Compass Box Flaming Heart, Chattanooga Anniversary Blend, Old Dominick & More

It's a light menu of new whiskey releases this week, led by the return of Flaming Heart from blended scotch bottler Compass Box, which is out with a 25th anniversary edition. Chattanooga Whiskey, meanwhile, has a 13th anniversary release, drawn from the distillery's solera systems and made from a different combination of whiskeys than the previous year, in keeping with Chattanooga's tradition. On the other side of Tennessee, in Memphis, Old Dominick has released a single barrel 7 year old wheat whiskey. And finally, Louisville-based Pursuit Spirits pays tribute to its hometown's distilling history with the revival of two lost whiskey names: Mellwood and Derby Town.

Compass Box Flaming Heart 25^th Anniversary Edition Blended Malt Scotch

ABV: 48.9%
Price: $165
Availability: Limited; 9,384 bottles

Compass Box has announced a new edition of Flaming Heart, its peaty blended malt scotch, to celebrate the company’s 25^th anniversary. Flaming Heart is a recurring limited edition that was first released in 2006. This is the eighth edition, and the whiskies here are notable for two reasons. First, the recipe no longer includes unpeated single malt whiskies matured in bourbon and sherry casks, but instead focuses exclusively on peated whiskies and whiskies finished in custom new French oak casks. Second, Compass Box’s whiskymaking director James Saxon has used fewer components than in previous editions, aiming to intensify the flavor of the smoky whiskies at its heart. You can read our full review of this 94-point whisky here.

The blended malt is made up of whiskies from Talisker, Benrinnes, Laphroaig, and Williamson. The last component is a sourced Islay blend understood to be Laphroaig with the addition of a small amount of another single malt, a process known as teaspooning. When casks of scotch whisky are traded between companies for their blending requirements, this practice makes it impermissible for the cask to be sold as Laphroaig.

Chattanoooga Whiskey Founder’s 13^th Anniversary Blend

ABV: 50%
SRP: $60
Availability: Limited; Experimental Distillery and CO, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, SC, TN, TX, WI, and seelbachs.com

Each spring, Chattanooga Whiskey founder Tim Piersant creates a new blend for the distillery’s Founder’s series, a line that commemorates its history. This edition, which marks Chattanooga’s 13^th anniversary, like its predecessors it's drawn exclusively from the distillery’s three separate solera systems. That said, the blend breakdown is vastly different year-to-year, creating a variety of flavor profiles across the range.

For this year’s release, Piersant blended 23% of the 1816 solera barrel, the smallest of the three solera barrels (625 gallons) and home to the original MGP high-rye bourbon recipe Chattanooga sourced in its early days; 58% of barrel 91, the largest of the three solera barrels (4,000 gallons) and filled with Chattanooga’s signature Tennessee high-malt bourbon; and 19% of its infinity barrel (1,645 gallons), which contains a blend of malt and rye malt whiskeys from both the Experimental and Riverfront distilleries (this year’s infinity barrel components include five new mashbills, among them a heavily toasted iteration of the flagship 99 Rye recipe and a malt made with Italian Adriatic Coastal barley).

Pursuit Spirits Mellwood Legacy Collection: Mellwood Bottled in Bond Bourbon

ABV: 50%
SRP: $30/375 ml
Availability: Pursuit Spirits Distillery and P. Club membership program

Pursuit Spirits Mellwood Legacy Collection: Derby Town Barrel Proof Bourbon

ABV: 61.4%
SRP: $50/375ml
Availability: Pursuit Spirits Distillery and P. Club membership program

Louisville-based Pursuit Spirits is paying tribute to its local distilling history by resurrecting two dormant whiskey labels: Mellwood and Derby Town. The 6 year old Mellwood is the first bonded whiskey from Pursuit Spirits, and it’s distilled from a mashbill of 78% corn, 12% rye, and 10% malted barley. Bottled at 7 years old and 61.4% ABV. Derby Town Barrel Proof has a slightly different mashbill—keeping the 78% corn, but swapping the rye and malted barley ratios.

These whiskeys belong to the newly launched Mellwood Legacy Collection, which gets its name from the brand’s location on the corner of Frankfort and Mellwood Avenues in Louisville. That area was once home to Mellwood Distillery Co., which was founded in 1865 by George W. Swearingen, a former farmer who turned to making whiskey after the Civil War. The distillery found some success, providing whiskey to rectifiers like George Gavin Brown, founder of Brown-Forman, which today owns Old Forester, Woodford Reserve, and Jack Daniel’s, among others. The distillery would change hands a few times over the ensuing decades until Prohibition forced its closure in 1918.

Mellwood was reopened in 1933 and, after a brief renovation period, restarted production in 1935. It continued to make whiskey for another three decades, selling some stocks to other producers and bottling the rest under its own labels. The distillery ceased filling barrels in the 1960s, though it would continue to bottle whiskey until 1974 when it was demolished. Pursuit Spirits released these two expressions in honor of the original Mellwood bottled in bond, which was the distillery’s flagship brand in its early days, and Derby Town, which came around after the distillery reopened in the ’30s.

Old Dominick 7 year old Single Barrel Wheat Whiskey

ABV: 62.31%
SRP: $65
Availability: Old Dominick Distillery and at retailers in Memphis and across the southeast

Memphis-based Old Dominick Distillery has unveiled a new single barrel wheat whiskey. The whiskey uses a mashbill of 83% wheat, 12% corn, and 5% malted barley, and was aged for 6 years in barrels made from Tennessee-sourced white oak.

According to Old Dominick lead distiller David Valentine, this is the first wheat whiskey distilled in Memphis since the era of Prohibition. That may be true, but it isn’t the first wheat whiskey we’ve seen from Old Dominick. The distillery has released MGP-sourced wheat whiskey under the Huling Station label, a sister brand to the flagship Old Dominick. The main one was a straight wheat whiskey, which launched as a core product in 2020 alongside a straight bourbon and blend of straight bourbons. In 2023, Old Dominick released an older version of that whiskey—bottled at 9 years old—as part of its limited edition Trolly Stop Series. The newcomer was distilled by Old Dominick using the same mashbill as its sourced wheat whiskeys.