Linkwood 28 1987 Cadenhead Small Batch

Thanks to /u/xreekinghavocx for pouring me a dram of this.

Here we are, more mystery reviews, done in December as part of an Advent Calendar made up by my wife of my own samples. It’ Advent Day #18, just in case you’re having trouble following, what with my other whisky samples, tastings, and pretty baller-ass whisky life, when I think about it.

I’m pretty happy with it all.

So let’s get to the next one and stop standing around sucking our own dicks, shall we? This is already delayed enough.

Price: N/A at the LCBO

Region: Speyside

Distilled: 1987

Bottled: December 16th, 2015

Stated Age: 28-years-old

Cask Type: 2 butts

Number of bottles: 1062

Abv: 58.4%

Colour: 2.5Y 8/10

Nose: Pear, cloves, pineapple funk, white cake, almonds

Starts out quite simple. Starts picking up with time, more funk, more tropical notes, a nice backbone of cloves. Water almost brings out more nuttiness and sweet aspects.

Taste: Lemon-lime soda, rich caramel, mint, cereal/muffin/white cake, peanut, white raspberry, honey

Amazing mouthfeel. Really quite nice. Immediately I’m liking it because of that. It may not be super crazy at first, but between the mouthfeel and the rich caramel notes that startup, there are hints that this will open up.

Luckily those hints are correct. This opens into that mixture of Angel food cake and tart strawberries type combination. Or tart raspberries and honey, though I don’t know how common it is.

Finish: Cinnamon, spruce, pear, tar, ginger, leather, seeds

Spicy, tarry finish. If you’re used to playing with acid and light cake before, the finish throws you face first into an industrial road work situation.

I like it.

Conclusion: Keeps evolving and changing as time goes on. Just grows from a simple, but promising rich dram to this rich, interesting, fun whisky. It’s just really enjoyable. Has all the hallmarks.

As for guessing, I was off, of course. This reminded me more of a young whisky that was showing signs of being big and boisterous for its age, versus the older dram it really is. Which frankly I should have guessed given the leather at the end.

But that takes time to pick up. If you’re ever worried about a Linkwood, grab it anyway. I’ve been happy with all of them so far, and this one just amps up the hypes for me even more.

86/100

Guess: Ex-bourbon, 15 years, 48%, Speyside?

Actually: Linkwood 28 Cadenhead Small Batch

Scotch review #1075, Speyside review #298, Whisky review #1676