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Jan. 8: Drammers Sarasota......

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Hello Sarasota Drammers!

We’re excited to announce our next tasting in Sarasota will be on Wednesday, January 8th at 7pm (following our events earlier in the week in Miami on Monday the 6th and in West Palm Beach on Tuesday the 7th). A big thank you to Turner for organizing and hosting us again (we’ll circulate the address to those who sign up closer to the event). We’ll be tasting through 8 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 our Florida chapters will be the first in the club to try it! A single cask pick from the Angels Envy Distillery, bottled at 555 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.

  • Paul John Christmas Edition 2019. With the holidays still in mind, we thought it would be a nice moment to revisit the 2019 edition of Paul John Christmas Edition, an annual special release from this distillery based in Goa, India. This whisky is made like a Scotch in the sense that it is double-distilled on a pot still, made from 100% malted barley, and would otherwise meet the definitional requirements of making Scotch if it were entirely made in Scotland. It does differ though in a couple key respects. The biggest difference is the climate — the hot temperatures in Goa ensure that whisky matures there at a MUCH faster speed then it does in Scotland, as the hot temperatures cause the whisky to expand farther into the wood, and so it extracts (and evaporates!) much faster. You’re never going to have a 20 year single barrel of Indian whisky — the whole barrel will have evaporated likely around the 12 year mark! There is also an interesting technical difference in that India uses locally-grown 6-row barley as opposed to the 2-row barley that is universal in Scotland. We’ll get into all that at the tasting. The company puts out a special edition each year for the holidays, and we are particularly fond of this 2019 edition. This edition features a mix of their lightly peated whiskies aged in ex-Bourbon casks for at least 5 years and then finished for at least two years in ex-PX sherry casks. 46% 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.

  • Compass Box - Glasgow Blend, Drammers Exclusive Single Marrying Cask.  Compass Box is famous for making BLENDED Scotch premium again, creating ultra-high end blends of malt whisky and grain whisky.  Early last year they announced they were shutting down their single cask program -- where they create a blend and then "marry" it in a single cask, in this case an ex-Cameronbridge single grain scotch cask.  The company let us buy the very last single barrel they released in the United States before shutting down the program, which features deep, rich cocoa notes among other things. 49% abv

  • New England Barrel Co. Bourbon Finished in a Lord Hobo Stouted Beer Cask. This is a single barrel that our Drammers Boston chapter selected. New England Barrel Co. is an independent bottling company based out of New Hampshire, and it is all the rage in that region — luckily our Boston members jumped on it early. We welcomed their founder James Saunders as a guest speaker for our kickoff Drammers Boston event, and followed that up by tasting through some of his special releases. When we got wind of this barrel - Kentucky Bourbon sourced from Green River and finished in a Lord Hobo stout beer cask. Our Boston chapter made the way up to the NEBCo offices a few months ago and picked a barrel just for our members, and it is yummy -- like a Milky Way candy bar in a bottle. Since we selected this barrel, Green River Distillery was acquired by our friends at Bardstown Bourbon Company! 56.9% abv.

  • 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.

That’s our lineup, we hope you can join us! We’ll order in light food (likely pizza, 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, Turner and Drammers Club