Jan. 13: Drammers Washington DC!......
Fellow Drammers!
We’re excited to announce our next Drammers Washington DC event will take place on January 13th, starting at 7pm, and a big thank you to Friendship Lodge for hosting us! (They are located at 701 24th Street, NW).
We’ve put together a great lineup. Initially we had hoped to have bottles of our brand new Glen Scotia barrels in hand, but unfortunately the transportation company delayed that to Monday. So we replaced them with even bigger bottles. :) Check out this lineup:
Port Askaig Islay Single Malt Scotch, Aged 25 Years. Reportedly this is an independent bottling of Laphroaig distillate where they weren’t allowed to say it contractually on the bottle, but obviously 25yo Laphroaig is cause for celebration any day of the week.
GlenDronach Allardice - Single Malt Scotch, Aged 18 Years. This was an official bottling (meaning released by the distillery, as opposed to the bottle above which was independently bottled). It was matured for all 18 years in Oloroso Sherry Casks, which was more common in the Scotch industry a century ago, but is quite rare today when nearly all Scotch is at least initially aged in barrels that used to hold bourbon, and then sometimes “finished” in a barrel that used to hold sherry for a few months.
Teeling Irish Whiskey - Carcavelos Single Cask. We’re huge fans of this Irish distillery, built on the success of the Cooley Distillery that most credit with revitalizing the Irish whiskey industry generally. The Teeling family took the money from the sale of that distillery (now owned by Beam Suntory) to build the Teeling distillery in Dublin, the first distillery to operate in Dublin in many decades. They’ve got a lot of exciting core range expressions, but we also keep an eye out for their exciting experimental one-off single barrel releases, like this one. It was matured initially in ex-bourbon casks (see above) and then finished in an ex-White Port barrels from the Carcavelos region of Portugal. It was a single barrel and (to our knowledge) only released in California, where luckily our LA members tipped us off to its arrival and we snapped up a few bottles, though this is our last one.
Kilchoman - Drammers Private Barrel Pick. We’re very proud of this one — a single barrel that our club picked and which is available for sale exclusively to our members. It is a 9yo single malt scotch from the famous Islay region, which is known for particularly peaty/smoky whiskies. Kilchoman is one of the newest distilleries on the Island, unlike their more famous neighbors like Bowmore, Ardbeg, Laphroaig, etc.., but they peat their whisky to the same level (read: a lot!) as the peatiest of their neighbors. Our members picked this barrel during an online event, and it stood out in part because it was finished for 14 months in a rejuvenated (or STR) barrel. And as always, we bottled it at cask strength, so it packs plenty of punch!
Amrut Indian Single Malt - Rye Cask Matured, Drammers Private Barrel Pick. Next we turn to Indian single malt, and we’re huge fans — not only because we have a chapter of our club that meets regularly in Mumbai (and another soon to launch in Delhi!), but because we think India might just be the next world whisky to really “pop” like Japanese whisky has in recent years. They don’t release many single barrels, so we were very fortunate to be given this opportunity to pick a barrel last year with their master distiller Ashok Chokalingam, who we’ve had the pleasure of welcoming in person at our events in the US in past years. Bottled at cask strength.
Stellum Rye - Drammers Private Barrel Pick. We’ll likely have more than one American whisky in hand when we arrive at the event honestly, but we’ll at least include this one — a recent private barrel pick we did that has been a crowd favorite among our members. It’s created by the same team behind the Barrel Craft Spirits company, which specializes in especially unusual and experimental releases (think their Dovetail, Seagrass, Armada releases, etc.). So when they wanted to go the other way and create a whiskey that reflected more core bourbon and rye notes, they decided to create a new brand name for it (Stellum), and we were proud to be part of the launch, with this extraordinary barrel pick, which features a high-rye (95%) mashbill distilled at MGP in Indiana and bottled at cask strength.
That’s our lineup — or at least a lot of it, we have a bad habit of adding pours last minute. :) But we hope you can join us! We’ll order in food (likely pizza) which is included with your ticket. $40/person for Drammers Members and $50/person for Drammers Observers. Please feel free to contact us with any questions!
Cheers,
Charlie, Joe and Drammers Club