Signatory Linkwood 13yo
2006 Cask #8 | 58.4% ABV
Score: 6/10
Good stuff.
TL;DR
A compelling whisky with an edge of inferno
Glassware is the most important tool in the whisky box.
January 2021 was not that long ago and Scotland, at this point in time, was in lockdown. It’s the only reason my discovery of whisky was through the medium of Zoom chats, as distilleries hastily bungled their wares into the virtual domain — the host of my first “virtual tasting” was sitting inside a repurposed garden shed.
The industry had taken a serious hit, clearly, and in a bid to reignite the revenue streams, distillery tour guides were doing all they could to inject enthusiasm into an inanimate camera lens. Strange, bordering on the absurd.
After that introduction, I knew that whisky was open for my investigations and before I bought anything else (other than a 70cl bottle of my gateway whisky), I went shopping for the perfect glass. You see, as well as being a graphophile (you need the perfect pen in order to do perfect work) and an audiophile (you really need to hear the floor squeaking under the 3rd cellist, otherwise is it really music?) and a papyrophile (because nothing beats the soft resistance of a Clairefontaine Triomphe leaf under my Kaweco nib), I am also a bit of a crystalphile (as it were)…obsessed with glassware.
Whisky for me, in the here and now, is all about the smell, flavour and experience of exploring it. But that’s only because I can focus on those things — the medium of delivery has already been taken care of. It’s important stuff, glassware, because it’s another sensory interaction with whisky (Dallas has even done a shoot-out of the best whisky containers, so you don’t have to).
I’ll say it now, though: I hate tumblers. If I could insert the f-bomb as a prefix, I would, because it’s a passionate hatred I have of straight-sided glassware for consumption of this beautiful amber nectar. There doth exist big proponents of the tumbler, not least of whom are some Dramfacers (listen to Podcast 5 for the culprits). Shocker.
For me, the glass is as important as the liquid because it’s the touch part of the sensory experience: I hold it, I look through it, and I fiddle with it as I ruminate on what’s happening in the other sensory areas like smell and taste. Most importantly, it touches my face to deliver the liquid into my facehole — it’s hugely important.
So my search began, working my way through the usual suspects of Glencairns, copitas, hideous abominations of twisted refractive tumblerage, and many more, until I finally stumbled upon an Australian brand called Denver & Liely. Here was a rather beautifully shaped whisky glass — with typical marketing buoyancy surrounding it, like air profile charts and physics based whatsits — but really it just looked like a smashing glass*.
So I bought one, at a bit of an expense (£40), and it arrived four weeks later directly from Australia, intact. It was a miracle unto itself, the wee cardboard tube protecting that fragile glass through the Aussie postal network, along various other airborne routes, into our Royal Mail system — the most notorious breaker of things — and to my door in one piece. Oh what a joy this little glass is to hold in the hand, with the heavy base and nuclear cooling tower aesthetics. Refraction is a fickle mistress with this one, for it tricks you into pouring a far larger measure than you would usually. Magic at work.
Anyway, I loved this glass so much that I started posting my images on a new Instagram account — it was that transformative. Through that account and my regular posting of photographs, the chaps at Denver & Liely started commenting on my stuff, and we got chatting. At first it was about the glass and the drams I was featuring inside it, but then it turned to other areas of what’s good in whisky, from Australian to Scotch and in between. We had a chat about Mortlach 16 Flora & Fauna and about what might go someway to replacing it — the Dailuaine Flora and Fauna was the answer. But there was one bottle that, according to D&L, was beyond incredible — the best whisky they’d tried that year. It was a Signatory Cask Strength Collection Linkwood 2006.
My search began and, despite much Googling, I couldn’t find a bottle in any online shop anywhere. But at the time of searching, I had just entered the murky world of online auctions. To cut a long story short, I’d signed up to the Whisky Auctioneer site a month or so before this, paid my £5 deposit for access, and had spent the rest of the time baulking at the prices some whisky goes for. But this time I had intent, and bashing “LINKWOOD” into the search bar displayed a bunch of interesting looking bottlings and, to my surprise, a bottle of Signatory Linkwood 2006. Clapping my hands, I watched with interest as the bidding deadline approached and, with a low-ball punt of £65, I miraculously won the auction.
After the auction ended, I went back to Google to see what this bottle should command. I was a bit surprised to see it was going for anywhere between £90 and £300. Compounding this surprise was a message to D&L on Instahoot to let them know I’d managed to find one, and at a pretty good price too. The response was short and succinct: ‘That’s the bargain of the century — it’s a £1,000 whisky.’
I don’t know if I believed it, truly, but the prospect of me procuring a £1,000 whisky for £65 was enough to have it sit on the whisky super-shelf undisturbed for months, for fear of opening it. I mean, would I be able to enjoy a whisky knowing it’s worth so much? What does a £1,000 whisky even taste like? What if I just have it sit there and maybe one day flog it for millions?
