Single malts get all the glory and blends get none. But Compass Box Crafted Whiskies wants to change that, writes Adam Withrington.
Tasting whisky at 10am was never my idea of fun. Making my way down Marylebone High Street to meet John Glaser, chairman of Compass Box Crafted Whiskies, I made a mental note never to arrange tastings for this time in the morning again. My last serious taste of whisky was from a bottle that really lived up to its £4 price tag.
I had to find their office first. It is hardly what you would call conspicuous. I had pictured a grand stuffy office surrounded by bottles of classic scotches, exciting new bourbons - a mecca of whisk(e)y. Instead I found myself taking the stairs down into the basement beneath a hair salon. And there was John.
"The situation works well - I like being here in Marylebone, it's a good area, very central and while this is a hair salon's basement, it's not so bad. And being here underground means it's not as expensive on rents," he says. It's good to discover that he does not carry any pretensions and, over the course of our discussion, he brings a refreshing attitude to the table, a breath of fresh air in a category that gives the impression of stuffiness.
For one thing he is very enthusiastic about the possibilities that his whiskies offer the pub trade.
"If pubs are looking to raise margins by trading up and offering alternatives that customers may not get at another pub down the road, there is an opportunity to do that with whisky, and they should look at independent bottlers like us," he says. "We can offer a greater degree of quality and a greater range of products, flavours and styles than a major brand can - simply because at a small company like Compass Box we bottle things on a small scale.
"We're very particular about the casks we pick and the things we put in the bottle. There are growing numbers of independent bottlers in Scotland today and, to my mind, this gives publicans a great opportunity to offer customers a trade-up to a greater range of interesting products that are made in this country."
His passion is for blended scotch. He sees it as the hidden secret of scotch, something that is not appreciated fully because of a snobbery that exists in favour of single malts.
"There is more breadth of flavour in scotch whisky than there is in any other type of spirit in the world and we just see a huge opportunity for creativity. That to me is what blending offers," he argues.
Despite his great enthusiasm for whisky, John started out as a wannabe wine buff. But after working for a winemaker in both Burgundy and California, he was offered a job by Diageo in New York with Johnnie Walker and it was whisky that came to dominate his outlook.
"When I was sent over to Scotland to meet and work with distillery managers and blenders I fell in love with the stuff pretty quickly for all the same reasons that I fell in love with wine: the heritage, craft and complexity, the mysteries around the creation, the fact that no-one can know everything about it," he says.
In 1998 he became Johnnie Walker's marketing manager in the UK. However, his views about what direction the company should be taking began to conflict with those around him as he encountered the blended versus single malt clash once more.
"I started to ask a lot of questions about what we were doing as a whisky company. Like why were we afraid to talk about blending and vatted malts?" he says.
"The attitude I was confronted with was, 'people don't think that highly of blends, this is a single malt world'. And my response to that was 'well, we're whisky blenders - it's a major part of Diageo's portfolio, why shouldn't we be proud of that?' There was this reluctance in some quarters to make too much of it because of the consumer perception. And my view was, let's challenge the consumer perception because it's unfounded."
As a result John left his post at Diageo and set up Compass Box. He's pleased with how it has progressed.
"It's all gone very well - I think we've made an impression in the industry," he comments. "We can be the introduction to the world of scotch whisky for a lot of younger people in their late 20s and 30s. It brings in lots of people who are interested but for whom the major brands haven't been too inviting."
As I mentioned earlier, I know very little about whisky and have never really liked it. But John completely changed my mind. And those who do know about such things are of a similar viewpoint. Well-known whisky buff Jim Murray has written of one of Compass Box's varieties, Asyla, "It's so sexy you can almost make love to it."
Asyla (pictured top) won Food & Wine magazine's award for Best Scotch Whisky of the Year and the Hedonism varietal has won praise from writers ranging from Dave Broom to Michael Jackson.
And, what's more, I found that tasting whisky at 10am was good, really good. Don't tell anyone but I might try it more often.
- For more information, go to www.compassboxwhisky.com
Whisky - as you like it
John Glaser (pictured) says: "When people ask me 'how do you drink whisky?' my answer is always 'any fricking way you want'. We're not high-handed about that - ice if you want ice, water if you want water. My personal choice is to add water, even just a splash, as it opens up the aromas, will soften the palate and take away some of the burn."