Jul. 25: Drammers Charlotte / Ft. Mill...
Hello Charlotte and Fort Mill Drammers!
We’ve got some exciting news — the founder of one of the hottest new Irish whiskey companies is coming to be our guest speaker in Fort Mill on Thursday, July 25th at 7pm. A big thank you to Tanya Thompson for hosting (address: 2077 Tatton Hall Road, Fort Mill, SC).
Our guest speaker will be Louise McGuane, the founder of J.J. Corry, which has resurrected the lost art of Irish whiskey bonding (in oversimplified terms, you might think of them as a kind of Irish Compass Box-style premium blending house). We’ll have an array of JJ Corry expressions on hand for you to try, and we’ll update this when we have more information on which expressions.
In the meantime, we also don’t want you to miss out on our newest touring Drammers bottles, so we’ll have the full roster of bottles we’ll be pouring this Summer in Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston, Atlanta, Birmingham, etc., including the hot new line of Premier Drams bottlings from Jack Rose founder Bill Thomas, the new Bardstown Bourbon Co. collaboration with Amrut, our club-exclusive single marrying cask from Compass Box, Goza Anejo Tequila and more (details below).
We hope you can join us! As usual, we’ll order in light food (likely pizza) to try to make sure nobody is drinking on an empty stomach, and of course we strongly recommend arranging a ride home. Please let us know if you have any questions!
Cheers,
Charlie, Perry and Drammers Club
BOTTLE LINEUP FOR THE EVENT (IN ADDITION TO JJ CORRY):
3 Expressions of Bourbon, Rye and “American Whiskey” from Premier Drams. These are hot off the presses — the owner of the legendary whiskey bar Jack Rose Saloon in DC has launched this new bottling line of 7yo bourbon, rye and rye aged in a used barrel, hence “American Whiskey”. We are fortunate to call Bill a good friend — Drammers Club has hosted numerous events with him over the years and we’re very proud to say he carries many of the Drammers barrel picks behind the bar. Now, we’re thrilled to announce that we split 3 single barrels with him that will only be available at The Jack Rose Saloon and to Drammers Club members at www.DRINQY.com/drammers. Ok, so what is this exactly? Bill’s not allowed to say who distilled it, though we think it’s pretty obvious (not many brands command $219/bottle at 7yo, so that’s a big hint). There are some reviews out there that are pretty blunt about where they think it was distilled. One review at District Drams notes: “Bill Thomas has a famously good relationship with Willett […] the long and short of it is this is supposedly contract distilled Willett aged at Castle and Key.” That’s certainly the consensus view. All bottled at cask strength, 50% to 53% abv.
Bardstown Bourbon Co. - Amrut Collaboration. Next up, we’ll try the newest release from Bardstown Bourbon Co. Their collaboration series is arguably more robust than any in the industry, and this newest collab with the Amrut distillery in India is hot off the presses. We’re huge fans of both distilleries (and have in fact bought single barrels from both), so naturally we’ve been anticipating this one for a while. To create this bottling, they took KY rye, finished it in ex-Amrut Indian single casks, then blended that with KY bourbon to arrive at this flavor profile — the distinct honeyed / tropical fruit notes really come through on the finish. 55% abv. More info here.
Compass Box - Extinct Blends Quartet - Metropolis. Compass Box, king of the premium blended Scotch, launched this four-part series in August of 2022. The idea was to reimagine four of their favorite blended Scotches of yesteryear, recognizing that tastes and flavor profiles change over time — blended Scotches of the 70s, 80s and 90s tasted very different from what we find today. They claim to have assembled these limited edition blends out of their “rarest and most idiosyncratic stocks of whisky”. For this 3rd release, “Metropolis” (launched in September of 2023), we are told they were recreating a “recently lost” premium blend “with a long history”, though we don’t know exactly the brand. It is assembled from a mix of sherry cask-matured whisky along with grain whisky and a small amount of highly aged single malt whisky. This series also shows their relatively new “lead whiskymaker” James Saxon (he’s been at it at Compass Box for a while now, but the founder John Glaser only stepped down from the company in March of this year. 5,910 bottles created for the release, globally at around $300/bottle. 49% abv.
Compass Box - Drammers Exclusive “Single Marrying Cask”. A single cask program is tricky when your brand is all about blends, but it can be done — creating a blend and then recasking it, in this case in an ex-Cameronbridge (single grain Scotch) cask. We recently learned that Compass Box had decided to shut down the Single Marrying Cask program, and they were nice enough to let us select one last cask before they shut down the program, we’re told for good. This is a variant of their flagship “Glasgow Blend” series, which is why we wanted to pair it with their more premium “Metropolis” release in the Extinct Blends Quartet, as it too is credited as taking inspiration from the city of Glasgow, whose preferred blending profile was a little more robust in the early 1900s, featuring a wee bit of peat in the mix. We get huge cocoa nuts on this — think Cocoa Puffs, right out of the box without milk. Exclusive to Drammers Club at $55/bottle.
Goza Anejo Tequila. This is fun - a new tequila brand from our friends Paul Hletko (founder of FEW Distillery in Chicago) and Dave Schmier (creator or Redemption Rye a million years ago, and more recently The Senator, Tumblin Dice etc.). With so many adulterated tequilas out there, it’s nice to know there’s another one we don’t have to worry about. Made from 100% Weber Blue Agave, distilled in small batches at GOZA’s distillery in Jalisco, Mexico, aged for 18 months.
One More Bonus Pour. There are honestly like 7 more we really want to pour for you. The new Lagg Distillery whisky? The new Lochlea? Did you know that Indri Indian single malt is now allocated?! Alas, we can’t pour them all, so we’ll keep one slot open to surprise you with.