Compass Box Flaming Heart 15th Anniversary Limited Edition

With Round 2 of our distillery tour looming I figured I needed to work on a couple of open bottles I've had sitting around for a month or so. Tonight is the night. Up first: Compass Box Flaming Heart (15th Anniversary). This was bottled in July of 2015 with a total of 12,060 bottles available. This is the 4th edition of the Flaming Heart series. This is roughly made up of 65% Caol Ila (14 & 30 year old), 24% Clynelish (20 year old) and 10% Dailuane (7 year old). It's bottled at a slightly robust 48.9% ABV and is non-chill filtered. Enough with the technical mumbo jumbo... The nose is heavily peated with subtle hints of red berry fruit, cookie dough and bourbon cask wood. There's a lot of smoke so you really have to wait it out and get in there for the rest. It's worth working for, though. The initial sip is almost entirely peat. You can tell it's primarily Caol Ila used in the blend. It really overpowers, err shines, here. I love Caol Ila and that makes this one another winner in my book. Sea salt and briny seaweed stick to the tongue towards the finish which, in my opinion, makes you want to drink more. The finish is thick and oily. There isn't much burn and it's all over pretty quickly. This isn't my favorite CBW by a long shot but I can't see ever turning it down lol. Overall, it smells better than it tastes and the taste is kind of one dimensional- peat. But, if you love oily, peat bog whisky then seek out a bottle and give it a try. I paid somewhere north of $100 for this bottle which is cheaper than their newer blends, yet slightly higher than their core stuff. Buy it for the simple fact it's got 50% of whisky older than 20 years old. That makes the price point pretty reasonable IMO. 4.25 stars. Cheers, my friends.

It's an interesting beast. Initially all the nose gives you is fire, acrid smoke and peat; but after a while it either edges off or your nose gets used to it and it mellows out into what I can only describe as marmite – salt, umami, a hint of sticky sweetness – spread on burnt toast. The palate is a bit disappointing, again, completely dominated by the smoke but with none of the interesting saltiness and sweetness that hung around in the wake of it all on the nose. A rather short and rough finish leaves the whole experience a bit flat. Not an unpleasant dram by any measure, it's definitely interesting, but not sure I'd be shelling out a ton for a bottle.