Apr. 20: Drammers San Diego...
Hello San Diego Drammers!
We're excited to invite you to the launch of the San Diego chapter of Drammers Club, a global whiskey, mezcal and spirits club that meets regularly in over 40 cities across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Our kickoff meeting in San Diego will be on April 20th at 7pm, and the plan is to follow that up with regular tastings every couple months or so. We also organize group trips, barrel picks, online events and more. More details about the club below, and below you'll also find a preview of some of the bottles we'll be tasting at our event. On the 20th we'll be tasting 8 expressions total, a mix of whiskey, mezcal and other spirits. We're announcing 6 of them now, which you can read about in detail below, and we're saving a couple spots for some surprises (we'll be coming to San Diego from our events in Oaxaca, Mexico City and a brief detour to Michoacan, so we're planning to add a couple more bonus pours from the trip.
We hope you can join us! We'll order in some light food (included, likely pizza) to try to make sure nobody is drinking on an empty stomach, and as always we highly recommend that everyone arrange a ride home.
Cheers,
Charlie, Steven and Drammers Club
6 OF THE 8 BOTTLES WE’LL BE DRINKING AT THE EVENT:
Barleycorn Magic from Atelier Vie. A couple weeks ago, we were in New Orleans for the New Orleans Bourbon festival, and while we were there we made a point to check in on our favorite craft distillery, Atelier Vie. Their newest release is fascinating -- founder/distiller Jedd Haas started with beer from a nearby brewery (Zony Mash), and here we're talking about hopped beer -- very hard to make a balanced whiskey that is hopped, but Jedd has pulled it off. Needs to be tasted to be believed. 42% abv.
Loch Lomond's Glengarry 12yo. Our newest Drammers pick single barrel just arrived, a 12yo single malt Scotch from the Highlands distillery Loch Lomond. Distilled in 2010, bottled in 2023, unpeated, matured in a 1st fill Bordeaux red wine barrel -- the barrel yielded 281 bottles. 55.0% abv. Of course non-chill filtered and no color added. Cask #21/546-6. Exclusively available to Drammers members.
Version Francaise - Eddu 2011. Have you heard of the Eddu distillery? Neither had we until our friends at La Maison du Whisky started releasing their Version Francaise line of new French whiskies, many from distilleries we'd never heard of before. This bottling of 2011 single malt French whisky was only released at the LMDW shops in Paris, where we were fortunate enough to pick one up. 48% abv, made in the Bretagne region. We recently hosted an online discussion with the LMDW team about their recent very limited number of their first releases here in the United States, which you can see here if you'd like to learn more about them.
Copper & Kings Brandy - Finished in a Tequila Cask. This barrel pick recently arrived from Copper & Kings distillery in Louisville, Kentucky. They specialize in American brandy and here we've got a single barrel of their grape brandy aged in a tequila cask, bottled at cask strength of 62.5% abv. It’ll be fun to compare this to the grape brandy finished bourbon from Starlight! It is available exclusively to members of our club.
Rezpiral - Simeon Ramirez Mezcal Ensamble of Mexicano Agaves. We had the pleasure of selecting a batch a few years ago that Simeon did with his father Apolonio, that time from a tobasiche agave, which was dominated by vegetal and mineral notes. That pick was a big hit, so we selected a new batch that just arrived -- a mix of 4 varietals of the Mexicano agave, it has a dominant lemon-lime custardy-sorbet flavor, backfilled with vanilla. Yum. Details here, and available exclusively to members of Drammers for $120/bottle, 50.8% abv.
Rezpiral - Tobasiche Mezcal by Simeon and Apolonio Ramirez. We picked this batch of mezcal from Simeon three years ago, a batch of the tobasiche agave that Simeon made with his father Apolonio (our newest batch is made by Simeon by himeself). This earlier batch is very nearly sold out, which is both why we selected a new batch from him, and we our bringing out some of our last bottles of our earlier batch for one last hurrah. 50.9% abv, yummy stuff. Exclusively available to Drammers Members.