This is a protest post. The Scotch whisky association has reprimanded Compass Box for sharing the recipes of their whiskies Flaming heart (5th edition) and This is not a luxury whisky. Compass Box has been forced to remove the detailed information about the ages of the different whiskies that make up the recipe from their website.
This is ludicrous. The SWA is now basically saying that not only is it OK for the big brands to keep pushing out NAS whiskies without telling customers what’s actually in the bottle – it’s even illegal for them to reveal such details. If anything, John Glaser and Compass Box should be applauded, lauded and revered for their transparency. They are doing what many of us whisky enthusiasts have been saying for many years now: NAS whiskies are not a problem in themselves, as long as the industry only could share what is actually in their different blends.
(For me, I’ll happily spend 150 pounds for an Ardbeg Baznak – no, that’s just a name I just invented, so please don’t faint from excitement – if I know it contains 10% 25 YO Ardbeg, 55% 16 YO Ardbeg, 22% 9 YO Ardbeg, 7% 7 YO Ardbeg, and 6% 3 YO Ardbeg to give it some oomph. If I don’t have a clue whether it’s all seven YO whisky or not, but with a cool marketing story around it? I’ll spend my cash on something else, thank you very much.)
I hereby implore whisky bloggers everywhere to write posts which share the detailed recipes of the new edition of Flaming Heart and This is not a luxury whisky, just for the hell of it. Just because Compass Box cannot tell you what’s in them anymore, doesn’t have to mean that we can’t inform the customers! As I am in no way affiliated with John Glaser or Compass Box, I have a very hard time thinking that the SWA will sue me for informing you about what John Glaser at Compass Box no longer can.
So, here we go!
Flaming Heart, 5th edition, 2015 release: recipe
Here’s the version of the fact sheet given on Compass Box’s website:
Here’s what Compass Box can no longer tell you, their customers: the 27.1% Caol ila is 30 YO whisky. The 24.1% Clynelish is 20 YO whisky. The 10.3% Highland malt is 7 YO blended malt whisky made up of whisky from Clynelish, Teaninich and Dailuiane; this whisky was finished in very active hybrid casks made up partially of French oak. Finally, the remaining 38.5% of Caol ila is 14 YO whisky.
This is not a luxury whisky: recipe
The 79% Glen Ord is 19 YO. The 10.1% Strathclyde is 40 YO. The 6.9% Girvan is 40 YO. The 4% of Caol ila is 30 YO.
Giving this information to customers is, apparently, illegal. Feel free to either share this blog post, or, even better, write your own with the exact same information in it.
We all know that people who can be described with terms like ”stunningly, almost amazingly ignorant”, ”downright stupid”, ”obnixious” and ”you know, this guy really treats people like assholes” can be very different from each other. It’s a sad state of affairs when all of them can be applied to an organization which works with what I hold so very dear: whisky.
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