How Highland Park Is Rewriting the Rules of Whisky Marketing With Its Between You and I Series
For most of its history, the Scotch whisky industry has sold its wares through a fairly rigid playbook: age statements, cask provenance, distillery pedigree, and an authoritative list of tasting notes handed down from experts to consumers like gospel. The language has always been institutional — citrus, vanilla, dried fruit, smoke — as if a bottle could only be understood through a professional's vocabulary. Highland Park, the storied Orkney distillery, has decided that playbook is overdue for a rewrite.
Through its Between You and I series, the Scottish single malt brand has launched a new approach that aims to reframe the whisky experience entirely — rather than relying on classic tasting notes, Highland Park invites creative minds from outside the spirits world to share their own interpretations of the whisky, each filtered through the lens of their particular background. It's a concept that sounds simple on the surface but represents a genuinely disruptive idea in a category long dominated by gatekeepers and connoisseur-speak.
The series has now produced two editions, each anchored by a high-profile collaborator from the worlds of food, art, and fashion, and each generating a liquid profile built backward from an artist's personal memories and sensory associations rather than forward from a distiller's standard recipe. The results are not just interesting whiskies — they signal a broader strategic repositioning for a brand with deep roots and a clear eye on the future.
The Distillery Behind the Ambition
To understand why this series matters, it helps to understand what Highland Park is and where it sits in the Scotch whisky hierarchy. Highland Park is the Orkney distillery founded in 1798, and it has built a loyal global fanbase while remaining a strategic brand for Edrington Global Travel Retail. It operates at the northern edge of the Scottish whisky map — geographically remote, meteorologically brutal, and philosophically distinct from the Speyside and Highland distilleries that dominate mainstream conversation.
Highland Park uses local peat that contains a higher proportion of heather than many other peats, a detail that matters enormously to the flavor it produces. This peat, infused with aromatic heather rather than woody tree roots, gives Highland Park its distinctive, subtle hint of aromatic smoke — resulting in a whisky that is characterfully complex and expressively deep, with a flavor that cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world. That combination of sherry cask influence and heathered smoke is Highland Park's calling card, a profile the distillery has spent more than two centuries refining.
The accolades have followed accordingly. Highland Park has been named "The Best Spirit in the World" on three occasions by F. Paul Pacult, America's foremost expert on distilled spirits, and its 25-year-old whisky was the first spirit ever to receive a perfect 100-point score at the Ultimate Spirits Challenge. For a distillery that has achieved that kind of recognition, the decision to experiment — to hand the interpretive reins to a chef or a visual artist — is not born of desperation. It's born of confidence.
The First Edition: Björn Frantzén and the Swedish Oak Breakthrough
For the Between You and I series, the distillery works with leading figures from food, art, and fashion. The first edition was created with Swedish chef Björn Frantzén, famed for his three-Michelin-star restaurant. The choice of Frantzén was deliberate on multiple levels. Frantzén is no stranger to innovation himself, having earned a unique place in culinary history as the only chef simultaneously holding three Michelin stars across three restaurants. His Nordic-kaiseki style, blending Nordic ingredients with Japanese culinary philosophy, parallels Highland Park's own blend of tradition and creativity.
The liquid that emerged from that collaboration was consequential not just conceptually but technically. Between You and I was matured for 16 years across a selection of virgin Swedish oak — a first for Highland Park — alongside sherry-seasoned European and American oak, and ex-Bourbon casks. The use of virgin Swedish oak marked a genuine departure from the distillery's established maturation vocabulary, which has historically centered on Spanish sherry casks. The distillery describes the result as layered and complex, designed to spark conversation between drinkers rather than dictate what they should taste, and it's bottled at 48% ABV.
The philosophical dimension of the release was made explicit by Highland Park's own Brand Director. "Between You and I invites people to share their own personal tasting notes and what the whisky evokes for them, from a treasured memory to a favorite song," said Paul Condron. "This is a new way of tasting whisky, more personal and emotional than ever." That framing — emotional rather than technical, personal rather than prescriptive — is the through-line of the entire series.
