Around the table of whisky geeks experts gathered for the reveal of Cadenhead’s Linkwood-Glenlivet 28YO (more of that later), a media colleague started regaling us with a tale of how he woke up one time thinking he was dying – intense shoulder pain – and so he crawled to his cabinet and reached for a whisky that would presumably be the last one he would swig.

He took a swig.

He passed out and survived. And of course it turned out to be just that, intense shoulder pain (not sure what the doc said about the whisky-as-medicine), but the convo around the table then got around to naming the whisky we would drink if we were on our death bed; “Lagavulin 1976” was the one I remembered most. I don’t think I could commit – it’d probably be an Islay single malt – but certainly this Linkwood-Glenlivet 28YO would make its case and climb up the chart.

Fun Fact: A square shaped Cadenhead’s means it’s bottled at cask strength.

Cadenhead’s is Scotland’s oldest independent bottler, and the single cask L-G 28 year old is specially bottled for Singapore. It is only available at New Ubin Seafood, The Swan Song, Quaich Bar and The Writing Club, because the owners of these four joints had the foresight to combine their resources to buy it when they tasted the sample a few months ago. There are only 289 bottles available, and each is $880. 

Fun Fact: Linkwood whisky is usually a work horse for Diageo’s other blends.

And so to the notes: It’s a sherry cask, so you have notes of dark fruit, coffee, gula melaka, red apples among many others. It’s rich, with chambers of secrets that yields itself after the second or third swig. The single malt is also available at the those four outlets as drams, but prices vary ($25 for a half dram to $75 for a full gentlemen’s pour).

And in local parlance, it’s a whisky that you die die must try.

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