Gordon & MacPhail Linkwood 1969 33-Year
As time has passed and I’ve had the good fortune to taste a wide range of whiskies, from new make spirit all the way up to 44-year olds, I’ve developed a real respect and affection for older whiskies. While I appreciate and enjoy the brash energy of young whiskies, it’s the greater complexity and stateliness of older whiskies that really has the power to mesmerize me. Time brings lots of benefits to whisky, among them more presence in the glass, and a ripe, richness that comes across as a much different characteristic when the whisky is younger.
Most excitingly, it’s always fun to dive into a really old whisky to see what it has to offer. Because Scotch whiskies past the 30-year mark can be an unpredictable mixed bag, you never really know what you’re going to get. At this point, the whisky has been in the barrel for quite a long time, and so the characteristics that it had when fresh off the still have long since been subsumed and transformed into a unique, profound relationship with the barrel that it’s been resting in for so long. The impact and role of the barrel are therefore predominant in determining the quality of the finished whisky. A bad barrel can ruin what would have been a remarkable whisky, and a great barrel can raise the same whisky to stunning heights.
Them there is the role of the bottler, who has a handful of decisions to make. Blend several old casks into a single bottling, or go single-cask? What proof? Cask-strength or diluted? If diluted, how low do you go? 46? 43? 40? Chill-filter? (shudder…) I’ve definitely tasted a number of old whiskies where you could just tell that bottled at cask-strength or as a single-cask it would have been an amazing whisky. But bottled as it was, well…something had been lost along the way.
In my experience, many of the older whiskies from Gordon & MacPhail experience a fate such as this. Their typical approach is to blend casks of older whiskies together and dilute at bottling, to either 40% or 43%. I can understand the rationale behind both decisions, but don’t empathize with it. Yes, 40% or 43% makes for a very drinkable whisky, but a rather tame one as well. And if I’m spending the money on such an older whisky, I want the choice as to how much water should be added to my whisky. I also have such a strong affinity for single-cask whiskies, that it’s simply too hard not to speculate longingly about how stellar some of the casks that went into the final blend must have been.
That being said, G&M offers a wide range of older whiskies at very reasonable prices, so it’s hard to take them to task too much. It’s more like buyer-beware: it’s important to know how they typically bottle older whiskies, so that you can have appropriate expectations. They’re all very nice whiskies, if not overly remarkable or inspiring.
This Linkwood 33-year old was one of the whiskies at we featured at the Old Whiskies tasting at Amherst Coffee this past March. It was the only one of them bottled at 40%, and it showed. Overall the whisky was quite good, but very understated.
Linkwood produces a fair amount of whisky each year, approximately 2.6 million liters. But what makes this whisky pretty darn exciting is that it was produced in 1969, 2 years before the distillery was expanded from 2 to 6 stills. So this particular whisky was distilled at a time when Linkwood was a much smaller distillery, and likely producing a slightly different spirit.
Tasting Notes
The whisky is the color of burnished gold with subtle amber tints. The nose has soft notes of red fruit reminiscent of sherry cask aging, alongside butter cookies, poached pears, candied lemon lime rind, and spun sugar. The whisky’s texture is very soft, gentle, and mouth-coating. The spectrum of favors is similar to the nose, with subtly sweet and gentle elements of pears, caramel custard, shortbread cookies, wheat and grain. The one note missing is the red fruit flavors, but these are compensated for by a buttered rum note that becomes more prominent as the whisky warms. The medium-length has flavors of genoise cake and soft, ripe fruits.
Very nice whisky. Rich and interesting, and quite drinkable. The flavors came across a bit soft, which is the impact of the 40%.
The one caveat to these notes, is that all of the flavors were very gently pronounced and subdued, not quite as profound as they sound in writing them. Nonetheless, this is a nice whisky. I remember distinctly at the tasting that the reception was very similar: this is a nice, very drinkable and enjoyable whisky, but without loads of character in the glass.
Still, pretty cool that it was distilled 41 years ago’ eh?
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