Journeys: The Travel Retail Companion
Alongside the main Frantzén release, Highland Park introduced a companion expression designed specifically for global travel retail. Orkney single malt Highland Park partnered with three-Michelin-starred chef Björn Frantzén to unveil Between You and I: Journeys — a travel retail-exclusive 17-year-old single malt. Rather than prescribing standard tasting notes, Frantzén was invited to interpret the whisky through the lens of his own sensory and culinary journey. He drew inspiration from personal memories spanning winters in Stockholm to adventures in Tahiti, New York, Istanbul, and Orkney, where he visited the Highland Park distillery and discovered the brand's aromatic heathered peat firsthand.
The liquid itself reflected those far-flung influences. Matured for 17 years in first-fill French oak casks seasoned with red wine and complemented by sherry-seasoned American oak casks and refill casks, Between You and I: Journeys is rich, fruity, and delightfully complex. The packaging design, shaped by Frantzén's sensory impressions, features six layered colors, each representing a distinct memory. Inside, instead of traditional tasting notes, the pack contains a booklet filled with reflective questions and prompts, encouraging the consumer to respond to the whisky with their own travel memories, answering the question: Where will it take you?
Between You and I: Journeys launched exclusively at Dubai Duty Free locations throughout October, featuring world-first activation displays before a wider global travel retail rollout. The whisky was showcased across four activation sites in both departures and arrivals throughout October, followed by an additional site in November, where it took center stage in Dubai Duty Free's high-profile promotion space in Terminal 3. Additional activations were planned for Edinburgh, Shanghai Pudong, and Singapore Changi airports in November and December and into early 2026.
The Second Edition: Laila Gohar and the Art of Sensory Translation
If the Frantzén collaboration introduced the concept of between You and I to the whisky world, the second edition with New York-based artist Laila Gohar has pushed it further — and in a direction that feels even more aligned with the series' core ambition.
Laila Gohar is a New York-based artist and creative director renowned for transforming food into surreal, theatrical art that blurs the lines between cooking, performance, fashion, and design. Originally from Egypt, Gohar is known for immersive, sensory installations centered around food. She has work that straddles art, performance, and gastronomy, and she has collaborated with prestigious names in fashion and luxury. She is famous for turning food into playful, surreal art, from butter sculptures to towering seafood displays. Gohar is, in other words, someone who has already spent her career collapsing the walls between disciplines — which made her a natural fit for a series that asks whether whisky can be understood through imagination as readily as through palate training.
Building the Liquid Around an Artist's Heritage
The craft process behind the Gohar release was meticulous and genuinely unusual in its methodology. Highland Park Master Whisky Maker Marc Watson sampled more than 80 casks while developing the release, taking inspiration from Gohar's Egyptian heritage. That's not a standard cask selection process — it's a targeted search for a flavor profile that could speak to a specific person's cultural memory. The resulting whisky spent its first 11 years in refill casks before moving into unseasoned American oak, selected to amplify notes of orange blossom, leather, and warming spice alongside the distillery's characteristic peat smoke.
The final bottling comes in at 47.5% ABV (95 proof), with notes of orange blossom, leather, warming spice, bright fruit, and subtle peat smoke. Those are not accidental descriptors — they were assembled with Gohar's palate and cultural framework specifically in mind, a process Marc Watson has described in candid terms.
"Working on Between You and I was an opportunity to step into Laila's universe and create something deeply personal for her," said Watson. "This release was about creating a whisky that feels cinematic, adventurous, and transportive. What I love most is how it invites conversation, encouraging people to experience flavor in a more personal and imaginative way, with each sip taking everyone on a different journey."
When Tasting Notes Become Visual Narratives
What happens after the liquid is built is where this collaboration becomes genuinely extraordinary. Gohar was the first person to taste both whiskies, and her responses shaped the packaging, which features hand-drawn illustrations by Silja Goetz. That creative pipeline — from distiller to artist to illustrator — is unlike anything else happening in the Scotch whisky market right now.
Leather brought to mind ancient artifacts in a Cairo museum; orange blossom suggested a sun-drenched Andalusian courtyard; and vanilla transported her to the slopes of a tropical volcano beneath a night sky. For the collaboration, these impulses meant giving illustrator Silja Goetz the moods and imagined settings that came to her while tasting the whisky, rather than a literal visual brief. The result is packaging that carries genuine narrative weight — not just attractive design, but a mapped record of one person's sensory and imaginative journey through a glass of Orkney single malt.
