Jul. 11: Drammers Tel Aviv Returns!...

Hello Tel Aviv Drammers!

Drammers Tel Aviv returns on Monday, the 11th of July, starting at 19:00.  We have been counting the seconds until we could get our Drammers Tel Aviv chapter back up and running.  Hard to believe it's been 2 years!  It seemed like every time covid was calming down in Tel Aviv, it was heating up in the USA and vice versa, ugh.  But we're all the more fired up to get the party started again, starting on Monday, the 11th of July at 19:00, and our friends at M&H Distillery have generously offered to host us.  We actually had the chance to host Tal Chotiner, their International Head of Sales at our Seattle chapter in the USA a couple weeks ago!

Many of you participated in our online combined barrel pick event last year, where our members in the US picked a barrel and you (our Tel Aviv members) picked a barrel (we actually ended up picking 3 total!).  Well, they've arrived, and we'll be tasting them for sure.  We even set aside a number of bottles of the barrel that you picked (the STR cask) at M&H just for our Tel Aviv members, which you can buy here if you like  and they'll be available to pick up at the event.

Btw, we've just created this as a separate mailing list just for our events in Tel Aviv (that way you can sign up to receive these emails without having to get our more frequent general newsletter emails if you prefer).  But since this is new, we don't have the emails for everyone who signed up in the past, so please feel free to forward to anyone you think might be interested (we don't want anyone to feel left out accidentally!).

Ok, so let's get into the details of what we'll be tasting, drumroll please...

• Glen Scotia 2022 Festival Dinner Bottling. This is a big one. Unless you attended this year's Campbeltown Malts Festival and happened to get a spot to the coveted Glen Scotia festival dinner, you almost certainly haven't tasted this whiskey. Of course, we bumped into several Tel Aviv Drammers at the festival, so we know a few of you have tasted this, but we're pretty sure you won't mind another look at it, ha. It's a single barrel that they only handed out at that dinner, Cask 47, 9yo, d.2013, b.2022, 1 of 228, first fill bourbon cask, 58.1% abv.

• 19yo Highland Park Stones of Stenness Single Cask Nation Bottling. This bottling from our friends at SCN discloses that it was distilled on Orkney, and reportedly they considered calling it "Not Scapa" for a while ha (Scapa is the only other distillery on Orkney!). So we're pretty comfortable saying this is a Highland Park bottling...

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 of course, our headliners for the evening are our 3 single barrels that we selected just for our club from the M&H Distillery:

• 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%!

That’s our lineup!  Or at least most of it -- we'll almost certainly have a small amount of additional pours from our events this week in Barcelona, London, Warsaw and Berlin that we can snack on for those who arrive first.  

We hope you can join us. 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,
Drammers Club

Anyone who has been to one of our events is welcome to invite friends to join.