Sep. 14: Drammers St. Louis!...
Fellow Drammers!
Our next Drammers St. Louis event will take place on Tuesday, September 14th at 7pm! We’ve got a great lineup for you, drumroll please!
Caol Ila 12yo Feis Ile 2021 Bottle. The great whisky festival on Islay had been virtual the last 2 years, but they're still releasing their traditional festival bottlings that you can only get in person at the distillery. Happily, we stopped by Islay last week and scooped up a bottle! Aged for 12 years, bottled in 2021, finished in Moscatel-seasoned American Oak casks. 57% abv.
Bimber London Single Malt - Distillery Exclusive 2020 Madeira Cask. After our Drammers London event last week, we made a point to stop by one of our favorite new distilleries - Bimber, based right in the middle of West London. You may recall we did an event with them a few months back. This Madeira cask bottle was one of only 71 bottles released, a distillery exclusive that was intended for 2020, but with the pandemic a few bottles remained as of last week. 57.8% abv.
High West American Prairie Bourbon - Finished in a Rivesaltes fortified wine cask (Drammers barrel pick #26). We're huge fans of this distillery, which is located in Park City, Utah and makes their own whiskey, but also sources whiskey from MGP as they did with this barrel. The High West team prides themselves on their blending skills, which makes single barrels a challenge -- after all, how do you show off blending skills on a single barrel! Their solution is to only release single barrels that are finished in interesting ways, and we were very proud to have the opportunity to select this single barrel finished in a fortified Rivselates wine cask.
High West Double Rye - Finished in a Cognac Cask (Drammers barrel pick #25). Same story as above regarding only releasing single barrels with interesting finishes -- this one is finished in cognac, and I personally find an incredible menthol/mint finish on it, though not everyone does.
Wyoming Whiskey – 2 Drammers Barrel Picks. This distillery made big waves when they launched back in 2009, convincing the master distiller for Makers Mark to come out of retirement to be their master distiller for a while and show them the ropes, eventually passing the baton to their own home-grown team. We’re big fans of their juice, and we were curious what happened when they finally made the transition – so we flew out to Wyoming for a big online Drammers event, tasted a ton of barrels, and picked one of each from just before and after the master distiller transition. We’ll taste both on Saturday, and you’ll have to decide for yourself if you can taste a difference, and if so which you prefer! Bottled at cask strength as always.
Mlody Ziemniak - 2 Versions (2019 and 2020). Whisky enthusiasts tend to be respectful of all other spirits categories except one -- vodka. But these bottles might change your mind. The logic goes that by definition, the spirit needs to be tasteless and odorless, so what's there to be proud of? The culprit here is that vodka is by definition distilled up to at least 96% alcohol, thereby eliminating a lot of the potential flavors. But what if you took the same distillate, and only distilled it once, stopping at 60% abv? And what if Poland's most prestigious craft vodka distillery made a point to do it in a special limited edition series to highlight flavor differences among potato varietals? That's exactly what Chopin did, and we were so blown away by the results, we flew to the distillery in Poland to do an event live with the founder, where our US members tried samples and voted to pick an exclusive batch for our club. That batch hasn't arrived yet, but in the meantime we've secured the very limited 2019 and 2020 special editions, released under their "Mlody Ziemniak" (or "young potato") line. These bottles can only be found in Poland currently, and in our opinion, they're a game changer.
That’s our lineup, we hope you can join us! And of course the event will include pizza as usual. In the meantime, feel free to sign up, we hope you can join us! $40/person for Drammers Members, $50/person for Drammers Observers.
Cheers,
Drammers Club