For consumers, this means whisky can arrive as a collectible object that sets the mood before the first sip. It also pushes spirits closer to a multisensory experience, where the label, booklet, and liquid work together to guide how the drink is read. That's a substantial shift from the traditional model, in which the bottle is largely an inert vessel decorated with tartan patterns and heritage typography.
Two Whiskies, Two Worlds
Highland Park launched two 17-year-old single malts with Laila Gohar as the second edition of the Between You and I series — a global release and a travel retail exclusive — going on sale from September 24, 2026, each with a recommended retail price of $160. The global edition centers on Gohar's Egyptian heritage, with its orange blossom and spice profile driving the visual identity. The travel retail exclusive, titled Journeys, takes its inspiration from New York, Gohar's home city. Watson built it around a core of new Spanish oak casks, with official notes from the brand listing cinnamon, warming spice, subtle smoke, and vanilla from ex-bourbon casks, while sherry-seasoned oak adds deep chocolate notes.
The 700ml whisky is bottled at 47.5% ABV and carries a recommended retail price of $165. Shoppers can buy the global edition online and in stores worldwide, while Journeys will be sold only at duty-free travel retail locations.
The Larger Campaign: Orkney as Identity, Not Just Origin
The Between You and I series doesn't exist in isolation — it's part of a broader brand repositioning that Highland Park has been executing since 2024. Edrington has rolled out a marketing push for Highland Park Scotch whisky inspired by the brand's home archipelago of Orkney. The campaign, titled "Different by Nature," represents a deliberate pivot away from the brand's earlier Viking-mythology branding toward something more grounded and locally authentic.
The campaign showcases real-life Orkney locals who embody the creative, original, and unexpected approach that Highland Park brings to whisky making. Photographer Tom Johnson captured these "local legends" at landmarks significant to the distillery's process, including the Highland Park facility itself and Hobbister Moor, where the brand sources its distinctive heather-infused peat.
Among the featured locals are Highland Park warehouse operator Gary Skea, farmer and ecologist Noel Thomson, artists Louise and Megumi Barrington, and local legend Phylida Wright. These are not actors or brand ambassadors hired to embody an aesthetic — they're working Orcadians who happen to represent the texture of life in the place that makes Highland Park what it is. "Highland Park has always been an incredibly special whisky, but Orkney is what makes it special," said Paul Condron, Brand Director at Highland Park.
The packaging refresh was applied across the 12-, 15-, and 18-year-old iterations of the brand's portfolio, meaning the visual identity overhaul runs all the way from entry-level expressions to the premium core range. That kind of top-to-bottom coherence suggests a brand with genuine strategic clarity rather than a marketing department chasing trends.
Historical Precedent: Highland Park Has Always Understood Objects
Highland Park's instinct for marrying great liquid with arresting physical presentation goes back further than most people realize. In 2012, the distillery released a 50-year-old expression that won Best Design at the World Whiskies Awards. With only 275 bottles produced, each was encased in an intricate hand-crafted ornate sterling silver 'net cage' created by Scottish jewellery designer Maeve Gillies, who took inspiration from Orkney's elemental forces. Maeve's bottle design celebrates Orkney: its seas, island life, wild elements, incredible natural light, and the passage of time.
Earlier artist collaborations have also peppered the brand's history. The Twisted Tattoo release saw a bottle design created in collaboration with Danish tattoo artist Colin Dale, who was inspired by Nordic and Viking wood carvings, including depictions of the legend of the Midgard serpent. Another release was created with Danish photographer Søren Solkær and came packaged with a 160-page book of photographs spanning Solkær's 26-year career, during which he had shot musicians including Björk, the White Stripes, and Franz Ferdinand. What's new about the Between You and I series is not the idea of collaborating with artists — Highland Park has done that for decades — but the depth to which the collaboration now penetrates the liquid itself, not just the packaging around it.
Industry Implications: What the Rest of the Whisky World Should Watch
The spirits industry has experimented with artist collaborations before, but most of those efforts have amounted to little more than commissioned label art. What Highland Park is doing with Between You and I is structurally different: the collaborator's sensory identity, cultural history, and imaginative responses are embedded in the maturation decisions, cask selection, and flavor architecture of the whisky. The artist isn't decorating the product — the artist is shaping what goes inside the bottle.
