Oct. 15: Drammers Berlin!...

Berlin Drammers!

Our next Drammers Club whisky and spirits tasting in Berlin will be Friday, 15th of October at 19:00. Keenan Popwell, the head of our Berlin chapter, has kindly offered to host at his apartment. For those who are new to our club, we host whisky tastings every 6 weeks or so in 35 cities around the world, and we’re just getting started here in Berlin (it will be our 2nd Drammers Berlin tasting!). In any case, we've put together an incredible lineup of spirits to taste, drumroll please...

• Bunnahabhain Cask Strength from Signatory Vintage. We're huge fans of this famous distillery on the island of Islay, known for its peaty and smoky scotches. And this is a particularly fun bottling -- heavily peated, un-chillfiltered, bottled at 59.2% abv, courtesy of our friends at Signatory Vintage. It is a single barrel selection by one of the great whisky bars in America (Jack Rose Saloon in Washington DC).

• Glen Moray Barolo Finish 1998. This is another one hot off the presses -- the Warehouse 1 release, single malt scotch from the Glen Moray distillery, finished in an Italian Barolo wine cask. It was received exceptionally strong early reviews, reporting notes of chocolate, figs and dark berries. Bottled at 52.9% abv.

• Amrut Indian Single Malt - Ex-Rye Cask. This one is hot off the presses -- a single barrel of Amrut's Indian Single Malt -- made like a scotch, but in Bangalore, India. The hotter climate there means this whisky ages a lot differently than a scotch,with delightful results, and here it was aged in an ex-rye cask, a rare offering from the distillery (we previously tried a similar Amrut ex-rye cask bottled by our friends at La Maison du Whisky in Paris a few years ago. This is a Drammers exclusive single barrel pick, and is bottled at 60.2% abv.

• Penderyn Single Cask 9yo. This is another exquisite so-called "world whisky", this time made in Wales, and known for exceptionally long stills that produce a distinctly fruity character. That's amplified here by its maturation in an ex-oloroso sherry cask, and delightfully bottled at 58% abv.

• Leopold Bros. Three Chamber Still Rye. This much-talked about recent release is the first whiskey to use the legendary three-chamber pot still, a dominant still type before prohibition, which was all but forgotten until Todd Leopold dug it out of the history books and took a huge financial gamble to recreate it. And wow did that pay off, with famed whisky writer Dave Broom calling it the most important whisky release of the century thus far. Arguably the still design was abandoned simply because it was more difficult to operate, but when done right it is billed as an aroma extraction machine, and the perfumed notes here are obvious -- this is simply put an entirely different category of whisky. Only 5,286 bottles have been released so far, and instantly sold out, but they were nice enough to set aside 100 bottles for our club.

• Frey Ranch 4 Grain Bourbon. This farmer husband-and-wife team are taking bourbon to the next level -- all the whisky they make uses grains they grow themselves on their generations-old farm just outside Reno, Nevada. Initially conceived as a way to show off the quality of their grains, it has taken on a life of its own, and this is the first single barrel they have allowed outside of the Nevada and California markets (it was selected by our members as a Drammers exclusive bottling).

• Rezpiral Mezcal – 100% Tepextate from Berta Vasquez. We love mezcal here at Drammers Club, and organize an annual event down to Oaxaca for Day of the Dead each October (which everyone in the club is invited to - over 20 of our members have already signed up to come this year). As part of that, we have visited with many of the most celebrated mezcal producers in Mexico, and we had the pleasure of visiting with Berta Vasquez a couple years ago. She blew us away – she is widely seen as one of the world’s greatest mezcal master distillers (and one of the few maestra mezcaleras!). The independent bottlers Rezpiral have released a bunch of her mezcal batches, and we love working with Rezpiral, they have incredible integrity in the way they operate, even giving back 20% of the profits to the producers, which is unheard of. But finding 100% tepextate is very rare these days (it takes 20+ years to just grow the plants!), and while Berta’s blends of Tepextate with other agave types have been released in the US, to our knowledge this is the first time a 100% tep batch has been released States-side. Special stuff, and we bought the entire batch just for our members.
  

That's our lineup, we hope you can join us! We'll have yummy pizza on hand as well to make sure nobody’s drinking on an empty stomach!

Cheers,
Drammers Club

• Format: in person tasting, includes snacks

• When: 19:00 start

• Where: Jessnerstr. 9, Berlin, 10247

• Cost: 25 Euros/person for Drammers Members or 35 Euros/person for Drammers Observers / Non-Members

(Please note: You can toggle the currency in the upper right. It will show up in US$ on the final checkout page, but will be the same price equivalent in pounds).