Compass Box Oak Cross

Floral nose. Soft and young, but very pleasant.

I'm upping my previous review of a 4.0 for a few reasons. The other night I was feeling like a lighter dram and poured myself a generous measure of Oak Cross. After consuming said dram, I remembered that this bottling is what's listed as the "vatted Highland malt" on CBW's recipes, and a part of this whisky is in all their other whiskies as well, so naturally I poured myself a bit of Peat Monster to test this theory, and lo and behold, having had Oak Cross first amplified the taste of Peat Monster! I tried the same procedure with Spice Tree the next night, and The Spaniard the night after that. Having Oak Cross as a "warmup" to the other CBW offerings made all the others more enjoyable! While this one isn't their best offering (keeping in mind that when these guys have a bad day it looks like a good day at most other places...), it cuts right to the core of what John Glasser is going for in his quest for whisky "deliciousness", and therefore my rating for this one gets a boost and a hearty salute.

Very mellow creamy nose, flavor starts of creamy vanilla and ends with a big dose of spicy oak. Yum! @Elw00t

For those of you playing along at home, I've been working my way through the Compass Box's core range of blended malt whiskys. My local liquor store was having its annual liquidation sale, and I picked this up for next to nothing. The price listed was the regular retail, but I got it for about $21. Bless you Texas liquor laws, and bless Compass Box whisky. This is a much more subtle whisky than its burlier cousins, Spice Tree and Peat Monster. It takes time to get to know it. Maybe it's shy. Or maybe it's just trying to figure itself out, since it is a seamless blend of single malts aged separately in refill American oak casks and new French oak casks, then blended together. It's a similar process that CBW uses for Spice Tree, but with less casks and less toasting/charing of said casks. At first sniff, I get vanilla, and quite a bit, but not an overbearing amount of oak (Duh...). You have to let this one sit on the palate a while, and when you do, you get more vanilla and oak, as well as a light, nondescript fruity taste, a creamy mouthfeel, and a warm, slow finish that lingers with more vanilla and oak (are you sensing a trend here?). I haven't tried this one with food yet, but I suspect that it won't hold up the same way some of the other CBW expressions might, but as an aperitif whisky, or even a desert whisky, sign me up! I wonder what it would taste like over vanilla ice cream...?