The Compass Box Stranger & Stranger Limited Edition

[Editor’s note: This Limited Edition celebrates 10 years of collaboration between Compass Box Whisky and the packaging design company, Stranger & Stranger. The liquid is Scotch Malt Whisky blended with wheat and barley spirit, making it officially a “spirit drink.”]

Tasting notes:
The nose opens with vanilla and caramel, yielding something closer to the nose of a wheated Bourbon, but with super-sweet citrus notes: freshly cut lemon and lime rinds fashioned into a candy cornucopia by a snibbledewidget (a machine Charlie Bucket devised, years after Wily Wonka had passed away, to give the Oompa Loompas a day off now and again).

The mouth also offers bright citrus, but sublimated under extremely bright melon and grenadilla. It’s the kind of thing that has the citrus in therapy twice a week. To say the mouth pops would be a massive understatement: it’s more of an experience than a taste. Also, there’s huge waxiness on the mouthfeel–who would have ever dreamed of such a thing in a Compass Box expression?!? 

The finish is caramelly and waxy and smooth like you’ve eaten really good caramels and some is still stuck to the roof of your mouth. Slight bitterness as the rindy notes make their natural progression toward pith. The finish is long on the spice like an authentic mango curry served with a chili chutney. 
With water, it loses the wax, and becomes much brighter and sharper–even hotter. It also gets rounder and the spice consolidates into something you would swear was a hint of smoke–but maybe that’s just all of the newfound fire that’s taking the lining of my mouth to a #3 char.

 
 

Rating:
On the scale of stranger things–

The Compass Box Stranger and Stranger Limited Edition is the character Dustin in the series Stranger Things–He’s not really that strange, actually, but oozes character and charm. OK, so he loves weird baby alien lizards like pets, and that’s strange, but the curly locks, the effusive smile, and the lisp make you just want to cuddle him.

   

   

                                                           –Stephen

   

   

–Our thanks to Compass Box for the sample!