With as much as 70% of the overall flavour of a single malt whisky coming from the type of cask it is matured in, it is imperative to treat these handmade casks with a reverence and respect. For Distillery Manager, Graham Manson, the peat is the key to understanding and appreciating Highland Park he describes its role as being “absolutely fundamental.” The peat is a mixture of textures and aromas ranging from a more floral heather-rich top layer, to a darker, denser material, the mixture giving the resulting smoke a slow burning and complex aroma.
The Orkney Islands have an abundance of this sweet, heathery peat, which is around 4000 years old and is carefully selected from Hobbister Moor. One of the fundamental flavours in Highland Park single malt whisky is the delicate, sweet, aromatic peat smoke, which has given Highland Park its unique character since 1798. When it is ready, the barley is then placed in the kilns where the aromatic peating process begins. To malt the barley, it’s steeped in the mineral rich water from the Crantit spring, before transferring it to the malting floor to slowly germinate. Highland Park is one of only a handful of distilleries that still retains a traditional malting floor, turning each batch of malt by hand, in what is a physically demanding process. When the sermon was over, Mansie was asked what he thought of the minister’s pronouncements “I think that oor minister is no’ very consistent, for at the very time he was preaching, he had six kegs o’ as guid brandy under his pulpit as was ever smuggled.” Clearly, Mansie was confident that his preferred hiding place for the contraband, under the floor of the pulpit, was well-placed. Smuggling on Orkney had become so prevalent that one Sunday, Mansie’s minister denounced the activity as being iniquitous and un-Christian. By 1798 Highland Park had been founded later a syndicate, which, somewhat ironically, included Eunson’s arresting officer, John Robertson, and his fellow exciseman, Robert Pringle, purchased the High Park estate, including the distillery in April 1813.Įxcisemen had targeted the Orkney Islands and seized many illicit stills from 1805. He smuggled principally spirits, but remains most closely associated with the origins of Scotch whisky from Highland Park Distillery. Mackintosh in Around the Orkney Peat-Fires (1898), Magnus Eunson was not a preacher, nor does his account suggest that Eunson was an illicit distiller, however smuggling was virtually a synonym for illicit distilling. He was a beadle by day and a smuggler by night, the latter operation based from his bothy on the High Park above Kirkwall where Highland Park Distillery now stands.Īccording to W. Magnus Eunson was not a preacher as received wisdom would have it. Highland Park was founded in 1798 by Magnus Eunson, the man often credited with the foundation of the distillery at the end of the 18th century. “We have a sacred trust to keeping it true to its roots.Distillery Information Highland Park Signage “I said, ‘Someone’s got to open this.’ I worked in real estate, and had never seen the inside of restaurant kitchen before.” He says the staff’s dedication and attention to detail has kept Highland Park Cafeteria a mainstay for Dallas. “Everyone in the community was just crying about it,” Snoyer says.
In 1981 The New York Times called it “America’s Cafeteria”, and neighbors lamented its closing in 1995. The cafeteria in Casa Linda Plaza is a Dallas landmark that first opened in 1925 on Knox Street. “For some families in Dallas, it’s a family tradition,” he says. Pies stacked high on the counters, and people lined up around the building. Last year during Thanksgiving week, Highland Park Cafeteria served about 9,000 over a three-day period. And everyone in uniform receives a 50 percent discount. “You pay $7, and you’re a member,” Snoyer says. For just $7.99, customers can go through the line and stay as long as they like. It only serves what’s in season, and for the holidays, that means baked squash, zucchini muffins and pumpkin bread, all made in-house by cooks who have been interpreting recipes for more than 20 years. “Any time there’s a tomato scare or an egg scare, we don’t worry because we know exactly where our food comes from.” The cafeteria’s vegetables are grown no more than 50 feet from a dirt road and nowhere near power lines. “Our secret is that fresh, raw ingredients are less expensive than prepared,” owner Jeff Snoyer says.
But Highland Park Cafeteria has debunked that myth, especially when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner. When you think of a cafeteria, gourmet food doesn’t exactly come to mind.
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