Compass Box Myths and Legends III

Despite brands like Ballantine’s, Johnnie Walker and Chivas Regal remaining the best-selling Scotch whisky brands in the world, the blended Scotch category played second fiddle to the more fashionable single malt market in the second half of the 20th century. This remains largely true today, however in recent decades the perception of the blend has improved. The company at the forefront of this is Compass Box, founded in 2000 by John Glaser, a former marketing director for the Johnnie Walker brand. Their core range consists of The Spice Tree, The Peat Monster, Story of the Spaniard, Oak Cross and Hedonism blends, and they regularly produce limited editions as well. The company prides itself on its boundary-pushing approach to its creations, and on occasion, boundary-crossing creations, such as the original Spice Tree in 2005 which was banned by the Scotch Whisky Association for its use of suspended staves in casks. Despite investment from Bacardi in 2015, the company continues to push the envelope and rebel against tradition, most notably in its Scotch Whisky Transparency campaign, launched in 2016 following another disagreement with the SWA, this time about their detailed revealing of the recipes of their whiskies.

A blended malt from Compass Box, this was the third in a series of three bottlings in their 2019 limited edition Myths & Legends series. Unusually, part I and II were both single malts.

Compass Box used some of the parcels of stock used to create the Glen Elgin Myth & Legends II, and added peated malts from from a pair of 'celebrated island distilleries'. Bottled in July 2019, this is one of 4446 bottles.

 Transparency:

• 9.5% Orkney single malt, re-charred American oak hogsheads
• 6.5% Caol Ila, refill sherry butts
• 67.8% Glen Elgin, re-charred American oak barrels
• 8.2% Glen Elgin, refill bourbon hogsheads
• 8% Glen Elgin, re-charred American oak hogsheads

This bottle is being sold from the Pat's Whisk(e)y private collection which, numbering in excess of 9,000 bottles and over 2,000 miniatures, is the single largest collection of whisky ever to be brought to auction. Pat's Whisk(e)y is the result of over fifteen years of passion and dedication to the goal of creating one of the most complete libraries of whisky and whiskey ever amassed by an individual collector. It contains bottles from over 150 different Scottish distilleries, as well as bourbon, rare Scotch releases from sought-after independent bottlers in Europe, and whisky from other distilleries across the globe. Whisky Auctioneer is delighted to have partnered with Pat's Whisk(e)y to offer this collection across a number of exclusive and spotlight auctions. For more information, please click here.