Apr. 26: Drammers Denver!......

Fellow Drammers!

We’re excited to get things going again in Denver! Wow has it been a while, our last in person meeting was over a year ago! In any case, we’re hugely grateful to Zareen for organizing this for us. The fun will start at 7pm (message us for the address). We’ve got a great lineup:

• Balcones True Blue Corn Whiskey Finished in Tequila - We selected this barrel exclusively for our club a few days after our last Drammers Denver meeting, and the barrel is sadly nearly sold out, with 15ish bottles remaining. So we wanted to make sure our friends in Denver had a chance to try it before it was gone. Truly a game changer — in fact, at our recent online event with their head distiller, they revealed that after we selected this cask, and frankly after our club’s reaction to this cask, they decided to put things into motion to make this a regular offering. It’ll likely be a while before we see that come to fruition, but it gives you a sense of how significant this barrel was, we’ll be sad to see it go. Barreled at cask strength as always, 56.5% abv.

• Ancient Age Dusty (1980s?). We picked up this fun bottle at auction in Europe a while back — It certainly looks like it’s been through the ringer, beyond that though were not sure on the ABV. Today these bottles are made at Buffalo Trace, though this may predate that acquisition, it reads tha tit was distilled aged and bottled by Ancient Age Distilling Co. in Frankfurt KY. 45% abv., no age statement, but always fun to try these old gems from history.

• Bomberger’s Declaration 2020. While we’re focused on bourbon, let’s try this special release from the Michter’s company. We did an event with them last year where they indicated they have big plans for the limited Bomberger declaration series as a space for fun experimentation. 1 of 1780 bottles released in the 2020 series, batch number 20G1527. 54% abv.

• Highland Park 13yo - Ok, let’s switch to the malty side of things, and here we’re excited to give our Denver members a chance to try the barrel pick we did with our friends at Highland Park. We’re very proud of this one, an extraordinary single malt scotch from the Northernmost distillery in Scotland, using their distinctive peat from the island or Orkney (known for a heather taste), and aged all 13 years in a 1st fill sherry European oak cask. So there’s a lot going on here: Highland Park’s distinctive heather note, the dried fruits and spiciness from the European oak, and of course the huge bear hug coming from the sherry. Btw, this is the first time that Highland Park has ever agreed to sell a barrel to a whisky club in the Americas before, which we’re incredibly humbled by. Bottled at cask strength of 63.9% abv.

• Single Cask Nation - Stones of Stenness 19yo Single Malt Scotch: We love the gang over at Single Cask Nation, and we’re delighted to feature one of their exciting releases in the lineup. A single malt Scotch, aged 19 years and bottled at 56.7% abv. It sold out pretty much instantly on release. While they don’t disclose where it was made, it does say it was distilled on Orkney in a 2nd fill bourbon hogshead, 1 of 304 bottles. There aren’t a ton of distilleries on Orkney, and word on the street is that this is almost certainly a Highland Park barrel, so a fun opportunity to compare to our club Highland Park barrel pick in the lineup.

• Starward Australian Single Malt - Single Barrel. Another club barrel pick, and btw, we won’t normally have so many club barrel picks in our event lineups, we’re just doing this to try and give the members a chance to try our picks before they’re gone, so playing a little bit of catchup here with the pandemic. In any case, this is fun one - Starward prides itself on maturing their single malt whisky in big red Aussie wine barrels — often filling barrels that were dumped by the wineries only hours earlier, so to say these are wet is an understatement! Starward hasn’t done a lot of single barrels, but we had a great event with their founder David Vitale at last year’s World Whiskey Day, which ultimately led to this. Bottled at cask strength as usual, though this one might be ever better with a little water to be honest. 55.5% abv.

• Tobala Con Frutas. Distilled by Aureliano Hernandez and bottled by our friends at Rezpiral, this is another gem from a master mezcal producer. Those of you who attended our meeting in early 2020 will remember that we tasted a different batch from this producer, his capon espadin, which we liked so much we had to go back and secure another batch from him for our club. This time it’s the tobala agave, and its made in the pechuga style where they add fruit and nuts to the distillate, however they don’t add the ceremonial chicken or turkey breast to the mix. We’d never heard of a pechuga-style mezcal being made NOT with an espadin, so we jumped at the chance to try this and absolutely loved it. Distilled in 2018, both this bottle and the next one arrived a couple months after we were last in Denver, so once again we’re including them here mostly because we’re about to run out of them, and wanted the gang to have a chance to taste it first. 46% abv.

• Tobasiche Mezcal. Distilled by Simeon and Apolonio Ramirez and bottled again by our friends at Rezpiral. We had the chance to visit with Simeon and Apolonio at their palenque in Oaxaca 2 years ago — we always try to do that before working with someone since mezcal is so personal. This is made with the tobasiche agave, and emphasizes more vegetal notes in contrast to the sweeter notes of the tobala con frutas we tried before. We’ve been busy since selecting this mezcal, even starting a chapter of the club in Oaxaca (we were their last month with Douglas French, the Master Distiller at Sierra Norte) and we’ve since selected 6 more mezcal batches for our club after picking these two. Really an exciting spirit category to watch grow. 50.9% abv.

That’s our lineup, we hope you can join us! We’ll have some food on hand included with the price of admission (likely pizza), and again a huge thank you to Zareen for organizing!