Scotland’s leading independent Scotch Whiskymaker and six-time Whisky Magazine Innovator of the Year, Compass Box, introduces what could be its unique limited edition yet: ‘Stranger & Stranger.’ Celebrating ten years of working together as whiskymaker and package designer, this $200 bottle will only release 4,802 worldwide.
Since 2008, John Glaser met Kevin Shaw, the founder of Stranger & Stranger, and their respective teams have collaborated on over 35 different Compass Box whiskies. However, the 10th-anniversary Compass Box-Stranger & Stranger projects is something special and not-technically a whiskey.
This anniversary project started with the ‘not-technically-a-whisky’ whisky. John Glaser had the idea of blending old single malt whiskies with a small amount of an extraordinarily delicious one-year-old spirit the company had been aging in experimental casks. He explains:
“We had taken to calling it a ‘sacrificial spirit’ because we didn’t know what it would taste like after a year in these experimental new barrels. Turned out, it was amazing! And adding just a small amount to old single malt whiskies provided a lovely underlying sweetness and complexity. The only problem was because it was just one-year-old it wasn’t technically Scotch whisky yet. Scotch has to be a minimum of three-years-old. We thought about this for a while, then concluded: for a product called ‘Stranger & Stranger’, who cares!”
The bottle itself is a work of art but what’s inside taste like a masterpiece. For more information visit the Compass Box website.
Photos by Max Twitty