Compass Box - The Spice Tree - 46%
Compass Box Whiskey is a Scotch whiskey production company, founded by American John Glaser in 2000. After working in the wine trade and then for the great distiller Johnnie Walker, John Glaser took the plunge and launched his own whiskey business. making whiskey in his kitchen. A decade later, the company has successfully established stocks of matured whiskeys in Scotland, with a mixing room for blends and an office in London. Compass Box Whiskey sources cooperage oak from the French Vosges Forest and the woods of Missouri, USA. The company carefully selects each cask for its blends. Once blended, the whiskey is returned to the cask to develop additional flavor and character for six months to three years.
The company sparked controversy in 2015 due to disclosing too much information on their labels, particularly details of distilleries, cask types, ages and proportions in final blends. John Glaser has therefore launched a Scotch Whiskey Transparency Campaign with the aim of giving producers the opportunity to fully disclose the composition of a blend.
The first editions of Spice Tree , marketed from 2005, were aged in different barrels than the current editions: the inner staves of the barrels were made of new wood. The SWA (Scotch Whiskey Association) has deemed it illegal to use these new staves in casks for multiple uses, when the tradition is to use barrels multiple times. The aging method has been adjusted, thanks to a collaboration between French coopers and the Compass Box team. They developed a new hybrid oak cask that achieved the same maturation results. As of March 2021, the Highland blend used in the blending of the Spice Tree consists of approximately 60% malt whiskey from the Glen Moray distillery, 25% malt whiskey from the Tomatin distillery and 15% malt whiskey from the Balmenach distillery. Spice Tree is a blend of: 28.9% Highland blend aged in bespoke French oak barrels for strong toast, 24.5% Highland blend aged in bespoke French oak barrels for medium toast, 20 4% Highland blend aged in the bespoke light toasted French oak cask, 16.9% first fill Bourbon casks from Glen Moray Distillery and 9.3% first fill Bourbon casks from the Balmenach distillery.
Not peated
