Aug. 4: Drammers Long Island!......

Fellow Drammers!

We're excited to get back to Long Island for our next in-person event there on Wednesday, August 4th. Our friends Pami Wexelman and Jason Tuerack have generously offered to host (59 Midland Road, Roslyn Heights, 11577). Our last few events have centered around particular brands, thanks to our chapter head Matt Lurin inviting some of his many contacts in the industry, which were awesome events! This time we thought it'd be fun to try a mixture of brands, as we taste through some of the rare one-off casks our industry friends have allocated exclusively to our club over the last year. A few of these are now sold out or nearly sold out, so this will be a last opportunity to try them:

• Highland Park 13yo Drammers Single Barrel. We selected this barrel of single malt scotch during our November 2020 event with the Highland Park team, and we were incredibly honored to learn that this was the first time Highland Park has ever agreed to sell a single barrel to a whiskey club in the Americas. Matured its entire life (of 13 years) in a sherry hogshead, unlike the much more common “finish” usually only for 3 months at the end of the aging process. The sherry influence is loud and proud here, but so is the European oak, which differs from American oak in bringing more spices and dried fruit notes that are easily identifiable here on the back of the palate. Cask strength of 63.9% abv.

• Starward Australian Single Malt - Drammers Barrel Pick.  We’re big fans of the burgeoning world whisky scene, almost all of which is made in the Scotch style.  Starward has consciously sought to go the other direction, expressly saying things like they’re “trying to do everything they can to not be Scotch”, ha.  It is made from 100% malted barley like a Scotch, but early on, they decided to make maturation in big Ozzie red wine barrels their signature, and our club’s barrel pick certainly shows that front and center, as does the fast maturation inherent in Melbourne’s climate.  Very few Starward single barrels have been released into the wild to date, making this a rare chance to try their whisky at cask strength! 55.5% abv.

• Balcones Single Malt Finished in an Apple-Brandy Cask. Next we'll turn to single malt whisky made in the United States by our friends at the Balcones distillery down in Waco Texas. Balcones was part of a kind of gold rush of American single malt production, here in the US in 2008-2010, when several distilleries including Westland in Seattle, Westward in Portland, Stranahan's in Denver, and of course Balcones among others. They all made a decision to focus primarily on single malts instead of bourbon and rye whiskies, and we're fans of all of them. Balcones is a particular favorite of ours, and we had the honor of selecting four private barrels from them last year, all of which we'll try at Wednesday's event. This release saw the apple-brandy finished in an apple-brandy cask, and bottled at cask strength.

• Balcones Single Malt Finished in a Stout Beer Cask. We looked at this cask on our first barrel pick event with Balcones in March of 2020, and weren't entirely sure what to make of it! Stout beer, rum and other barrels had played a role in its maturation, making for one of the most unusual and fascinating whiskies we'd ever tasted. Initially we passed it up in favor of the apple-brandy finish cask above, but we couldn't stop thinking about it, and a few months later decided we'd made a huge mistake. We went back and asked if we could still get it, and luckily they still had it and let us buy it for our members. Truly an exceptional, and exceptionally unusual cask in all the best ways (bottled at cask strength).

• Balcones Single Cask Rum. Yes, a rum! Although we mostly focus on whiskey here at Drammers Club, we've always said we're a whiskey and spirits club, and we like to explore other spirits too. Our friends at Balcones are big rum fans, and make some fantastic core range rum releases, but they had never released a single barrel rum into the wild -- until now. This was matured in an ex-Old Forester bourbon cask, and the impact is noticeable, so even though most rum is matured in ex-bourbon casks, with this one its fair to say its a bourbon-finished rum!

• Balcones True Blue Matured in a Tequila Cask. We're sad to say that only 2 bottles remain from this barrel we selected, and so we wanted to make sure our Long Island members had a chance to taste it before it was gone. This is a cask strength version of Balcones' special release cask strength blue corn whiskey, but this time it is matured entirely in a tequila cask, and our club was given the opportunity to buy the barrel exclusively for our members. The result is astounding, with movie theater popcorn giving way to a hint of agave on the finish. This bottle has generated more press than any of the 43 barrels we picked as a club last year, and it was such a hit that the Balcones team decided to create a permanent product line to try to mimick it, though that won't be available for some time, and as far as we know, not at cask strength. We're going to be sorry to see this one go.

• Smooth Ambler Old Scout. Hard to believe we only have one proper bourbon in this month's lineup, but it's more than up to the task. The Smooth Ambler distillery in West Virginia is one of our favorite craft distilleries, and they have long been celebrated for being among the very best at selecting barrels of exceptional sourced whiskey. Their Old Scout line and (now long gone) Very Old Scout line revealed some of the best barrels of bourbon ever to come out of the great MGP distillery in Indiana, so when they announced they were reopening their Old Scout line to a single barrel program, we were among the first in line to participate. Aged 5.5 years, this is fantastic MGP juice, selected by our members last Summer during a distillery visit event.

• Rezpiral - Capon Espadin. Finally, a mezcal! Our very first bottling, Drammers #001! This bottle is nearly sold out, with about 13 remaining as of this writing, so we wanted to give our Long Island members one last chance to taste it. This was produced by maestro mezcalero Aureliano Hernandez, and it was such a hit that we went back to him to get another exclusive batch for Drammers, his Tobala con Frutas. This first selection resulted from a visit by Rezpiral founder Alex White -- we tried 10 expressions, and this was the one the members loved the most. Two key things to know about this mezcal - it was rested in glass (oxidized, essentially) for over 9 months, much longer than the public releases by Aureliano, and that makes a BIG difference. Second, it is a "capon" espadin, which means "castrated" -- just as the agave shoots up the giant stalk to reproduce (at which point the plant dies), the mezcalero cuts the stalk -- the plant still thinks it needs to generate sugar for the reproduction process, resulting in a hyper-sweet agave, and ultimately a sweeter mezcal.

That's our lineup, and honestly we'll probably pull out a couple more, ha. A huge thank you to our Vegas chapter head Bob Brown, for organizing! In any case, we hope you can join us! If you're interested in joining, you can sign up here:

Cheers!
Matt Lurin, Dani Shulman, Charlie and the Drammers Club Crew