The Twisted Tattoo certainly gets under your skin. Not least because of this honey-coloured nectar’s rich, full-bodied flavour, but because what hits first is the striking red-and-black serpent emblazoned on the bottle.
Newly available in Singapore, the latest release from Highland Park was created in collaboration with renowned Danish tattoo artist Colin Dale. Dale specialises in the ancient art of freestyle, non-electric dot-work tattooing, seen in full effect on the bottle’s packaging.
Aside from the unique design, the Twisted Tattoo is the first time that the distillery has created a single malt combining whisky matured in Rioja seasoned wine casks with first fill bourbon casks.
The bottle’s distinctive graphic was inspired by the Viking legend of the Midgard Serpent, which grew so large it twisted around the earth to bite its own tail. It’s one way that Highland Park—located in the historic Viking islands of Orkney, Scotland—is paying tribute to its Norse ancestry.
That’s why collaborating with Dane Colin Dale was an ‘ideal choice’, says Highland Park’s global brand director, Jason Craig.
He says: “Dale is the perfect example of a modern-day Viking Soul and our partnership shows off the similarities between our crafts.”
Tattoos, adds Craig, tell emotionally important stories—much like how Highland Park wants to tell the story of the Orkney islands’ ancestry through its whisky.
Highland Park has been distilling whisky since the 1700s, and its founder, Magnus Eunson, was a direct descendant of the Vikings that settled in the region over 1,000 years before. Eunson certainly inherited his ancestors’ swashbuckling spirit, for he would often sneak away from his day-job as a church officer to set up an illegal whisky-making operation in a hut. That operation would one day become Highland Park; Though the brand marks its year of founding in 1798, that’s actually the year the authorities caught up with Eunson’s bootlegging operation.
Thankfully, there’s no need to go to such extremes to get a dram these days. The Twisted Tattoo is now available to purchase from selected retailers in Singapore.