Linlithgow 30 yo 1973 / 2004 Special Release 59.6%

Linlithgow 30 yo 1973 / 2004 Special Release 59.6%

Can’t believe I haven’t put down thoughts on this one, a formative part of my earlier years. This is a stunning old whisky, tense and garbed in a quivering peat-like earthiness, thin glints of struck flints, hot granite and violet leaf, though here I don’t find the gasoline note of later years. More gritty granite, crushed grass, slice of apricot, Hacks cough drops and plenty of weighty oils melt into thin smoke and dry black earth. A constellation of little phenolic-herbaceous notes flit back and forth. Black coal, oiled iron, skinned stonefruit, grapefruit zest, musty beeswax. Superlative malt, a paragon of old, I remember the frisson of first drinking this. 93 pts