Jul. 9: Drammers Berlin...
Hello Berlin Drammers!
We’re excited for our next whiskey tasting in Berlin, starting at 19:00 on the 9th of July, and thank you again to Keenan for hosting us and organizing .
We’ll be tasting an array of 8 rare whiskies including Single Malt Scotch, Bourbon, and even a super rare barrel of green corn Mexican Whiskey from the Sierra Norte distillery. Here are some more details about what we’ll be drinking, drumroll please…
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.
We’ll also be tasting a couple of fun single malt scotches from our friends at Elixir Distilling:
Clynelish Single Malt Scotch, 10yo, Single Malts of Scotland, Jack Rose Single Barrel, 1 of 213 bottles (cask ref: 800314, d. 17.05.2011, b.13.07.2021), 60.4% abv
Caol Ila Single Malt Scotch, 13yo, Single Malts of Scotland, Jack Rose Single Barrel, sherry hogshead, 1 of 260 bottles, cask ref 313260, d.04.07.2008, b.14.07.2021), 59.4% abv
Elixir Distilling was created by Sukhinder Singh, who also built the legendary Whisky Exchange in London, widely recognized as one of the greatest whisky shops in the world. Alongside that, they created a series of sourced scotch brands: Elements of Islay, Port Askaig and (their top tier) Single Malts of Scotland. Their commitment to single malt scotch (and scotch made on Islay especially — where Port Askaig is located) is so great in fact that they recently sold The Whisky Exchange to raise money for a new distillery they’re building on Islay! We attended a dinner they held on Islay (in Scotland) in late May to celebrate, and followed that up with a major tasting in NYC with their team. These two bottlings that we’ll be tasting were favorites to emerge from that event, so we picked up a couple extra bottles to taste with you!
Next up we’ll be trying three bottlings from our friend Dave Schmier, the founder of Proof & Wood Ventures, who we will have the pleasure of welcoming as a guest speaker in London earlier in the week (we also recently welcomed him to our Washington DC chapter).
Vertigo - Light Whiskey. This is very unusual — a blend of 25 year old, 12 year old light whiskey, 8 year old rye and 5 year old bourbon! If you’re not familiar with light whiskey, it is a largely forgotten category of whiskey in the United States that was created to try to help whiskey companies compete with vodka in the dark days of the 1960s. In 1968 they created a new category - whiskey distilled to between 80% alcohol and 95% alcohol, thus filling the gap between bourbon and vodka (bourbon can be distilled no higher than 80% alcohol, vodka must be distilled to no less than 95% abv. Long story short, light whiskey as a category failed to make even a small dent in the exploding demand for vodka in the 70s and 80s, and most people forgot about light whiskey. But a very few enterprising producers have started to play around with it a little bit as a premium product, and this is definitely Exhibit A for the defense!
Tumblin’ Dice 6 year old bourbon. This is a great example of one of the (many!) excellent bourbons that Dave has sourced and released under his Proof & Wood label, and in recent years, it has been racking up a lot of major awards. Cask strength!
The Funk - Rum. We’ll end with a break from the whisky party, here we’ve got a heavy pot still Jamaica-style rum, unaged and bottled at 100 proof. Our rum-loving members have been giving this bottling a big thumbs up.
That’s our lineup! The price is 35 Euros/person which includes the whiskies and includes some light food we’ll have on hand (likely pizza) to make sure nobody is drinking on empty stomach.
We hope you can join us!
Cheers,
Charlie, Keenan and Drammers Club