Jul. 12: Drammers Austin......
Hello Austin Drammers!
Our next in person Austin tasting will be on July 12th at 7pm (please note: we had initially announced doing it a few days earlier, but it turned out a lot of our members had conflicts for the original date, which is why we rescheduled — apologies for the change!). That said, we've assembled an exciting lineup of rare Scotch, Bourbon, Mezcal and other treats for the new date -- including a very rare old Balvenie dusty, more info on what we'll be drinking below. As usual, we'll order in light food (likely pizza), which is included. A big thank you again to Juan and Denise for hosting us (address: 3301 Thousand Oaks Cove). We hope you can join us!
Cheers,
Charlie, Dan and Drammers Club
Here are 6 of the expressions we'll be trying at the event, and we'll add a couple more between now and then...
Approx. 1983 Release - Balvenie Classic. This was our headliner from a recent event with the Balvenie's US National Brand Ambassador. We picked this bottle up at auction a while back and these days it sells for over $1k/bottle. As we understand it, this was first released in 1983, representing one of David Stewart's early steps in pioneering the art of "finishing" whiskies, and this product was later rebranded as the DoubleWood release in 1993. 43% abv.
Kaiyo Japanese Whisky, Mizunara Cask Matured (2 different Single Casks). If this was a Hollywood log line, you might call this Yamazaki meets Jefferson's Ocean, with a touch of juniper! These two single barrels could not be more different -- one tastes like sugar cookies, the other I would have guessed was an aged gin if I'd tasted it blind. They are really distilled in Japan btw -- they only don't say 'Japanese Whisky" on the label because they are partially aged at sea, Jefferson's style (so, if you take the Scottish approach that it has to be fully aged on land, then were Japan to have enforcable laws identical to the Scotch industry, you wouldn't be able to call it "Japanese Whisky". We'll get into all that at the tasting -- for now suffice it to say that they're damn tasty. They’re both unchillfiltered and bottled at cask strength of 56% abv.
Westland Mezcal Finish. We'll keep the agave party going with this fun new single barrel from our friends at Westland in Seattle. It's their trademark single malt finished in a mezcal cask, selected by our friends at Jack Rose Saloon, and which they've named "Fruit of the Earth", cask #2543. Aged for 7 years. 58.1% abv.
Barleycorn Magic from Atelier Vie. Last weekend we also picked up this gem, the newest release from our friend Jedd at Atelier Vie, a craft distillery located right in New Orleans. This one is fascinating -- he started with beer from a nearby brewery (Zony Mash), and here we're talking about hopped beer -- very hard to make a balanced whiskey that is hopped, but Jedd has pulled it off. Needs to be tasted to be believed. 42% abv.
Barrell Whiskey Private Release - Amaro Cask Finish. You haven't had anything like this before! Our friends at Barrell Craft Spirits had an opportunity to buy a tanker of American whiskey -- some company had intended to make a flavored whiskey out of it, but ran out of money. They knew it was probably bourbon, and it certainly tasted good, but they couldn't prove it met all the technical specs to call it bourbon, so they called "Kentucky Whiskey", and then set about filling it into a wide array of fun finishing casks, including this one in a St. Agrestis Amaro cask, bottled at 56.9% abv. It's wildly original, and our members picked this out of 7 different samples for our barrel pick event, so this is exclusive to Drammers.