LeeEvolved
Compass Box Flaming Heart 15th Anniversary Limited Edition
Blended Malt — Scotland
Reviewed
May 11, 2017 (edited September 16, 2019)
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.
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Looking back through my notes on every CBW I've had and I think I have the Luxury Whisky the highest rating. It's a 5-star CBW all the way. I guess I should look for another bottle just to verify that statement and rating. Where's my credit card....
Lost Blend is one of my favorites, great stuff. Still need to get into the sample of Luxury you sent me
This was one of my favorites, along with Circus and Luxury 3, though I've only had samples of each.
Ok, thanks Lee! CWH is reasonably priced; maybe I'll spring.
That's a tough one, Rick. For the longest time I kept thinking they couldn't make better whisky than the one I was currently drinking, but it seems they can always up the ante. I don't think you can go wrong with Hedonism, Not a Luxury Whisky or even Peat Monster. I have a couple of the more limited $300 bottles that I'm kind of scared to open because I don't think they can live up to the hype or price. Maybe one day soon I'll say what the hell and just pop them all and do a CBW tasting.
Great review! Which CBW is your favorite?