How you creatively combine ingredients, contrast cask types, harmonise the new make spirit, all play a hand in the character and flavour of the whisky.

Highland Park hand turn the barley every 8 hours, for 6 days, to ensure it maintains the perfect amount of moisture (5%) so that it will best absorb the intense aromatic smoke from our Hobbister Moor peat we burn in their kilns.

Normally, the hand-turned maltings account for 20% of the malt used in Highland Park whisky. For Shiel, a special edition release from 2017, they used 100% in order to deliver the most powerful intensity of peat smoke possible. Bottled at 48.1% ABV, this is a celebration of hand-turned floor maltings – one of our 5 keystones of production.