Jan. 22: Drammers Las Vegas...
Hello Vegas Drammers!
Our next tasting of rare whiskey and spirits in Las Vegas will be on Wednesday, January 22nd at 7pm. A huge thank you to our Vegas chapter head Bob Brown for organizing! We’ll be tasting through 8 great new expressions at this tasting:
Octomore 15.1 - Heavily Peated Single Malt Scotch. The newest wave from Bruichladdich’s famously peaty single malt Scotch line came out last month, and we’re going to dig in to the measuring stick in the series — edition 15.1. This whisky was aged for 5 years in a combination of first-fill bourbon barrels and re-charred ex bourbon casks, and in all respects is a slightly more mellow edition compared to last year’s 14.1 edition. Unlike last year’s release, which was matured entirely in new oak, here some refill casks were used. And while it was bottled at a hefty 59.1% abv, that’s a slight drop from last year’s 59.6%. But after all, this is all about the peat, so perhaps most significantly, this new release features 108.2 PPM of peat, which is a noticeable drop from last year’s 14.1 (which clocked in at 128.9 PPM!).
Angel’s Envy Bourbon - New Single Cask Pick. This only arrived last week, and you will be among the first in the club to try it! A single cask pick from the Angels Envy Distillery, bottled at 55.5% abv (110 proof). Angel’s Envy deserves credit for normalizing the concept of “finishing” American whiskies, which simply means that at the end of its aging process, the whisky was transferred to a barrel that used to hold something else (in this case, Port wine barrels. Although the barrel has been emptied of Port, there can still be up to 10 liters of it soaked into the wood, and so if you fill that with bourbon, over the course of about 3 months it’s going to absorb some of that port flavor and color. This has long been a thing in the Scotch world but until Angel’s Envy came along in 2006, it was fairly unusual — in fact some people questioned whether it could even be called bourbon at all! That issue has since been settled, and finished bourbons and ryes are part of the regular whisky landscape.
Jack Rose Pick - Wilderness Trail “Fernet Con Rye”. We’re proud to call the team at Jack Rose Dining Saloon our friends. The bar is widely recognized as one of the great whisky bars in the country, and we’re flattered to be able to say that they carry most of our Drammers single barrel picks behind the bar. They also set aside a few cases of their own single barrel picks for our members, including this — a single barrel of Wilderness Trail rye that tastes like fernet. Seriously. You have to try it to believe it, but it really tastes like Fernet, but for once that’s not a bad thing? 52.15% abv
Jack Rose Pick - Peerless Single Barrel Bourbon. Jack Rose owner Bill Thomas dubbed this one “Sunset Sasparilla”, which gives you a hint of the flavor profile. We of course have long been huge fans of this distillery that was resurrected on distillery row (one of their distillers who is also their “Master Taster” is the co-head of our Drammers Louisville chapter), and we’ve done 3 single barrel picks of their rye for the club ourselves. Bottled at cask strength of 56.95% abv
Kings County Distillery - Cask Strength 5yo Custom Blend Straight Bourbon. Next up, we’ll try a very special release that our friends at the Kings County Distillery, which is located in Brooklyn, made just for our club — a combination of four 10 gallon barrels, bottled at a remarkable 68% abv. The bourbon that Kings County normal releases is unusual in that it features neither rye nor wheat in the mashbill, instead just using 85% corn and 15% malted barley, making this experimental blend they created for us particularly unusual for them — this features over 20% rye in the mashbill (closer to 30% if memory serves), making it a spicy departure from their normal bourbon releases.
Foursquare Rum - Magisterium. This “Mark XXVI” is the most recent in the “Exceptional Cask” line, considered by many rum enthusiasts to be the ultimate limited releases from one of the most respected rum brands in the world and often finding a bottle can be tricky. Even for Foursquare, this is a big one, featuring a 16-year-old Single Blended (Barbados) Rum. These releases are hand-picked by Foursquare’s founder and Master Blender Richard Seale as “one-of-a-kind” releases that he chooses when he finds casks of “exceptional quality”. This features a mix of 3 component rums, all made at the same distillery and aged for 16 years. 58% abv
Reina Sanchez - Ensamble Mezcal. Reina Sanchez is one of the reigning queens of mezcal in Oaxaca, and we've been proud to bring in batches of her mezcal for our members and visit her in person at her palenque (distillery) in Oaxaca, Mexico. This new ensamble (blend of agaves) is part of Series 7 from our friends at Rezpiral, and it is especially tasty, featuring a mix of jabali, madrecuishe and cuishe agave varietals and bottled at 47.8% abv.
Plus one more surprise pour!
That’s our lineup, we hope you can join us! We’ll order in light food (which is included), and as usual we strongly encourage everyone attending to arrange a ride home (keep in mind that just about everything we’ll be drinking will be at cask strength). Please let us know if you have any questions!
Cheers,
Charlie, Bob and Drammers Club