Jul. 29: Drammers Manchester Launch Party!...
Hello Manchester Whiskey Friends!
We’re very excited to announce the launch of Drammers Manchester as the newest chapter of our club! Our first meeting will be on Friday, the 29th of July at 19:00, and a huge thank you to longtime friend and fellow Drammer Vince Oleson for hosting and organizing. We'll be meeting at his place, which is The Astley M12FB). If you have any issues finding the place, feel free to text Charlie at +1 646 245 8400 (he's on WhatsApp). We'll be tasting at least 8 whiskies, many of them quite rare, which are detailed in depth below.
Cheers,
Charlie, Vince and Drammers Club
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Lineup for Sunday:
We'll kick things off with two fun American whiskies -- one a rye, the other a vatted American malt, both from our friends at Barrell Craft Spirits, one of the most celebrated and successful independent bottlers and blenders (having created famously unusual blends like Seagrass, Dovetail and Armada. And it'll be timely for us to try a couple of their releases as we'll be hosting their US National Brand Director Will Schragis in London on the 28th (the night before our event in Manchester - and certainly if any of you will be in town, or you have a friend you want to invite to join for that, you're welcome to!). We'll be meeting in London at the Little Yellow Door in Notting Hill, also starting at 19:00. In any case, back to Manchester - here are some more info on the two bottles we'll be tasting on Friday from Barrell Craft Spirits:
Stellum Black Rye - Fibonacci Blend #1. This is a fun one that is getting a lot of attention in the US recently. This whiskey blends various barrels of rye whiskey where the percentage of each blend matches up with the Fibonacci sequence (a series of numbers, each the sum of the two previous numbers). Doesn't hurt that it was bottled at cask strength! 57.56% abv.
Barrell Whiskey - American Vatted Malt. Cask Strength, June 25, 2019 Blend. This is vatting of a variety of 1.5 to 8 year old single malts from the United States.
Next, we'll turn to 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.
And last but not least, we'll taste through our 2 single barrels of Glen Scotia Campbeltown Single Malt (one peated, one unpeated):
Glen Scotia 8yo Unpeated Campbeltown Single Malt Scotch, Single Barrel #740: (Drammers Exclusive). So excited about both of our single barrels, 2 of only 4 private barrels they've allowed out (in the US at least) in the last few years. And the timing is particularly good because GlenScotia was just named earlier this year as Distillery of the Year by the Scotch Whisky Association! We’ve had the pleasure of hosting their Master Distiller Iain McAllister a number of times at Drammers Club. 56.1% abv (cask strength).
Glen Scotia 10yo Peated Campbeltown Single Malt Scotch, Drammers Exclusive Single Barrel. 55.6% abv. (see above)
Plus, we'll also taste a special bonus pour that our host Vince is bringing for us to try! We'll keep that a secret for now, but trust us, you're gonna love it!
That's our lineup! We'll also order in food (likely pizza) so nobody is drinking on an empty stomach (btw, arranging a ride home from the event is highly recommended). We hope you can join us!
Note: the price is £30 / person — although it initially appears in US$ of about $35/person, you can toggle the currency in the upper right hand corner.
And if you have a friend you think would enjoy joining us, please feel free to invite them.