Linkwood 1989-2001 - 12 Year Old - SMWS 39.37

Linkwood is a large Speyside distillery making top class single malt whisky for owner Diageo’s portfolio of blends. Such is Linkwood’s importance to the blending industry that very little of its production is officially released, with only the mediocre Flora & Fauna edition and one horribly overpriced Special Release appearing in the last decade or so.

Much more rewarding are the terrific Rare Malts editions of Linkwood bottled from 1995-2005, all from 1970s vintages that showcase the distillery’s fantastically pure spirit style to great effect. There have also been numerous outstanding long-aged Linkwoods by Gordon & MacPhail, who were licensed bottlers of Linkwood for many years and have bottled the oldest Linkwoods yet released, the Private Collection editions from 1953 and 1956, both of which were over 60 years old.

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) began in late 1970s Edinburgh when founder Pip Hills persuaded a group of friends to chip in for a cask of Glenfarclas, and was officially formalised in 1983. Today the SMWS has two venues in Edinburgh, a London bar and a string of international partnerships serving its 35,000 members. 

The Society’s whiskies are known for their unique SMWS coding system. Each cask bottled is assigned two numbers, representing the distillery and the bottling number, so 1.45 is the forty-fifth cask bottled from the first distillery and 33.27 is the 27th cask from the 33rd distillery.

Glenmorangie bought the Society in 2004, but sold it in 2015 to a private consortium who floated the SMWS on the stock market in 2021 via their holding company Artisanal Spirits Co.