Review by: DemiTastes
Let’s explore some open-bottle flavor drift! I accidentally opened a fresh bottle when I still had a bit less than half left in the first bottle. Well, happy accidents! — It’s not every day that you have an occasion to compare a fresh bottle of a favorite to one that’s not yet on its last legs.
For the uninitiated, Single Cask Nation is an American Independent Bottler of various aged spirits, largely focused on scotch whisky, single malt whisky from the rest of the world, and occasionally other aged spirits such as rum. Single Cask Nation is much like the members of this site in that way: we single malt lovers can’t help but dabble in other things, now and then.
These bottles of Single Cask Nation’s Linkwood 11 (exclusively bottled for The Barrel Thief) were bottled and received at the same time by The Barrel Thief, kept in the same storage conditions there — albeit the second bottle was stored a couple of months longer at The Barrel Thief before I took it home — and then lived another 5 months in my home. The first bottle had been between 1/2 to 1/3 full for about 6 months prior to the tasting described below. In theory, this is a side-by-side test of flavor drift in an open bottle over about 6 months. I kept both glasses capped between sips to minimize the impact of exposure to air in the room which would very likely equalize the drams.
Distillery: Linkwood
Bottler: Single Cask Nation
Region: Speyside
ABV: 55.5%
Age: 11 Years. Distilled July 2010, Bottled September 2021.
Cask type: First-fill Bourbon Hogshead.
Price: $110
Color: 0.5 yellow gold
Left (Open since November 2021, tasted June 17th, 2022):
Nose: Relatively more vibrant and fruity. Honey, apple, caramel, wet moss, moist earth, petrichor.
Palate: Less effervescent but still noticable. Fruity apple note from the nose emerges as bayberry, but subtle. A hint of smoke, candle soot. Fruit leather. The sweeter of the two but also more bitter.
Finish: Don’t really get as much waxiness as the fresh bottle. A touch of bitter wood. Charcoal leftover in the grill from last night. Mildly astringent.
Rating: 86
Right (Opened on June 17th, 2022 and tasted the same day):
Nose: More coy and subdued, but more balanced into a warm wall of aromas (subdued high notes, integrated earthy notes). Bayberry, wet moss, tree bark.
Palate: Effervescent mouthfeel. Nice, smooth, and round. Bayberry, soil, cinnamon bark. Candle soot. Floral: garden flowers after a rain. Sap of snapped green twigs.
Finish: Cinnamon bark continues, light waxy character, the waxy/sooty quality of a candle that has just been re-lit. Whisper of smoke. Flowers just past their prime and beginning to wilt. Pine needles.
Rating: 88
Blind (Tasted November 14th, 2022)
Nose: Warm red fruits. Red apples. Lightly waxy as of apple skin. Mildly floral. Lightly earthy, suggesting mildly peated.
Palate: Arrives with rosewater and confectioner’s sugar. Evolves into sooty like a candle wick. Sweet fruits. Vanilla bean. Cloves. Very floral: lilacs, roses, cherry blossoms; reminds me of a bath bomb. Mildly bitter, adding to the bathtime image of getting bath bubbles in the mouth.
Finish: A bit of a burn, mildly astringent. Smoke becomes slightly more charcoal-ash in quality. Dried apples with cloves. Late-spring floral, flowers wilting but still aromatic. Garden soil appears early but gets covered up in the evolution, and then lingers a long time as the other flavors fade.
Rating: 87
Conclusion:
For the side-by-side, my conclusions were as follows:
The bottle open for 6 months seems to have lost the cohesiveness of the throughline from nose to palate to finish, and lost a bit of the nicer textures, but the nose is somewhat more rewarding even if it is less balanced, and I love the moist earthy tones and petrichor that developed. Unfortunately the palate and finish feel a bit more unstable, going in both sweeter and more bitter directions that slightly clash. The fresh bottle is overall better integrated, even if the nose is harder to pull apart, and the palate benefits from a nice effervescence complementing a gentle waxiness, with floral and bayberry notes, and a hint of spiciness. The second bottle is a very enjoyable experience and a nice chance to revisit the glory days of the first few pours of the first bottle. It’s a close call: overall we’re comparing minute differences in very similar drams, and they’re more similar than they are different. I slightly prefer the fresh bottle, but I’m not at all disappointed by the first bottle, which is still worth nursing, even though I have a (now opened) backup bottle.
Afternose of both is of moist green plants, floral, and waxy like lipstick on a napkin or crayons; the newer bottle’s afternose is just a little fruitier with a bit of petrichor. (Though, I think afternose varies a lot glass-to-glass or day-by-day, it’s just how it happens to dry, and is not necessarily purely an artifact of subtle differences in the original pours.)
All in all, I felt that the fresh bottle sligihtly edged out the already-opened bottle, but overall both very enjoyable and not very different in the scoring.
Adding in the blind tasting of the left-hand already-opened bottle 6 months later, I again rated it a bit more highly, with rather similar tasting notes to the earlier tastes.
With every glass of this, I love to just sit and smell it for an extended period of time. The nose is enchanting, and the rest can be a bit hot at times with bites of bitterness on the palate and finish, but I overall don’t really mind that in a high-proof spirit. Even so, the experience of this whiskey is very much anchored around the nose, with the occasional sip to find a bit more complexity and contextualize the aromas.
SMWS-style name, for fun: Bathtime in the Gardens
Buy a bottle? Yes, I think this was quite good and I bought several bottles. In fact, this was one of the first bottles I felt was worth having duplicates given the value: a good price, and an excellent flavor.
Final Score: 87
(DemiTastes Review #74, Scotch #11)
Scoring Legend:
- 95-100: As good as it gets. Jaw-dropping, eye-widening, unforgettable whisky.
- 90-94: Sublime, a personal favorite in its category.
- 85-89: Excellent, a standout dram.
- 80-84: Quite good. Quality stuff.
- 75-79: Decent whisky worth tasting.
- 70-74: Meh. It’s definitely drinkable, but it can do better.
- 60-69: Not so good. I might not turn down a glass if I needed a drink.
- 50-59: Save it for mixing.
- 0-49: Blech.
Malt Runners 
