Compass Box Tasting – Jan 27 2010
Bauer:
Curt, Scott, Clint, Robert and Bauer attended. Dave from Willow park started the night off with an introduction. He is the expert on whisky at the store and I rely on him heavily when making my choices for our gatherings. I know what my tastes are and he directs me in the right path every single time. I find that his passion for whisky really comes out when you talk to him. His eyes go wide, gets a smile on his face and he makes you even more excited about drinking whisky. After the introduction, John Glaser from the Compass Box Whisky Company came “onstage” and ran us through six types of his Company’s whisky.
First he explained what his company did – they take whisky from distilleries all over Scotland combine them to make the appropriate flavour profile, mature, then bottle and sell.
There were three types of whisky, in six different bottlings, that we tried tonight. The first was blended scotch whisky which is a blend of both single malt whisky and grain whisky. The second was vatted malt scotch whisky which is different single malts blended together. The third was a grain scotch whisky. Compass box does not distill or sell single malt whisky.
In addition to the whisky there was also a variety of cheeses, sausage and bread on each table to snack on/taste with and of course bottled water.
The participants were from all age groups and knowledge levels. Before going I kinda had it in my head that there would be a bunch of stuffy old men with pipes in their mouths and tweed coats with ascots coming out of them, however there was no pretension to the evening at all and everyone was quite relaxed.
I would have to say it was not only an entertaining evening but one which I gained some knowledge from. For $20 you get about 6 oz of whisky some nosh plus loads of info to put to use in the future! Better and cheaper than going to a movie!
Whisky tasted:
ASYLA blended scotch whisky
OAK CROSS malt scotch whisky
THE PEAT MONSTER malt scotch whisky
HEDONISM grain scotch whisky
ELEUTHERA malt scotch whisky
THE SPICE TREE malt scotch whisky
Thanks for the write up (Bauer, I assume?). I pulled out my initial note from the top of this page so it is all yours now. Also dropped in Robert’s name (did you skip him intentionally
), and changed yours to ‘Bauer’. C’mon, man…no one knows ‘Shane’.
A few notes of my own…
I like that John is doing something different here. He iterated that his approach to whisky is that of a wine blender. Instead of the multitude of whiskies that generally comprise a Blend, John is choosing one as a body and building around it. Some of his bottlings apparently are as few as two whiskies…others four and five. I imagine it as jewellery. A nice diamond in the middle with a few gems to compliment.
Details regarding the bottlings we sampled will be posted soon under “WHISKY REVIEWS”. I was pretty diligent with my notes this time.
Thanks to David and the Willow Park team for another entertaining, informative…and tasty evening.
Last note…chatted briefly with David about what we do here. Asked him if he would be interested in being one of our ‘Occasional Travelers’. He was very intrigued. Hopefully we’ll be talking soon.
When there’s rum tasting, I imagine I’ll pop my head out of the gopher hole, if I can ever find my plantation owner’s costume, pith hat, and cane. I’m really shocked that no-one appeared at your whiskey tasting in the aforementioned tweed and chuffing pipes. Whatever happened to a sense of occasion? See wht I mean about a smoking jacket and a hound around one’s feet in front of the crackling fire?
I put Bob in!
Oh wait I put Charles by mistake right? Lol