May 3: Drammers Springfield / Western Mass......
Hello Western Massachusetts Drammers!
We’re excited to announce the launch of our newest chapter on May 3rd, starting at 7pm. Our “Drammers Club” meets regularly in 45 cities around the world across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and recently we launched a Singapore chapter with hopes to do more in that region. We’re calling this new chapter of the club our Springfield & Western Massachusetts chapter, with the idea that we can bounce around a bit between Springfield, Amherst and the general area (our first event is being hosted by Brooke Donatone). If all goes well, the plan is to meet regularly in person (approximately every two months or so) to taste rare whiskies and other spirits, and members will be welcome to join the club’s monthly online events, club-exclusive barrel picks, group trips and more. If you’d like information on those things, feel free to sign up for our General Newsletter through the “Join Mailing List” tab on this site. As for our kickoff, we’ve assembled a fun lineup of whiskies, mezcals and even a brandy to taste through and we’ll talk a little about each as we go. We’re announcing 7 of the bottles now, and saving one surprise bonus pour in case we find anything we can’t resist between now and then. Here’s the lineup as of now:
Loch Lomond's Glengarry 12yo. Our newest Drammers pick single barrel just arrived, a 12yo single malt Scotch from the Highlands distillery Loch Lomond. Distilled in 2010, bottled in 2023, unpeated, matured in a 1st fill Bordeaux red wine barrel -- the barrel yielded 281 bottles. This was a big hit last week at our tastings in Kansas City and St. Louis. 55.0% abv. Of course non-chill filtered and no color added. Cask #21/546-6. Exclusively available to Drammers members.
New Riff - Single Barrel Cask Strength Rye. The story of how New Riff distillery grew out of the success of the Party Source liquor shop is extraordinary, and we'll get into that at the tasting, where we'll try a single barrel expression of their rye, released exclusively at the Premier Drams whiskey festival in Washington DC last year at Jack Rose Saloon, which we were proud to attend. 53.05% abv.
2 Different Stauning Danish Whiskies - a Double-Oaked Malted Rye, and a Peated Single Malt. Our club recently selected these two special single barrels from Stauning Danish Whisky -- a double oaked floor malted rye, and a peated single malt whisky, both selected by a majority vote of our members during a special online tasting event and distillery tour of Stauning. We're extremely proud to say that our barrels are the very first single barrels Stauning released in the United States. If you haven’t tasted a malted rye before (most rye whiskies in the US are not malted), it is a very different flavor. This one has notes reminiscent of English breakfast tea, bordering on clove! 57% abv.
Copper & Kings Brandy - Finished in a Tequila Cask. This barrel pick recently arrived from the Copper & Kings distillery in Louisville, Kentucky. They specialize in American brandy and here we've got a single barrel of their grape brandy aged in a tequila cask, bottled at cask strength of 62.5% abv. It’ll be fun to compare this to the grape brandy finished bourbon from Starlight! It is available exclusively to members of our club.
Rezpiral - Simeon Ramirez Mezcal Ensamble of Mexicano Agaves. We had the pleasure of selecting a batch a few years ago that Simeon did with his father Apolonio, that time from a tobasiche agave, which was dominated by vegetal and mineral notes. That pick was a big hit, so we selected a new batch that just arrived -- a mix of 4 varietals of the Mexicano agave, it has a dominant lemon-lime custardy-sorbet flavor, backfilled with vanilla. Yum. Details here, and available exclusively to members of Drammers for $120/bottle, 50.8% abv.
Rezpiral - Tobasiche Mezcal by Simeon and Apolonio Ramirez. We picked this batch of mezcal from Simeon three years ago, a batch of the tobasiche agave that Simeon made with his father Apolonio (our newest batch is made by Simeon by himeself). This earlier batch is very nearly sold out, which is both why we selected a new batch from him, and we our bringing out some of our last bottles of our earlier batch for one last hurrah. 50.9% abv, yummy stuff. Exclusively available to Drammers Members.
That’s our lineup so far, and like we said, we’ll add one more bonus pour to the mix. We hope you can join us! As always we’ll order in some light food to try to make sure that nobody’s drinking on an empty stomach (likely pizza), and especially since this will be our first event in the area, anyone who has been to one of our events is welcome to invite friends to join. Keep in mind that a lot of what we’ll be drinking will be at cask strength, so of course it is strongly encouraged that everyone arrange a ride home from the event.
Cheers!
Charlie, Brooke and Drammers Club