Compass Box

Compass The Story of the Spaniard

Anyone can bottle a single cask, the real skill in Scotch whisky is demonstrated by the blender

Translate: Bottle a single cask is within reach of anyone. But Master Blender doesn't want to. This quote from John Glaser, founder of the company Compass Box, sums up the current context perfectly.

In recent years, the fashion has been single malts from a single barrel. In contrast to all market trends and prospects, John Glaser's approach seems to be challenging and even unconscious. On the contrary, it is a thoughtful and controlled approach, a result of a long experience.

Before discovering the world of whisky in 1994, John Glaser first worked in the wine industry. Six years in the Diageo group, a global spirits giant, will allow him to develop a true passion for this brandy and a new design of the blending whisky. To give him life, he decided in 2000 to fly his own wings. His first blend was designed in his kitchen. Then John Glaser moved to the basement of a hair salon in the heart of London. Since then, he has moved his modest laboratory to a spacious loft in Chiswick Studios still in central London.

John Glaser jostles the traditional concept of assembly by introducing a artisanal approach, to the antipodes of current methods, which does not aim to create a product shaped according to marketing studies. The only parameter taken into account by John Glaser to create his assemblies is pleasure and especially his. Everything is done in the nose, no electronic instrument intervenes in the process of elaboration. However, nothing in his empirical approach can be the result of chance. Creating wealth and balance is John Glaser's ultimate goal. To achieve this, he selects the best single malts and single grains. But he goes even further than a trader, since he assembles them to give birth to a new whisky and create a new emotion. The proportions of each whisky then depend on the style and the aromatic dominant that it wants to get.