Old Team – Compass Box Crimson Cask

In fact, I wasn’t a big fan of the old sherry forward bottling ‘Story of the Spaniard’. Of course, it was not bad, but something was missing from it to make it special. Yet, the new Crimson Cask makes totally up for it! On top of that, I decided to mix a Black Manhattan variation with it.

For their Crimson Cask, Compass Box combines barrels from Benrinnes, Glen Moray, Teaninich and a distillery near the town of Aberlour as well as their Highland Malt Blend. Apart from a part coming from a French oak cask, a bourbon barrel and a portion from an ex-Spanish red wine cask all over casks are sherry casks. Compass Box bottles their blended malt at an ABV of 46 %. Here you will find the whole fact sheet.

A lot of sherry, some flowers and some red wine

I guess it does not come as a big surprise that the Crimson Cask is dominated by sherry cask flavours. You can find a lot of red fruits in there. Yet, I also noticed some floral notes of violets and a touch of red wine. This way the blended malt comes off as quite complex and it is a great sipper on its own.

Black Manhattan-ish

First, I wanted to use Cynar in combination with red vermouth in this recipe. However, I thought that this would bring this too close to a Boulevardier variation again. This is why I went for the Meletti Amaro instead. Moreover, I also used Barolo Chinato instead of regular sweet vermouth. To round everything off, I added two dashes of Ango Ximenez (50:50 mix of Angostura Bitters and Pedro Ximenez sherry) and washed the glass with a bit of Peat Monster.

Obviously, this is a spirit forward drink. Yet, it goes down quite smooth. The combination of sherry cask whisky, lavish wine notes from the Barolo Chinato and the herbal flavours of the Meletti works exceptionally well. Lastly, the PX sherry of the Ango Ximenez rounds everything off.

*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. The whisky was provided by Kirsch Whisky.