Linkwood 12yo
DS Tayman | 46% ABV
A fantastic compromise
I fear I’m a caricature of the old man, sitting on his porch and yelling: “Get off my lawn” to passers by.
I’m middle-aged and for the life of me, I just can’t understand the generation of kids who are 20 years and younger than me. I know this is a cyclical thing that every generation says when they reach their fifties. Well, cyclical or not, it’s affecting me, and I need to vent a bit.
I was raised to strive to do the very best I could. I was brought up with a core notion that one should have initiative and drive. You know… purpose.
My daughter recently graduated from college near the top of her class and is going to save all the animals on the planet. For now, she’s studying migratory and mating habits of a certain frog species in the southern United States. Her hard work has paid off by landing in a prestigious university’s lab and has spread her wings living on her own, enjoying a new part of her life and has used that initiative to help herself to be in the best place (literally and figuratively) she can. This makes papa happy.
My older son is equally driven - excelling in his last year of college and appears to be on his way to write his own ticket in the world of investigating cyber-crime. We’re hoping he doesn’t want to go to law school – there’s already one concussed and misguided bloke in the family. He works hard and has a great work-life balance - all the while doing his best and carrying forth an inner initiative. Fantastic.
And then, there is my 18 year old son. I think he was hatched.
His name is Finn. He is, without exaggeration, the sweetest and kindest person I know. He graduated high school last year, not without some drama to get to that finish line. His hair is down beyond his shoulders, he has a dead fuzzy caterpillar on his upper lip as a bad attempt at a moustache, and there appears to be some scrappy, moss-like vegetation going down his jawline which is his excuse for a beard. He sits and plays video games, he likes to tinker and fix things and he has absolutely no motivation. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch. I’ve had to resort to cattle prods to get him to work, and he does so with a grunt and not a care about what he does, or what kind of job he does. I have no idea where he came from. Same gene pool, but you’d never know it.
When I ask him questions such as: “What do you want to do today? What do you want to eat? Do you recognise you’ve been wearing the same t-shirt for four days straight? What do you want to do with your life?” I’m invariably met with shrugged shoulders and the response: “Dunno.”
If his motivation and initiative were measured on a temperature scale, we would be speaking in the Kelvin range.
I think you get the point.
I love him dearly but we are night and day; Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito; Public Enemy and Frederic Chopin. I swear that when I speak to him, he hears another language and I, frankly, in turn have no idea what comes out of his mouth, either.
The one thing that appears to have caught his interest is in his father’s whisky journey. He’s watched me sample, catalogue, take notes, and write about whisky. He’s been present for my whisky club meetings and listened to the banter. There’s some smouldering whisky geekhood in him and Finn does read whisky labels from the bottles in the cabinet as well as in my empty bottle collection. My “collection” consists of a bottle for each different whisky expression I’ve drained. The shelf has overflowed and there is a line going across the floor - but that’s a topic for another day.
Over the last two years or so, I’ve let Finn take a sip of my dram when he asks to try it to the extent I can gauge what his preferred flavour profile is. It is (perhaps not surprisingly) youthful whisky. Whisky with edges. Whisky that has a bite. Whisky that’s a bit sharp. Can you guess how that compares with his old man? Yep, diametrically opposed. I do love a good worm tub if I can find it. I love rich, oily, heavy, and creamy drams. Floral, grain-forward, and fruity are just fine but I want something with body to it.
After I returned home from work one night, I dared to try and talk with my son despite the fact there wasn’t an interpreter on hand to help us communicate. I asked him if he wanted to join me on some errands. “Dunno,” he replied. I took a deep breath and simply said I’d like the company. He shrugged his shoulders and put his sneakers on.
The last stop on the list of errands was to a liquor store. Two more bottles had been drained from the cabinet after my whisky club meeting, and we were soon walking up and down the aisles together examining bottles. After a few minutes, the store owner asked me if I was being bothered by the teenager with the long hair. When I told the owner that he was my son, his face blanched. He looked back and forth between both of us and was incredulous. I, the guy in the suit and tie with the high and tight hair cut of salt and pepper hair. Down the aisle a bit was my son, the teenager who looks like a skinny version of Gregg Allman with ripped jeans and a t-shirt with a Wonder Bread logo. The owner stammered a bit and apologised. “No worries,” I told him, and I walked toward Finn to continue our examination of the shelves.
