Compass Box Myths & Legends I

Three caskings from one Highland Single Malt makes for a delicious and aromatic wonder.

Compass Box isn’t a distillery or a distributor. Compass Box is a story. It’s a story that began in the year 2000 when John Glaser — a marketing director for Johnnie Walker decided to break out on his own. He was an American working for one of the most iconic brands in the world of Scotch Whisky and — like a typical American — thought that he could do it better on his own. It takes a lot of whisky stones to step out of a dream job with Whisky perks and start a business like this. John buys output from some of the best distilleries in Scotland and then creates custom blends which he finishes and ages to create unique Whisky expressions.

Compass Box created the Myths and Legends series as a cultural nod to Scottish heritage — as you can see by the color labels — and to address common misconceptions about Whisky blending.

Most of us have a favorite distillery… or two… or three. But the truth is that individual barrels of Spirit can have remarkably different flavor profiles even when it is all coming from the same "place." Compass Box Myths and Legends I emphasizes this by combining Single Malt from three different caskings from Balbair Distillery which sits about a mile away from Glenmorangie in Ross-shire. This dram is a twenty-two year-old aged in first-fill ex-Bourbon casks, 26% is sixteen year-old aged in American oak, and the rest is 15 year-old in American oak. And as you would expect from Compass Box, all 4394 bottles are bottled at a perfect 46% ABV without chill-filtering.