Highland Park Distillery occupies a site on the Holm Road outside Kirkwall that has a somewhat ambiguous history. The location was previously the operating site of one Magnus Eunson — a church officer of the United Free Church of Scotland and, simultaneously, one of Orkney's most prolific and inventive illicit distillers.
"Eunson reportedly used the church's underfloor space to hide his spirit from the very gaugers who attended Sunday services directly above it. He kept the best of it for the ministers. They never asked uncomfortable questions."Oral History Record · Kirkwall Parish · c. 1850
When Eunson eventually retired from the illicit trade, the site passed through several hands before being formally licensed in 1825 under the new Excise Act. The transition from hideout to licensed premises was, by all accounts, straightforward: the equipment was largely the same, the water source unchanged, and the knowledge of local malting and peat-cutting had not gone anywhere.
Highland Park is today the northernmost traditional whisky distillery in Scotland. It continues to floor-malt a portion of its own barley, sourcing peat from Hobbister Moor south of Kirkwall — an Orcadian peat quite different in character from the deep, phenolic peats of Islay. The result is a lighter, more fragrant smoke, underlaid with heather and wildflower.
