Nov. 12: Online Poitin Now Tasting -w- the Founder of Poitin Now, Francis Leavey

Fellow Drammers!

Last year we attended the first ever Poitin Now festival in Dublin, where we learned all about this incredible Irish pre-cursor to modern whiskey. Some call it Irish moonshine, but we quickly learned there’s a lot more to it than that. We’re going back this November for the 2nd annual Poitin Now festival, and since tickets just went on sale, we wanted to alert our members in case anyone wants to join. But if you’re not able to join in person, we wanted to bring you the next best thing — a virtual Poitin Now festival, featuring rare poitins that were released exclusively at last year’s festival (in tiny, tiny quantities), plus one made right here in the US. If you want to get a jump start on Poitin, we recorded most of the speeches/talks given at last year’s festival, which you can find on a dedicated Poitin Now page we created for the festival here.

On to our lineup. Now, keep in mind that some of these are 500ml bottles, so those pours will be correspondingly a little smaller (we’ve noted below which expressions came in a 700ml vs a 500ml bottle). Here’s our lineup:

• Tipperary Distiller's Select Poitin, using 50/50 malted and unmalted barley from The Big Field at Ballindoney Farm, 47% abv (700ml bottle)

• Mourne Dew Distillery - The Pooka Irish Poitin - Blend No. 1. “Held in Wood for 10 weeks”, 43% abv, (700ml bottle)

• Baoilleach Distillery: The Cratur Irish Poitin - Exploration Series MEVAGH, 60.4% abv (500ml bottle). Mash: Peated malt barley, double distilled, still strength, batch #1 in praise of the 130 poitin makers in the Mevagh Parish in 1819.

• A Do: Irish Poitin (the Killowen/Blackwater collab). 48% abv. A combination of Knockshee Oats and Waterford Heritage Barley, and fusing 2 different distilling characters (Killowen and Blackwater). 500ml bottle. 1 of only 66 500ml bottles released exclusively at the Poitin Now fest.

• Killowen: Faoi Dhraiocht Under a Spell Irish Oak cask (rested for 18 days). 55% abv. 500ml bottle.

• Kings County Distillery Poitin. Made right here in the USA, in Brooklyn. We’ll try to get some more details from co-founder Colin Spoelman and report back (2x 375ml bottles)

That’s our lineup, we hope you can join us!

Cheers,
Drammers Club