Last Night's Tipple

The gentleman to the right is John Glaser, the founder of Compass Box Whisky. For a number of years, he was first US marketing director then global marketing director for Johnnie Walker. He left in 2000 to start Compass Box with the stated mission to "revolutionize" the Scotch whisky world. In evaluating anything that John Glaser says, of course, it is useful to remember his background: he did work for Johnnie Walker (and so naturally absorbed some of the Johnnie Walker philosophy of whisky), but he did so as a marketing person rather than a whisky person. I have no doubt that he knows and cares a lot about Scotch whisky, but it is undeniable that Compass Box is a slick marketing machine (how else can you respond when he says that he wants Compass Box to be the Ben and Jerry's of the Scotch world?) and that his business plan was well-crafted to avoid the pitfalls of the spirits world. The two biggest problems for spirits producers are the capital investment required (stills and barrels are expensive, and one has to pay taxes when one distills the spirit, despite the fact that the spirit can't be sold for years) and the difficulty in creating a consistent brand. Glaser decided that Compass Box would be a blender, buying whisky in cask from distilleries, blending it, and bottling it under their own label. Because they buy the whisky in cask, they avoid most of the capital investment required of a distillery. Because they blend the whisky they buy, they can make it consistent, even when buying relatively small quantities. Combine these two things with fancy packaging, good marketing, and good whisky, and you have something.

This last ingredient is key: the whisky has to be good. Otherwise, the brand will fail, at least when it's primarily marketed to whisky snobs. And John Glaser was smart enough to hire people who knew Scotch and knew blending. The Compass Box whiskies that I've tried have been very good. The one that I had last night, Eleuthera, whose stated mission is to be assertively smoky but not one-dimensionally smoky. It succeeds in that. According to the Compass Box website, the centerpieces of this vatted malt are Caol Ila, Glenlossie, and Clynelish. I've never had Glenlossie, but I do have bottles of Caol Ila and Clynelish on hand. I can certainly see how both of these fit into the blend. The nose at first is all smoke and bacon, but over time, it tones down into just a smoke-tinged sweet orange. On the palate, it's a bit briny, but mostly sweet, waxy, and smooth. I'm tempted to mix Caol Ila and Clynelish 50-50 and see how close the result is to Eleuthera. It's an enjoyable Scotch, and although not mind-altering, it does show quite clearly what blending can achieve.

(The bottling that Compass Box is most known for is Hedonism, which is a vatting of Scotch grain whiskies. As such, it is utterly unique in the market -- nobody else uses grain whiskies for anything other than blendings. I would think that the result would be similar to a gentle American straight whiskey or an aged Canadian whisky, but I don't know. I am intensely curious. Alas, Compass Box doesn't appear to be available in Houston.)