Compass Box Great King St Glasgow Blend

A great representation of grandpa’s scotch.

Nice smoke and bite. Nose of wax candle and smoke. Taste is ashy and smokey with a pleasant bite.

Bottled in 2019 So, I bought a house. When I closed, I had 25 days of having both the house and an apartment within a 15 minute drive of each other. So, I leisurely moved my whisky collection, a few backpacks at a time, until I realized all my whisky was at the house, but my bed was still at the apartment. I thought about one bottle to take back to the apartment to enjoy after a day of heavy lifting, and I chose this one: Compass Box Great King Street Glasgow Blend. This is the perfect Scotch whisky. It’s under $50. It’s widely available. It adds peat and sherry to a solid base of grain. Marrying peat and sherry is like the Holy Grail of scotch, and so many highly touted single malts, from my previously reviewed Laphroaig Lore, to the rarified Ardbeg Dark Cove offer false divinity in the form of apocryphal luxury. Leave it Compass Box to show us how things are done, at a fraction of the price. For its price, the Glasgow Blend is a miraculous whisky. Every component serves a purpose and adds to the glorious, but humble whole. The Cameron Bridge grain matured in first fill American oak barrels brings a spicy creaminess that is anchored by the waxiness of Clynelish. Sherry-matured Benrinnes is very underrated, offering a soft, sympathetic sweetness rather than the pompous and domineering sweetness of most sherried malts today. Finally, the Laphroaig (17% of this whisky!) is somehow tamed; it offers an un-shy drying smoke, but I would not be able to guess this was from Laphroaig versus Ardbeg or Caol Ila. The component whiskies are of course offered by Compass Box with a little bit of effort, but they could have just said, “These were bottles of water. And then Jesus touched them,” and I would have been fine with that. Score: ** (unimaginably good) How much does a bottle cost: $35-45 How much do I think a bottle is worth?: $70

Big sherry up front. Smoke trails behind. Vanilla icing in the middle. Sweetness and oranges on the aroma. Quick finish. Would buy.