Signatory Linkwood 9 Year
Linkwood is a whisky that you rarely find in single malt bottlings, and for the vast majority of those you do find (and I believe all that you’ll find in the U.S.) we have the independent bottlers to thank. I wrote a bit a couple of weeks back about independent bottlers when I was talking about a Blackadder Longmorn bottling. At the time, I mentioned that there were only a few independent bottlers that I found to be reliable sources of bottles, and among those was Signatory.
Signatory is, along with Gordon & MacPhail, one of the two most common independent bottlers you’re likely to find in shops in the U.S. They produce a wide range of bottlings, including lots of distilleries, many of whom are no longer with us. They also have a couple of different series of bottlings, including a cask-strength series, and an un-chill-filtered series. This last has been a source of some very surprising bottles that I’ve tried, including heavily peated versions of Bunnahabhain and Benriach (both malts whose distillery bottlings have historically been unpeated).
They’re also the source of perhaps the single most amazing scotch I’ve ever had the remarkable good fortune to try. It was a single-cask bottling of Ardbeg, distilled in 1967 and aged in oloroso sherry casks for 30 years. I don’t know how it was that I was lucky enough to try this whisky, but I’m so glad I did. Now that I’ve tasted scotch-perfection, I know just how amazing whisky can be.
And so I was intrigued and excited when a friend came to town with a Signatory bottling of Linkwood. Surprisingly, I’d never tried a Linkwood whisky before (I even went back and checked my records to be sure), and since it came from a sherry cask I figured it was a great place to start. But it was also a 375ml bottle, a size I had never seen whisky in before. It seemed the perfect combination for a night of dramming.
Linkwood is located in northern part of the Speyside region. It was founded in 1824 and has been rebuilt/refurbished three times since then, in 1873, 1963, and 1971 when it was expanded from 2 to 6 stills. One of the infamous stories about Linkwood concerns Roderick MacKenzie, the distillery manager in the 1940’s and 50’s. He was so superstitious about maintaining the quality and characteristics of Linkwood’s whisky that he “strove to avoid any change that might impact adversely on the whisky quality, even issuing an edict to not remove cobwebs in the still-house.”*
Today it’s a large distillery, turning out 2.6 million liters per year, but only 1-2% of this goes for single malt bottling. Of that 1-2%, the majority goes into bottles for the Flora & Fauna series, an excellent series of whiskies put out by United Malt & Grain Distilleries (only available in the UK). The whiskies in this series tend to be somewhat rare in single malt bottlings, owing to the fact that the majority of these distilleries’ products go into UMD’s various blends. The list below is slightly dated (from 2006), but gives a good picture of what is included in the series:
- Aberfeldy 15 Years
- Aultmore 12 Years
- Balmenach 12 Years
- Benrinnes 15 Years
- Bladnoch 10 Years
- Blair Athol 12 Years
- Caol Ila 15 Years
- Clynelish 14 Years
- Craigellachie 14 Years
- Dailuaine 16 Years
- Dufftown 15 Years
- Glendullan 12 Years
- Glenlossie 10 Years
- Inchgower 14 Years
- Linkwood 12 Years
- Mannochmore 12 Years
- Mortlach 16 Years
- Pittyvaich 12 Years
- Rosebank 12 Years
- Royal Brackla 10 Years
- Speyburn 12 Years
- Teaninich 10 Years
So many great distilleries in there that are so hard to find in single malt bottlings!
This bottle from Signatory is quite unique. It was distilled on May 31, 1988 and bottled in June 1997, at the tender age of 9 years. It comes from two sherry butts, numbers 2757 and 2758, and was bottled at 43%.
The whisky has the appearance of lightly burnished gold. Despite the low 43%, it looks like it has some good body to it, with some decent legs. The nose has scents of ripe red berries, hints of cinnamon, pepper, and nutmeg, all of which are underscored by pleasantly warming sweet lightly sherried notes. The palate has a wonderfully soft and velvety texture. Sweet flavors of caramel, dessert wine, ripe grapes, a wisp of smoke, are layered together with a surprising amount of depth. Warming alcohol catches a bit of fire at the back of the palate, and this is really the only place that the scotch’s youthfulness shows. Following on this the finish kicks off with citrus and apple flavors, giving way to a brightening acidity, mixed with a tingling alcohol.
A very fine whisky indeed, and perfect as a bridge between winter and summer (whiskies). While I firmly believe that scotch plays well in any season, you definitely need to pick the right scotch for the occasion. In this case, I could actually see this whisky fitting in well in any season, but it seems to work most perfectly somewhere in-between the heavy, smoky whiskies that are so satisfying in the winter and the lighter bodied whiskies that hit the spot in the summer.
What is more, Linkwood clearly makes some nice whisky. They’re one of the several distilleries whose bottles I have looked at on many an occasion, considered, but passed on for one reason or another. After tasting this bottle I realize what I’ve been missing. Time to begin keeping an eye out for others, perhaps a slightly older version, maybe even something from the Society…
*Quote from The Whisky River, Robin Laing, p. 48
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