A familiar face to anyone who has come to Whisky Show over the years, Martin Markvardsen is celebrating 20 years at Highland Park with an anniversary tasting. We’ll be taking a tour through some of his favourite drams from over the years, and toasting one of the industry’s greatest champions and one of its greatest distilleries. 

Highland Park on the storm-battered, isolated and majestic Orkney is a distillery that is easy to love. It has a real commitment to doing things in a traditional and flavour-focused way. That sees floor maltings, peat sourced from Orkney, and a myriad of other choices put to work. Recently, the distillery was closed for a period of sustainability-minded improvements which will help steer this brand through the next century. 

Martin’s journey in whisky was by no means conventional, as is often the case. Before finding his way to Orkney, he was a two-time Danish boxing champion and attached to the Danish Navy’s military police. A fateful trip to Scotland and a day’s leave saw him arrive at the gates of Glenkinchie, where he fell in love first with the stories, myths and legends that surround whisky and then with whisky itself.