Compass Box. Twenty-eight whiskies.

John Glaser was marketing director at Johnnie Walker when he decided that blends could be taken just as seriously as single malt. In 2000 he started Compass Box in London, with an approach borrowed from the wine world: choosing casks on taste, not on name.

The first bottle was Hedonism, entirely grain whisky. Grain was then seen as the cheap filler of a blend; Glaser bottled it as a finished product. Four years later came The Peat Monster, which became the bestseller.

Twice the house clashed with the Scotch Whisky Association. In 2005 over The Spice Tree, for which extra oak staves had been hung in the cask. That was not allowed, and the bottle returned with heavily toasted cask heads instead. And in 2016 because Compass Box said exactly how old each component of a blend was; that, too, was formally not allowed. The response was a campaign for more openness, which Bruichladdich, among others, joined.

On the label of a blend only the age of the youngest whisky may be stated. Compass Box thought that was too little information and published the rest anyway.