Highland Park was founded in 1826 in Kirkwall, the capital of the Orkney Islands. It is the archipelago's most northern distillery. Its history of more than two centuries is rooted in the Scandinavian era of the Vikings. Highland Park has a wide range of several very popular whiskeys such as the Highland Park 12 years old Viking Honor, and exclusive vintage editions such as the Highland Park 1902 Berry Bros & Rudd. Highland Park is one of the most successful internationally operating distilleries in the world.
The myths that circulate about the history of the Highland Park distillery have their origins in the late 18th century, and are probably some of the most enigmatic historic tales from the world of Scotch whiskey. Legend has it that Highland Park was founded in 1798 by the legendary smuggling “whiskey priest” Magnus Eunson, a man who is said to have established an illegal distillery on the current site of Highland Park. Magnus Eunson was a cheeky man: he was the priest of Kirkwall Cathedral, a religious leader and an illegal whiskey distiller, who hid his produced whiskey under the lecterns in the cathedral.
One day, when customs arrived in Orkney, Magnus Eunson knew his illegal practices would be discovered. He decided to move his filled whiskey casks from the cathedral to the rectory where he lived. He put a sheet over the casks, placed a coffin on top and instructed the parishioners to form a circle around the coffin. Meanwhile, customs officers searched the town of Kirkwall, and also visited the cathedral. While searching the rectory, the customs officers noticed the coffin, which was surrounded by the parishioners singing a dirge while holding Bibles in their hands. Magnus Eunson then made customs officials believe that a funeral ceremony was being held in honour of a smallpox death. Fearing for their lives, the men fled the cathedral, leaving Magnus Eunson's illegal practices undetected.
However, other sources claim that Eunson's practices were indeed discovered through an intervention by the customs officer named John Robertson, who would go on to become the co-founder of the distillery. Robertson worked as an excise officer in the 19th century, and some believe that John Robertson took over Eunson's illegal distillery, by which means Euston managed to clandestinely escape persecution.
Exactly what happened in these years around the founding of Highland Park will probably remain a mystery forever. What we do know for sure is that Robert Borwick and John Robertson founded the Highland Park Distillery as a legal concern in 1826. In fact, a lot of illegal whiskey was distilled before the Excise Act of 1823, and numerous illegal and still unknown moonshiners have contributed to the rise of the (unregistered) whiskey industry. It is advisable to approach any undocumented historical narrative with a certain amount of skepticism, especially since distilleries' historical stories have always been surrounded by myths and heroic tales.
Nevertheless, the name Magnus Eunson remains inseparable from the historical roots of the Highland Park distillery, the oldest and most enigmatic historical story in the whiskey world.
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