Compass Box has unveiled two new whiskies, Flaming Heart 2022 and Ultramarine.
Independent scotch whisky bottler and producer Compass Box this week launched two limited-edition whiskies, Flaming Heart 2022 and Ultramarine.
Bottled at 48.9% ABV, Flaming Heart 2022 is the latest of seven limited-edition Flaming Heart bottlings. Flaming Heart 2022 is a blend of whiskies from the Laphroaig, Talisker and Caol Ila distilleries.
The name of the series comes from a song by M Ward, an artist from Portland, Oregon.
"For the label of this seventh version, we have made the original rock music inspiration still more explicit," James Saxon, lead whiskymaker for Flaming Heart, said, according to Bar Magazine. "We wanted something that could just as easily be used as the artwork for an LP, or as a tattoo. Oak, smoke and fire reunite once again, fusing pyrotechnics with deliciousness. As well as being the fruitiest Flaming Heart of recent years, we have brought in special remnant stocks of past releases for layers upon layers of smoke and French oak influence."
Flaming Heart 2022 will retail for £130 ($153), with 9,606 bottles available worldwide.
Bottled at 51% ABV, Ultramarine is the first member of a new series called the Extinct Blends Quartet, which will pay homage to past styles of scotch. Ultramarine takes its inspiration from a "deluxe" blended whisky first released in the late 1980s
"As whiskymakers and blenders, we take umbrage that closed single malt distilleries attract all the adulation and explosive hammer prices at auction," Sexton said. "A distillery is never entirely lost. As we see with Brora, Rosebank and Port Ellen, they can be revived - mash tuns can be refilled, stills heated up again.
"Blends, though, are the richest time capsules Scotch whisky has, reflecting the ideas and sensibilities of the teams of people that made them, and the styles of stocks available to the blenders from year to year."
The first few batches of the blend Ultramarine is based drew from malt and grain whisky stocks hat built up as part of Scotland's "whisky loch" of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Ultramarine uses aged malts and pre-blended parcels of Scotch whisky, both matured in Sherry casks, together with peated malts.
Ultramarine will debut in October at a suggested retail price of £295 ($347). The release will comprise 5,982 bottles worldwide.
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