May 19: Online Tasting -w- Duncan Taylor - Independent Bottlers, with Peter Currie...
Fellow Drammers!
We have exciting news — our club has selected two Octaves (small sherry barrels) from the legendary independent bottlers at Duncan Taylor for our club, and they’ve just arrived. We’re hosting an online tasting to celebrate with none other than Peter Currie. Peter is a longtime friend of the club and has an incredible history. Today he is the National Sales Manager for Shand Imports, which imports Duncan Taylor into the United States along with a whole range of other fun expressions, some of which we’ll be trying at this event. Before that, he spent 7 years as the Global Sales Manager for Duncan Taylor, and before that he was Sales Manager at Springbank! For this event, we arranged for our retail partner DRINQY.com to bring in their entire line of products, and in that process we tasted all of the Octaves they had available, ultimately settling on these two that we snapped up for the club, securing a little over 70 bottles of each. Here’s the lineup for our tasting, 9 expressions total:
Duncan Taylor Octave - Highland Park 18yo. While not a Drammers pick, this one is delicious and we did bring a few bottles into our shop. Distillery in 2004 at the Highland Park distillery, which of course needs no introduction, but just in case: while technically it is a Highland Scotch, it is actually the Northern-most distillery in Scotland, famous for a heather note that they get from their peat bog. This was aged for 18 years, Sherry Cask #501710931 53.1% ABV
Duncan Taylor Octave - Aultmore 13yo (Drammers Pick). The first was distilled at the Aultmore Distillery in 2008 and aged for 13 years, including 9 months in an Octave cask, and bottled in 2022 (72 bottles, 52.1% abv).
Duncan Taylor Octave - Brackla 7yo (Drammers Pick). The other Octave we picked for the club was distilled at the Brackla Distillery in 2011, aged for 7 years, including 8 months in a sherry Octave, and bottled in 2018 (110 bottles, 52.4% abv).
Duncan Taylor - Hampden Rum. This is a crazy rare vintage. It was distilled in 2007 -- and how on earth is that possible given that the distillery didn't resume production until 2009? Apparently NRJ ran a couple of test distillations in 2007 before fully relaunching, which is what we'll be tasting. That means it is *likely* that this was distilled by an entirely different team of people than those who have been employed at Hampden in the past, or who run the distillery today. That's gonna make a difference -- after all, fermentations are especially tricky with Hampden. We can't wait to see to what extent the rums differ from the Hampdens we know. The only thing we know for sure is that they stuck to Hampden's marques (they have to, by Jamaican law), with this one being C<>H – a Continental Hampden with an ester range of 1300-1400 g/hlaa.3 Expressions from The Glasgow Distillery - 3 different single malt expressions from The Glasgow Distillery (Original, Peated and Triple Distilled). This distillery is located right in the city of Glasgow, and we have invited the team there to join us online for the tasting, we’ll let you know if they confirm).
Islay Boys Flatnose - blended malt, 46% abv.
Storywood Tequila Anejo. For a twist we’ll include a tequila that Peter imports — Storywood Tequila Anejo is aged for 14 months.
We hope you can join us!
WHEN: Sunday, May 19th, starting at Noon Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 8pm in Scotland)
Cheers,
Charlie and Drammers Club