That distinction matters enormously from a market perspective. Artwork-led bottle identities give premium spirits brands a way to transform packaging into a narrative cue that shapes perception before tasting begins. But when the narrative runs all the way through to the liquid, the story becomes harder to dismiss as mere marketing gloss. A collector who buys the Gohar edition isn't just getting a bottle with nice illustrations — they're getting a whisky that was literally built around the sensory memory of orange blossoms in North Africa and leather in Egyptian museums.
Layering visual design, printed materials, and flavor notes expands spirits into immersive rituals that compete with experiential luxury formats — and this is where Highland Park's strategy lands with the most force. The premium whisky category is increasingly competing not just against other bottles on a shelf but against experiences: high-end dinners, travel, art. By embedding those very experiences into the product's DNA, Highland Park is arguing that a bottle of single malt can be all of those things at once.
Limited releases with artist-designed presentation create secondary value around bottles as display-worthy objects rather than disposable containers. For American collectors who have watched the secondary market for rare bourbon explode over the past decade, that logic will sound familiar. The mechanics are different, but the fundamental appeal — owning something that is simultaneously a luxury object, a cultural artifact, and a piece of craft — is the same.
What It Means for American Enthusiasts
American whiskey drinkers, particularly those who came up through bourbon culture, tend to approach Scotch with a certain amount of skepticism. The peated character, the sherry influence, the institutional language — it can feel like a closed club with an initiation ritual. That's precisely the wall Highland Park is trying to knock down with this series. The question "Where will it take you?" is an invitation, not a test. It's the distillery explicitly telling the consumer that their imagination, their memories, their associations are as valid as any tasting panel's official notes.
For the American enthusiast who collects limited releases, the Between You and I series presents a compelling proposition. The Laila Gohar edition — a 17-year-old single malt bottled at 47.5% ABV (95 proof), with notes of orange blossom, leather, warming spice, bright fruit, and subtle peat smoke — sits at a price point that serious collectors will recognize as fair for a well-aged expression with genuine craft behind it. At a recommended retail price of $165, it competes directly with allocated bourbon releases and premium single barrel expressions that American consumers are already chasing. The difference is that the Gohar edition comes with a fully formed artistic narrative, a visual identity of real distinction, and a liquid built on a foundation of more than 80 carefully selected casks.
The travel retail angle opens another dimension for a specific kind of American buyer — the frequent traveler who habitually browses duty-free spirits halls between flights. One version is sold only in duty-free travel retail shops, making it the kind of find that feels earned rather than simply purchased. That scarcity mechanism, familiar to anyone who has hunted rare whiskey at airports from Dubai to Tokyo, gives the Journeys expressions a cachet that goes beyond what any standard retail allocation could manufacture.
A Blueprint, Not a One-Off
Perhaps the most significant thing about the Between You and I series is what it signals about Highland Park's long-term intentions. This isn't a one-time stunt or a brand manager's experiment — it's an ongoing framework with architecture built to accommodate multiple collaborators across multiple years. The distillery has stated that the series works with leading figures from food, art, and fashion, suggesting a pipeline of future editions that could span chefs, visual artists, fashion designers, photographers, musicians, and beyond.
Each future edition will presumably follow the same operational logic: Watson and his team taste their way through dozens of casks, calibrating a flavor profile to speak to a specific creative person's heritage and sensory universe, then invite that person to taste and respond before their impressions become the visual and narrative framework for the release. It's a repeatable process with infinite variation — and it gets more interesting with each collaborator who brings a different cultural vocabulary to the table.
For Highland Park, a distillery that has been making whisky on a remote Scottish archipelago since 1798, the willingness to hand part of the creative process to a culinary artist from Cairo who lives in New York is itself a statement of confidence. It says the liquid is strong enough to absorb any interpretation and emerge richer for it. Given what Marc Watson and his team produced — a 17-year-old single malt that evokes Cairo museums and Andalusian courtyards without losing a single thread of Orkney smoke — that confidence appears well-placed.
The whisky world has spent generations teaching consumers how to taste. Highland Park, with the Between You and I series, is doing something rarer and arguably more valuable: teaching consumers how to feel.