After another five or 10 minutes we compared notes. Ultimately, Finn and I came down to three candidate bottles. One was a well-known, old scotch distillery of which I was looking to sample a certain expression, one was a new American single malt of which I knew next to nothing, and one was the bottle I’m reviewing here. When we started to break down the pros and cons, the older, traditional distillery was voted down by Finn because it was, you know, old school. I ruled out the new American bottle because all indications were that it would be sharp, edgy, and drunk by the seat of my pants. The bottle that came home with us was a relatively new (to me) independent expression of a 12 year old Linkwood. This bottle was a great mix of old/traditional with new. Perfect for the two mis-matched Shaws standing in the aisle.
Review
Linkwood 12yo, DS Tayman bottling, 46% ABV
USD$50 paid (£42)
Distilled in March 2008, this was bottled in July 2020 after maturation in a refill barrel before a finish in a Flam wine barrel.
Nose
A bowl of fruit - peaches in particular. Crystallised honey and pears, while vanilla beans come forward on the second trip to the nose. Crisp red apples and inviting fruity wafts with some floral notes. All this accompanied by a distinct aroma of mellow malt.
Palate
Did I mention honey and malt? You bet. Vanilla, berries, and peaches. Wine notes are present – the wine cask finish has provided nice and well-incorporated fruit and spice notes. These marry with honey/toffee notes and the fruit in the background. Sweet but not cloying; just the right balance. Quite lovely. Reminds me of a combination of Craigeallechie 13 and Dalwhinnie 15, with a lovely wine finish. Very good mouthfeel. Not viscous but it’s a good coating on the tongue. The finish is nice as it builds just a bit with spice, and ebbs slowly back to the wine and honey notes.
This is a great combination of fruity and floral combined with some heft and weight with mouthfeel. Delicious.
The Dregs
This is a new independent bottler for me. I’d come across the likes of Cadenhead’s, Signatory and Douglas Laing before, but never had I seen a bottle from DS Tayman. Evidently, they’ve been independent bottlers for almost 20 years and have expressions from Caol Ila, Blair Athol, Glen Elgin, and Linkwood.
When Finn and I were examining the canister, we noted the whisky is aged in refill bourbon barrels and then finished in Flam wine barrels. At first I wondered if this was a new grape variety - Syrah, Chardonnay and now Flam? No. Doing some research, the barrels are from Flam Winery in Israel. Tayman’s choice of casks also gives this an additional selling point – other than the wonderful flavour imparted to the distillate. That additional selling point is that every bottle is deemed supervised kosher. This is a first for independent bottlers of single malt.
For those who are eating a breakfast of eggs and bacon while reading this and not particularly interested in the kosher designation, that Flam wine influence is simply spot on. Delicious and balanced. In my experience, some wine finished whiskies risk being overly wine-forward, and this isn’t. This particular wine finish gives my bottle a distinct character, while not covering the foundational bourbon cask flavours. The way DS Tayman has treated its Linkwood is tremendous and well executed.
I read that DS Tayman only bottles its whisky aged from single casks, so each limited edition is unique and will not be recreated. As such, there’s variation among batches. I reached out to DS Tayman via their website to get more information about the way it selects casks and finishes its whiskies, but I’ve not received a response yet. Undeterred, I did more of an online search.
DS Tayman has used different Israeli winery barrels in its series of releases. The first edition of its 12 year old Linkwood, for example, was finished in Galil Mountain Winery barrels – another Israeli winery. I can’t speak to the Galil Mountain barrels, but the Flam Winery barrel is a terrific pairing for this Linkwood distillate.
This is a very good bottle and – along with my Bladnoch 11 which is getting close to empty – it ‘s becoming a go-to for me when I want non-peated fare. If you find a second edition 12 year old Linkwood from DS Tayma, don’t hesitate to pick one up if you can get it at the price I found mine. I’m eager to sample their range, but for now, the Linkwood in my glass is just plain delicious.
Finn took a sip of this the other day and gave it a rave review by nodding his head and saying, “cool” as he walked away. That’s high praise from someone with his (clearly) emotive and expansive vocabulary. Maybe this whisky journey of mine will have set my son on a journey of his own where he makes a name for himself in the whisky industry as a brand ambassador, blender, or even master distiller. It would be pretty neat to see “Finn Shaw, Master Distiller” on a bottle one day.
Oh yeah, that would require some initiative.
Score: 7/10
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