Jul. 30: Drammers Kansas City...

Fellow Drammers,

We're excited for our next Drammers Kansas City meeting! A big thank you to Holly Twadell for hosting! We've assembled a rockstar lineup of whisky to celebrate the occasion, drumroll please...

• Craigellachie 20yo, by Gordon & Macphail. Our headliner is a gem -- a 20yo single malt scotch from the beloved Speyside distillery Craigellachie, bottled by the independent bottlers Gordon & Macphail. We picked this bottle up at auction a while back, and have watched as its value skyrocket in price. 40% abv.

• Laphroaig 13yo Chieftain's Bottling. Laphroaig has long stopped making barrels available to independent bottlers, making these unusual 3rd party bottlings increasingly rare. This one, released under the Chieftain's line, was aged 13 years in a sherry butt, bottled at 13 years old. VERY different than the usual Laphroaig profile, We picked this up from our friends at K&L in LA, and have been waiting for a special occasion to bring it out. NOTE: 58.3% abv.

• Bomberger’s Declaration 2020. While we’re focused on bourbon, let’s try this special release from the Michter’s company. We did an event with them last year where they indicated they have big plans for the limited Bomberger declaration series as a space for fun experimentation. 1 of 1780 bottles released in the 2020 series, batch number 20G1527. 54% abv.

• Wyoming Whiskey Drammers Private Cask. This is an interesting one -- when this distillery launched, the first in Wyoming since prohibition, it hired former Makers Mark master distillery Steve Nally to show them the ropes. So when he ended that period and went back into retirement, it was surprising to hear that the distillery made some changes to the distilling recipe/process. We decided to explore this, buying two single casks for our club -- one from the Steve Nally era, and one 6 months after he left, after they'd imposed the changes. Remarkably, most of our members prefer the post-Nally cask, which we'll be trying tonight. 58.8% abv.

• Clontarf 1014 Irish Whiskey. Time for a relatively obscure Irish whiskey, triple distilled in the iconic Irish whiskey tradition. This particular bottle is a slightly older version of the blended whiskey. 40% abv.

• 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 the lineup so far -- inevitably we'll add a bottle or three by the time we arrive. We hope you can join us!

Cheers,
Drammers Club