Linkwood: The Right Call

One independent bottler whose Linkwood has recently become more readily available in Hong Kong is Gordon and McPhail. Their 18-year-old Gordon and McPhail Reserve is more evocative of rich fruits, even of ginger and less smoky than the 12-year-old marketed by the distillery and the finish will appeal to devotees of the Speyside malts as it is almost entirely devoid of peaty overtones. There are many other Linkwood bottlings that I have yet to sample, although I have heard consistently compl i ment ar y assessments of their quality and I am hopeful that very soon I shall be sharing a few drams of a particularly well renowned Gordon and McPhail bottling with the esteemed publisher of this magazine. Whilst reputedly raking through his attic in his Scottish home for the ten shilling postal order that his Granny gave him in 1969, with which he intended to pay his editor’s bonus, he came across a bottle of Linkwood 50-year-old. In a display of unprecedented generosity he offered to share it with a well known Hong Kong banker and myself. My lawyer has a copy of the e-mail and I expect to be more successful than Tony Chan in the event of any dispute.

The decision by any whisky lover to sample any of the Linkwood expressions would be as right for the aficionado as the choice to go paddling on the eighteenth at Carnoustie in 1999 was wrong for poor old Jean Van de Velde. In Local Hero, the construction project is “Trumped” after the head of Knox Oil, played by the late Burt Lancaster, has a change of heart after encountering the local characters and their enduring culture. I feel the Aberdeen councillors responsible for planning permission would benefit from a fresh viewing of Forsyth’s masterpiece, perhaps accompanied by a few glasses of Linkwood. - J.B.

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