I batted this conundrum back and forth for months and months until, one day, I realised how stupid I was being. I’m the biggest mouthpiece for opening whisky and drinking it; it infuriates me to see swathes of identical unopened bottles sitting on groaning shelves because, if I were in that room, there would be so much zinc foil on the floor we could melt it down and cast a life-size statue of Dallas. I marched over to the shelf and, with a flamboyance usually reserved for Dancing On Ice, pulled the gigantic wood stopper off the awkwardly shaped glass bottle and inhaled deeply through the wide neck. Then I cried for the next 5 minutes due to the alcohol burning my sinuses.
“This is a whisky that holds an unfortunate stigma for me that it can’t seem to shake off.”
In between sniffing and pouring, I did a little more searching for reviews of this Cask 8 version of Linkwood 2006 — I wanted to know roughly what to expect. I found a YouTube review from a prominent German channel, with the sentiment being that it was full of bold sherry cask influence and not much else. By the way, I know ASMR is a thing now, but can we put in some chapter skips to avoid having to listen to the mouth swilling antics of whisky reviewers — it’s just not on. Sitting on a chair, actively listening to liquid being forced through teeth like an expensive mouthwash with accompanying grunts of surprise and adulation in surround-sound 5.1 Dolby Atmos, is about as enjoyable an experience as poking your eyeballs out with a lit candle.
*I subsequently smashed my Denver & Liely glass when enjoying, for the first few times, Arran 21. It was my first connection to that inimitable dram; interestingly, it was also my first review here on Dramface. That the glass smashed shortly thereafter is a bit symbolic of my writing style.
Review
Linkwood 2006 13yo Signatory Vintage Cask Strength Series, 58.4% ABV
£65 at auction, now sold out
The colour of this whisky is amazing. It’s akin to a vintage red wine, not that I have practical experience of this, but through the medium of Google I can see that vintage red wine also has a shift in hue as the wine approaches the thinner wedge of an angled glass. It goes from a deep scarlet or blue red to a more mahogany or orange red. This Linkwood does the same thing, going from a very dense purpley red to a more yellowy orange colour — very alluring and deeply pleasing through my elite glassware.
It’s worth noting that I have sampled from this decanter-style bottle for just over six months now, each time coming to it with a reserved judgement and suspicion borne from the gravitas of being told it’s a £1,000-level bottle of whisky. I still don’t believe that to be the case, and even if I did believe it, I wouldn’t have any data to back that belief — I’ve never tried a £1,000 whisky. I can only assume that the chaps at D&L have, and that they know what they’re talking about. Either way, this is a whisky that holds an unfortunate stigma for me that it can’t seem to shake off.
Nose
Marzipan, delicate. Raisins and vanilla fudge. Soft spice and sweetness. Red wine gums.
Palate
Flaming grape juice, raisins on scolding porridge. Highland toffee. Thick honey, mint and vanilla, with chewy fudge on the tail end. Fantastic.
The Dregs
The arrival, at its cask strength, is hot. It burns quite significantly, even now when I’m happy to quaff 60% new-make spirits and enjoy mostly cask strength whiskies in my stash. It has a dart of edgy spice, catching the throat and forcing you to stand to attention. Fighting through this and keeping the whisky at full potency, it does eventually reveal some beautiful things: the balance of grapey notes with toffee and some botanicals offers a really interesting journey through the dram. There’s almondy pops and fresh mint that lend a delicate balance to the experience — despite the heat, this becomes a real nice sipper.
Adding water tamps the heat but it takes a fair dosing to get it to a point where it’s smouldering, rather than blazing. Doing so reveals more of that toffee sweetness — highland toffee and fudge laced with one or two raisins. Nice. It has a coating viscosity at cask strength and was the first example of a “chewy” whisky for me: I felt it permeate my whole cavernous facehole and seep into its walls such that my jaw started to work up and down. It’s one to sit and really savour whilst it rests in your mouth.
Scoring this was a bit tricky. It’s not a whisky I’d pay £1,000 to experience. Having tried a bunch of whiskies in the hundreds of pounds bracket, and with some missing the mark completely for me, I have to say that for me to apply ‘worthy of £1,000’ to a whisky, it needs to transcend. It would, to keep this uncharacteristically short, need to be a 10/10.
This is not that, not by a long stretch. It’s very worthy of a 6, because it doesn’t make me swoon like a 7 would. It’s delicious and it’s complex — I think there’s more inside this whisky than I’m able to extract right now — but it’s a bit too hot and that sherry finish seems to interfere in a way that I wish it wouldn’t. Let me at more of those fudge notes and stop closing your raisin overcoat around them!
A solid 6 — maybe even a 6.5, but we don’t do that, so rounding down is the only fair way to score it. The availability is now patchy; it’s sometimes available at auction and hammering for around £90, which is a price I wouldn’t pay for it. For some reason I was able to snaffle it at £65, a price that is worthy of the experience, for me right now in this phase of my whisky trajectory. I’ll come back to it in another 6 months and see what’s occurring. The bottle is half empty now, so perhaps some in-bottle magic will manifest in the downtime.
Score: 6/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC
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