05/07/2023 Linkwood

Linkwood 11yo 1984 (60.5%, James Mac Arthur Fine Malt Selection): nose: hot metal, marmalade-jars tin lids, cast-iron stoves, made dusty and sooty by years of usage. It is perhaps a little closed, apart from that. We may find stale chicory granules in an old jar, and faded oilskins in the background. A little later, we have apples, poached, then caramelised, and rusty metal, as well as a minuscule drop of nail varnish. It might seem shy-ish a nose, yet it is probably the high ABV masking the aromas that are purring underneath. The second nose has hot clementine and hot metal intertwined. With water, it is quite the change! Forsythia-scented air freshener, sprayed in a black-marble-tiled, dark-wood-panelled room in a country estate. In other words: flowery and waxy -- both floor wax and wood polish. That gives the nose an elegance and a distinguished bitterness, as well as something a little more light hearted. Further nosing adds a thin veil of white smoke. Mouth: sharp, bitter, and musky, here are dried plant sap on a rusty sickle, hot chicory infusion, poached endives (in fact, poached, then braised). After thirty seconds, it is an old, cast-iron stove that emits a comfortable warmth, and heated marmalade-jars tin lids. The second sip seems sweeter, more approachable. We have citrus rinds, both dried and candied, an old-school colander, still hot from the pasta it was just used to drain, and the enamel of which is chipped. This feeling of heat never really disappears, more numbing than comforting, like gin on a flesh wound. Water turns this into a gentle Speysider as one usually understands them: mellow, flowery, a little sweet, and elegant all round. Finish: it is bold, of course, yet also fruitier than before: now, we have some marmalade, not just the lid of its jar. It only lasts for a moment, mind; soon, all that remains is anaesthetics, as the whole roof of the mouth tries to shake off the numbness. It feels as though hit by a dusty stove. Oh! there is plenty of dust, although the soot and rust are now hidden. The second sip brings back some bitterness, well within the boundaries of what is tolerable, but still: a drop of flower-stem sap, hot metal, warmed mixed peel, and cake batter, lightly burnt in the tin mould. With water, it is a drop of plant sap in a glass of plum juice, which is to say it is sweet and bitter in a balanced way. It does remain warming, yet nothing like the fierce heat from before, and little of the metal survives. Only that gentle bitterness that ends up pointing towards honeysuckle. Lovely, if not as fruity as the first time we had this. Happy birthday, JB!. 8/10 (Thanks for the dram, JS)