Sep. 22: Drammers San Francisco!...

San Fran Drammers!

We wanted to make sure everyone had seen that our next Drammers San Francisco meeting will be Wednesday, September 22nd at 7pm. A big thank you to Fatema, Mayur and Johnny for organizing! We're coming hot off visits to both Scotland/Europe and to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, so we've got a bunch of fun bottles in town that you're unlikely to get another chance to try! Drumroll please...

• Very Old St Nick - Curia - Kentucky Bourbon Fest Exclusive. We'll be coming to Seattle straight from the Kentucky Bourbon Fest, and we've got some fun bottles in tow to share. The team at Preservation (behind Very Old St Nick and Rare Perfection) released this bottle exclusively at the fest. It's a bourbon bottled at 47.6% abv, and since it was released under the Very Olde St. Nick line, you know it's not a young whiskey. I'll try to find out more before we get there, but this is definitely a one-off-shot to pick this up.

• Maker's Mark 2021 - KY Bourbon Fest Release. Another exclusive bottling to the festival, this time a cask strength Maker's Mark released in conjunction with retail legend Justin's House of Bourbon. They list the stave types included in the custom release, which include 4 seared French cuvee staves, and 3 roasted French Mendiant staves, 54.45% abv.

• Lagavulin 2020 Feis Ile Bottling. In a normal year, people can only get this bottle if they travel to Islay in May for the big annual Feis Ile, and camp out overnight for one of the mere 6,000 bottles that are released (keep in mind that over 10,000 people come to Islay for the fest). But with covid making the fest virtual in 2020 and 2021, we were able to scoop up a bottle just a few weeks ago by being among the first tourists to come to the Island after they reopened! This is bottle 1,924, aged 20 years., a blend of refill and PX hogheads (Colin Gordon selected them when he was the Distillery Manager there before changing jobs to be the distillery manager at Ardbeg a few months ago, and we had the pleasure of visiting with him for 30 minutes while we were out there (there's a video of it up on our website).

• Bimber Distillery only bottling. We love this distillery in West London, and when we were in town a couple weeks ago for our London chapter event, we stopped by to say hello. Founder Dariusz climbed up on a ladder and pulled out this special distillery-only bottling just for us, one of something like only 71 bottles! Crazy stuff.

• Paul John 2019 Christmas Limited Edition. Each year this distillery, which is located in Goa, India, releases a special "Christmas" edition, which (as you would expect) tends to lean heavily into their trademark Christmas cake style, with lots of tropical fruits. Each edition (which started in 2018) featured a slightly different finish, this time in a PX sherry cask. It's been a while since we've opened one of these up, very much looking forward to revisiting it. 46% abv.

• Smooth Ambler Old Scout 5yo. We picked this barrel for our club live at their distillery last Summer. We've long been big fans -- we had the honor of welcoming John Little and the team in person at a meeting in Brooklyn back in 2016. They’ve always been up front that their Old Scout line is sourced at MGP, which is great because we love MGP, and John has one of the best talents in the business for sniffing out the best barrels. Anyway, we mourned when they had to shut down their Old Scout line temporarily while they searched for more barrels that met their high standards, and so of course when they announced it was coming back in Spring 2020, we were in the front of the line waiting to throw a party for the first barrels to arrive — and they did not disappoint.

• Chuparrosa Mezcal. If you haven’t heard of Churparrosa mezcal before, there’s a good reason — it’s extremely rare. As far as we can tell, none has ever been released outside of Mexico before, with only two mezcaleros total producing this, only making 100 or so liters of it every few years! Our friends at Maguey Melate discovered this tiny batch by maestro mezcalero Isaac Alvarez Rodriguez — only 30 liters initially, and then they distilled another 65 liters, and that’s likely all that will be produced of this type of mezcal in that city (San Lorenzo Jilotepequillo) for the next couple years (they have now planted a new batch of Chuparrosa agaves, but it will take 5 to 7 years for them to grow, and there are very few plants that are near maturity currently, so it will likely be another 2 years or more before even this producer can make another batch.

That's not all of our lineup, but that's enough to get us started. We've also got some bottles left over from our events last week in Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Kansas City, which we'll open up for those who arrive early on a first come, first served basis. We hope you can join us!
Btw, there's a small chance our lineup may change slightly -- the limited edition Scotland bottles in particular were due to be delivered yesterday, but we still have two days, so we think we'll be fine. On the off chance they don't arrive in time, here are the likely backup bottles:

• Compass Box - Myths and Legends II. A blend of malt whiskies of different ages from the same Speyside distillery. It was released as part of a trilogy of limited releases designed to show that process matters more than provenance. Reportedly has aromas of tropical fruits and butterscotch and a spicy palate. 46% abv.

• The Lost Distillery Co - Loch Lossit. This is a fun project -- they track down recipes, distillery plans, old tasting notes, bottles when available, etc., and try to recreate flavors of long long distilleries -- in this case the Lossit Distillery, which was founded in 1817 and was the biggest producer of whisky on Islay in the industry's formative years (it closed in 1867). There's no way of knowing for sure if they've recaptured what the distillery tasted like, but what they ended up with was this: a nose of peat, pear and almond milk, a palate of elegant peat and pepper notes, and a long and smoky finish.

Cheers,
Drammers Club