Jul. 25: Drammers Charlotte...
Hello Charlotte Drammers!
Our next Drammers tasting in Charlotte will be Monday, July 25th at 7pm! We’re still finalizing our lineup, and there’s even a small chance we’ll have a guest speaker join us. But in the meantime we’ve got a fun lineup for you. Ok, so let's get into the details of what we'll be tasting. We'll start with 3 extremely rare Mexican whiskies...
Sierra Norte Mexican Whiskey - Green Corn Single Barrel. 52.8% abv
Sierra Norte Mexican Whiskey - Rainbow Corn Single Barrel. 61.2% abv
Sierra Norte Mexican Whiskey - Yellow Corn Single Barrel. 48.3% abv
Sierra Norte made huge waves when their bourbon-style yellow corn whiskey was named by Whiskey Advocate as one of the Top 20 whiskies in the world across all categories, and their master distiller Douglas French has taken that several steps further. Applying what he learned cultivating seed banks in his decades of building the Scorpion Mezcal brand, when he turned his hand to whiskey, he worked to isolate individual corn varietals, planting and refining them over decades to produce separate whiskies distilled using only white corn, or yellow corn, green corn, black corn, purple corn, and more recently red, green and rainbow corn. They’re all made like a bourbon (but in Mexico, so you can’t call it bourbon, which by definition has to be made in the United States). The mashbill is 85% corn, 15% malted barley, distilled on the same small copper pot stills that he uses to make his Scorpion mezcal. When our club visited Oaxaca last October, we picked 3 special single barrels. The first was a mind-altering variant of their award-winning yellow corn whiskey, with huge green pepper/jalapeno notes, very different from his standard release. Next, he let us buy the very first (and to our knowledge still the only) barrel of rainbow corn whiskey that he has ever released. And most precious, he let us buy one of only a few barrels of green corn whiskey that he barreled before abandoning the green corn project (it just wasn’t adapting to the Oaxacan environment, so he had to let it go — making our barrel incredibly rare, as one of only 4 or so barrels he ever produced, and he’s not making any more of it.
Next, we’ll turn to the 3 single barrels that we selected just for our club from the M&H Distillery in Israel:
M&H Israeli Single Malt - Fortified Red Wine Cask Finish. We selected three M&H Israeli Single Malt casks last year. Our US members selected 2 barrels, and our Tel Aviv chapter selected one. All three were matured for just over 3 years (closer to 3.5), and bottled at cask strength, which ended up being particularly high. This is the lowest abv of the three at 64.7% abv! This one is also the one that is most affected by adding a few drops of water. Neat it tastes delightful, and the bright red wine notes are there though it’s maybe a little more dry than you might expect (this doesn’t have the sweetness you sometimes associate with a fortified wine cask finish). But when you add a few drops of water it is transformed — mint notes dominate a suddenly much longer finish, bordering on peppermint some say. This was the first choice of our USA members during the barrel pick.
M&H Israeli Single Malt - Ex-Rum Cask Finish. This was narrowly the second favorite of the options given to our USA members, and it came with big expectations — the SCN M&H ex-rum cask release was arguably the highlight of the SCN M&H releases to date, and we went in with all eyes on this sample. It didn’t disappoint — is it something about M&H that makes their single malt particularly well suited to a rum cask finish? At a recent tasting of our Barcelona chapter, this was the favorite of the members there by a longshot, though nearly everyone preferred this one before adding water. And hey, 66.7% abv doesn’t hurt.
M&H Israeli Single Malt - STR Cask Finish. You (meaning our Tel Aviv members of Drammers) selected this single barrel, easily the smokiest of the bunch, even has notes bordering on peat (thought it is not peated). This was the favorite of Scotch purists among our European members who tasted it last week. And again, check out the abv — 69.4%!
Next, we’ll try a fun new rye single barrel.
Hughes Bros. - Belle of Bedford 9.5yo Single Barrel Rye. This was a single barrel pick from our friends at Jack Rose Saloon in Washington DC, and certainly it’s rare enough to find 9.5yo rye whiskey from MGP these days (which is where this is sourced from). Cyrus, the great great grandson of the original founder of this old Pennsylvania rye brand, resurrected it recently, and as chance would have it, he’ll be in Raleigh the night before, so I’m trying to talk him into coming to hang out with us in Charlotte, ha — long shot probably, but we’ll see. 95% rye / 5% malted barley, tastes so heavily of dill pickle that Jack Rose named the pick “Kind of a Big Dill”, ha. Cask strength bottling.
Plus one more bottle to be named later. Probably a scotch, but maybe a new Indian whiskey, we’ll see (I’m typing this up from Mumbai where we have an event tonight, and there are a few new Indian single malts in the market if I can track down a bottle…). Details on that last bottle to come.
That’s our lineup, we hope you can join us!c We’ll have food on hand as usual (likely pizza). As always, anyone who has been to one of our events is welcome to invite friends to join.
Cheers,
Charlie, Perry and Drammers Club
Anyone who has been to one of our events is welcome to invite friends to join.