Jun. 26: Chopin Distillery - Premium Vodka Club Pick...

Fellow Drammers,

We’ve been talking about this for over a year and a half, and now its finally happening — we’re buying a batch of premium Polish vodka exclusively for our members from Chopin Distillery on Saturday July 26th (exact time to be confirmed, but approximately Noon Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 21:00 in Poland, possibly an hour earlier). Our fellow Drammer Tytus brought samples of 5 different batches that we’ll be choosing from, 750ml of each, and everyone who signs up for the event will get the chance to try them and vote on their favorite — we’ll select our batch by majority vote.

Now, I know what some of you may be thinking — a lot of whiskey drinkers don’t have a lot of respect for vodka. As I’ve heard said on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail tours many times, if its tasteless and odorless, what exactly are vodka producers proud of? I was under this mistaken impression myself for some time, but then our members in Warsaw set me straight. After one of our events there in 2019, we went to Fort Whisky, a new whisky bar at the time, and they started talking about a high end vodka on the shelf. I gently tried to convey that many whiskey drinkers that I knew at least seemed to have respect for every category of spirit EXCEPT vodka, and they just laughed and said “that’s because you don’t get the good stuff in America”. Intrigued, I ordered the vodka they were talking about, and I was completely shocked. I couldn’t believe how flavorful the vodka was, it was exceptional. It was a young potato vodka, 2017 Mlody Ziemniak bottling from Gorzelnia Chopin. I immediately told our Warsaw members, we need to get in touch with this distillery, our members in the rest of the world need to taste this, they have no idea vodka can be this good. A year and a half and a global pandemic later, and we’re finally ready to do it.

So, for everyone who signs up, you’ll get to taste the 5 vodka samples that we’re choosing from. You’ll also get to taste a pour of each of their potato, wheat and rye core range single grain vodkas that are available in the USA for reference. I’m going to try to pick up some of the older vintage distillations like the one I tried in Poland when I’m out there for our upcoming Warsaw chapter event (which will be the day after this online virtual tasting). We’ll be doing this vodka pick event live from the Distillery itself, 2 hours outside of Warsaw. I know some of you are skeptical, but I’m here to put my money where my mouth is — get ready to taste real vodka for the first time. We hope you can join us.

Cheers!
Charlie

• $20/person for Drammers Members

• $30/person for Drammers Observers