Thor was the opening release in Highland Park's Valhalla Collection, a four-bottle series issued between 2012 and 2014 and named for Norse gods rather than the human Viking figures of the later Warrior range. Where the Warrior releases were travel retail products with no age statements, the Valhalla expressions were limited-edition single malts with stated ages and cask strength or near-cask strength bottlings, and they were considerably more serious propositions.
Thor carries a 16-year-old statement and is bottled at 52.1% ABV, in a striking wooden ship-stave frame designed to evoke a Viking longship. The release was limited to 23,000 bottles worldwide and sold out quickly on launch, helped by the distillery's steadily climbing reputation and by the theatrical presentation. Behind the packaging sits a genuinely weighty whisky, heavier on sherried darkness and peat than the standard Highland Park 18.
Highland Park has distilled at Kirkwall since 1798 and is one of the few Scottish distilleries still operating its own floor maltings. Its peat, cut from Hobbister Moor on mainland Orkney, is heathery rather than medicinal, and that character is fundamental to the house style. In Thor it is turned up noticeably from the core range.
Whether Thor is worth its price today — when bottles trade well above their original level — depends on taste and circumstance. As a dram, it is excellent: the sherry, smoke and strength all pulling together. As a collector's piece, it opened a series that remains among the more coherent limited editions the distillery has produced.
