What you need to know:

• New Compass Box bottling named “Orchard House” coming your way!
• This bottling “gathers together some of the fruitiest malts Scotland has to offer” and will include Linkwood and Clynelish, as well as some new makes that have been matured in Compass Box’s own casks, which is a first!
• Gorgeous label as always, we’re looking forward to this one, especially if you like fruity whiskies!

Compass Box never fails to bring us incredibly gorgeous labels, and whisky of course. This time a bottling named “Orchard House”.

As the label shows, lots of fruits; I spot some apples, pears, cherries, strawberries, grapes, lemons. That already tells us it’s going to be something very fruity. And then you also have some natives to fruit orchards, the usually butterflies, spiders, snails and beetles (I accidentally typed beatles, haha).

"Gathering together some of the fruitiest malts Scotland has to offer"

The label has a really nice gradient of orange to green from left to right, with the name swirled around the center, much like you’d see on the gate to a farm, and then a bell right in the center. 

John Glaser, the man behind Compass Box. (Image Source: The Daily Beast)

Really nice label as usual. After all, John Glaser, the man who started Compass Box, was once the marketing director at Johnnie Walker, so we should expect no less. If you’re interested, you can click here to read more about Compass Box; we did a little deep dive on the famous indie bottler.

So anyway, this bottle of blended malt is said to “gather together some of the fruitiest malts Scotland has to offer”, and will include the likes of Linkwood and Clynelish. Very much the usual stalwarts of Compass Box.

The Darjeeling Limited.

Sometimes I think of Compass Box like some of the great film directors who always fall on the same trusty cast, for example Wes Anderson with Adrien Brody or Jason Schwartzman, or Sofia Coppola and her recurring casting of Kirsten Dunst. It’s not a bad thing if you know what you like!

But what is interesting here is that, some of the whiskies included in this blend were actually sources as new make spirit and matured in Compass Box’s own casks.

Our Take:

Now that is certainly new! As we covered in our post about indie bottlers, one of the value they provide to us drinkers is that they don’t have to follow any guidelines or keep in style with what the distillery’s typical flavors and brand guides are. They are free to mix and match, and in this case, use their own casks to give us something totally new.

So far, all we’ve got to work off on is just the label, but we’ll be looking forward to this one since we really like fruity whiskies here and not to mention the new makes matured in Compass Box’s own casks that goes into this.

Keep watching this for more info!

Kanpai! 

@111hotpot