Jul. 28: Drammers Las Vegas...

Fellow Drammers,

Our next Drammers Las Vegas event is on for Wednesday, July 28th, at 7:30pm. We'll be meeting at a location on the strip (its awesome), and chances are we'll up somewhere afterwards, ha (last time we had an impromptu after-party at the Silver Dollar Lounge.... which was amazing. Anyway, we've assembled a kickass lineup to taste, drumroll please...

• Pittyvaich Single Malt Scotch, 20yo. We picked this bottle up at auction a few years ago and have watched in awe as the price has climbed to nearly 3x what we paid for it in the secondary market. This was part of Diageo's 2009 special release series, 1 of 6,000 bottles released from this little-known (and now closed) distillery, which was built in 1975, closed (permanently) in 1993, and the buildings were demolished in 2002. It is located a few minutes walk from Dufftown, and in full disclosure, though it has its defenders, not everyone is a fan of this distillery on the logic that the distillery was built for blending and some think the distillate doesn't lend itself to longer maturation. Still, this is a very rare chance to try it (don't hold us to it, but this might be one of only 3 bottlings as far as we know). 47.5% abv.

• Highland Park 13yo Drammers Single Barrel. We selected this barrel 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.

• Westward - Club Edition - American Single Malt - Tempanilla Cask Finish. We just had an event with our Portland chapter a few days ago, and we managed to pick up a distillery-only special release, which takes their single malt finished in a Tempanilla cask. This is part of their announcement that their whiskey club, previously only available to residents of Oregon, will now be available nationwide, which makes one-off special releases available to club members (like this bottle, which was their most recent release)

• Douglas Laing - Old Particular Series: Cameronbridge Single Grain Scotch 27yo. Here at Drammers, we do love us some single grain Scotch. Of course, its more famous cousin Single Malt Scotch gets all the attention, but single grain scotch can be excellent too, especially at older ages like this. This type of scotch is made with multiple grains, often dominated by corn historically (today wheat is more common), both making for a sweeter distillate that arguably bridges the gap between bourbon and scotch. Independent bottlers Douglas Laing picked a great barrel with this release!

• Saint Cloud Bourbon Batch #2. This is an early release from Saint Cloud that we picked up a couple years ago from our friends at K&L in LA, long since sold out. We're still learning about Saint Cloud, but here's what we know -- this was "custom distilled" (we assume contract distilled to spec, unclear if it was at the newmake stage though). Unusually, it is matured in new French oak, and it apparently has a high malt content in the mashbill. We're not 100% sure, but we think this is the 13 year aged variety (they have a color coding system, green for 7 years aged, black for 13, as we understand it). Bottled at cask strength.

• Rare Perfection 14yo Canadian Whisky. Rare Perfection is another popular independent bottler, that made early waves by finding some excellent 20+ year aged bourbon batches. Though of course some found them over-wooded, within the category they seemed to have a bit of the magic touch. So everyone was a little surprised when they announced that their next series, under the same "Rare Perfection" brand, would be Canadian distillate. Intriguing. Did their bourbon-whisperer skills translate North of the border? We're going to find out on Wednesday...

• Rezpiral - Capon Espadin. 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 Las Vegas 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!
Bob, Charlie and the Drammers Club crew