Compass Box Great King St Artist's Blend

Nose - vanilla, apple, lemon zest, some oak spice Taste - sweet vanilla that transitions to oak spices, a bit of browned butter and well rounded bitter/nutty notes Finish - nuttiness fades to a mild dryness, mild burn

N: Raspberries and cream. Peach, honey, and flowers (maybe roses even, but I don't trust my sense of specific flower smells). Tea and driftwood with possibly a light whiff of smoke. Little bit of a medicinal mint or even menthol. Tiny drop of water in a Glencairn brings out a little bit of stone and orchard fruit, but doesn't feel like this blend is really holding much back - it already smells fantastic. P: Lots of vanilla, caramel, and then some apples. The raspberries and cream is there too, but diminished and pushed to the background. There's a dried berries character in it. Subtler hits of leather and, like the nose, maybe a little bit of smoke. Finish is cinnamon spice, tannic and drying with a mild bitterness that comes in and out against the spice. Dried fruit also sort of plays against the spice and mingles with the bitterness here and there. The finish also feels very close to a good bourbon, more so than most scotches I've tried, and gives it a kind of odd American feeling. (The Compass Box website provides a breakdown of the component whiskies, and 72% of them were aged in first fill bourbon barrels, so perhaps that kind of explains that bourbon character.) I loved this. The nose is unique and shows the range that can be achieved with blended scotch. The palate is about a step behind the nose in terms of complexity, but that's not always a bad thing and it feels acceptable here. The bold, bourbon-style spicy hot finish is pretty aggressive for a blended scotch, but unless you just hate bourbon, it's interesting to see and drink the crossroads of ideas that comes out of this bottle. And, like the Glasgow blend, this is an excellent value dram.

Decent solid dram. Goes well in cocktails.