The third and final Compass Box whisky for a little while, unless I suddenly pop open my bottle of Hedonism. I don’t see that happening anytime soon though. Mostly because I’m still in the process of decreasing the amount of open bottles I have. Still some 12 to go before the end of the year!

Peat Monster was one of the first bottles I bought when I was getting into whisky a bit more some 9 years ago. Especially due to the name and the prettiness of the bottle, to be honest. I didn’t know anything about anything, so Compass Box, Vatted Malt (in those good old days) and other terms used on the label were new to me.

The unfortunate timing of this bottle, back then, was that I was expected some monstrous dram, since that was what I was going for in those days. Everything had to be high ABV and high phenol counts. Ardbeg Still Young, some Laphroaig indies, Caol Ila cask strength and such bottles all found their way home. Then came the layered smoothness of the Peat Monster. At first I wasn’t thrilled about it, but when the end of the bottle came near I started liking it more and more.

A few years after that I even considered buying one of those rare Magnum bottles of Peat Monster at 1.75 liters. They were relatively cheap, but my budget didn’t stretch that far at the time. Kind of a bummer, since it would have been epically unpractical and gimmicky to have that sitting on a shelf or table somewhere.

Compass Box Peat Monster

Sniff:
A very oily texture on the nose at first, but with quite a lot of raw smoke in it. Very Caol Ila like. I get some straw and heather, salt and extra dark chocolate. Very nice and elegant.

Sip:
The palate starts with some pepper , dried heather, vanilla and smoke. It’s rather rich and quite sweet but not overly so. It also has some salt and sea weed.

Swallow:
The smoke is less raw than on the nose and rather rich and sweet. There’s some oak too, pastry cream and a light dusting of pepper. It’s not very long.

It’s a lovely dram. One for the wishlist and very much worth the money (it’s under € 50). Not the most complex dram you’ll ever have in the price bracket, but one that has all the loveliness of the Islay drams mixed together to a very smooth and pleasing sum of its parts.

Kudos to Compass Box for consistently producing this stuff! I really love it. My favourite of their regular expressions!

Peat Monster, 46%, Compass Box, available at Master of Malt for € 46.
The Magnum bottle of 1.75 liters is available from The Old Pipe at € 107!

Thanks to Compass Box for sending me this sample!