Jul. 8, 2022: Drammers Warsaw......

Hello Warsaw Drammers!

We’re excited for our next whiskey tasting in Warsaw, starting at 19:00 on Friday, the 8th of July, and thank you again to Maks and Tytus Stempniewicz for 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 try the first-ever release of a new whisky entirely-produced in Spain, followed by a couple of American whiskies, a bourbon and a rye.

• Hidalgo 12yo Spanish Single Malt, Double Sherry Cask Finish. We stumbled across this bottle at a famous liquor shop in Los Angeles (K&L), which had no less than 3 Spanish whiskies on the shelf we’d never heard of! Here’s what we learned about it from their website: “family owned Bodegas Hidalgo la Gitana was founded in 1792 and has been passed down through 8 generations. This is their first ever release of Single Malt produced entirely in Spain. The malt comes from the hills of Sierra Nevada in Granada, Spain. Fermented for 72 hours before being double distilled on specially hand crafted copper stills. The spirit was filled into two American Oak Butts that had previously spent over 200 years in the famous Napoleon Amontillado VORS solera system and aged for 12 long years in the Hidalgo's historic cellars. The two barrels were married and proofed to 45% before bottling, so while the label states this is a "double sherry cask finish" it is neither a finished nor in multiple types of sherry. It is simply two barrels aged full term in some of the best old sherry butts anywhere in Spain. The resulting spirit can only be described as overwhelmingly decedent. Deeply imbued with the complexity of the old wood and that special wine. A truly unique expression and an exciting and unusual addition to any malt lovers repertoire.”

• The Senator, 6yo Barrel Strength Bourbon. The newest release from our friend Dave Schmier, founder of this brand and other Proof & Wood products is getting reviews as stellar as…. well… the last time he released the Senator, ha (last year). Sourced from MGP, Dave has long been ahead of the game when it comes to finding special barrels of sourced whiskey, starting with the Redemption Rye brand that he created, built and ultimately sold many years ago. We welcomed his as a guest speaker at our Washington DC chapter a week ago and will do so again in London this coming Wednesday, so we may have more info on this bottling, which is becoming increasingly hard to find in the US. 58% abv.

• Hughes Belle of Bedford Straight Rye Whiskey. Another whiskey sourced at MGP, this time a rye, bottled by our friends at Hughes Bros. in Philadelphia. Distilled March 2012, bottled October 2021, so for those doing the math, that’s a 9.5yo — an increasing rarity from MGP these days. Barrel #3748, bottle #165/198, 55.44% abv. Big dill pickle notes on this, which prompted Jack Rose to name this bottle “Kind of a Big Dill”.

That’s our lineup! 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. A huge thank you to Maks and Tytus Stempniewicz for organizing!

Cheers,
Drammers Club