Sep. 23: Drammers Los Angeles!......
LA Drammers!
We wanted to make sure everyone had seen that our next Drammers Los Angeles meeting will be Thursday, September 23rd at 7pm. Initially Kat had generously offered to host, but something came up last minute, so an extra special thanks to Bino for stepping in to host. He is located at 4501 Don Arturo Place, LA 90008)! 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 tow that you're unlikely to get another chance to try! Drumroll please...
Glenkinchie Distillery-Only Cask Strength Handfill. Diageo put a lot of money into revamping the visitor center at this Lowlands distillery just outside Edinburgh, and it opened in the middle of covid, so that so far, they haven't been able to welcome many visitors. If you haven't heard of this distillery, it's no surprise -- over 90% of what they distill goes into the Johnny Walker blends, so very little has been released under the "Glenkinchie" brand in the US, and of that virtually none of it is at cask strength, making this distillery only handfill bottle a particularly rare treat. Distilled in 2009, bottled in 2021, so approximately 11 years matured. I tried a small sip at the distillery, which was amazing, but otherwise haven't really had a chance to try this yet. 55.2%
Lagavulin Feis Ile Bottling 2020. About 10 of us had made plans to attend Feis Ile in 2020, and but for covid, we just might have done it. If we had, the only way we would have had a shot at getting this bottle would have been if we'd camped out overnight at the distillery for Lagavulin's big day. Instead, with the fest taking place virtually, we were able to pick up a bottle in their gift shop a couple weeks ago for us to taste! Bottle 1,924 of 6,000 bottles, its a vatting of 20yo refill and PX/Oloroso seasoned hogsheads personally selected by (then) distillery manager Colin Gordon and bottled at cask strength.
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.
3 Expressions of Peerless Rye. Next up we'll try a few Drammers barrel picks from our friends at Peerless. They're based in downtown Louisville, and are making some of the most exciting new expressions of rye anywhere. We were very proud to select single barrels of their rye, double-oaked rye, and especially their rye finished in an absinthe cask! There's a long, hilarious story to how we got that last one which I'll explain at the event. Btw, the Double Oaked was a one-off-fluke at the time. They hadn't intentionally double-barreled it, it was simply that the first cask had leaked and they had no choice but to fill it in a 2nd cask to save it. The distillery released a special distillery only double oaked expression last week to coincide with the Kentucky Bourbon Fest which was a hot commodity, not to mention a humbling reminder of how fortunate we were to have been entrusted with their first single barrel double oaked.
Mlody Ziemniak - 2 Versions (2019 and 2020). Whisky enthusiasts tend to be respectful of all other spirits categories except one -- vodka. But these bottles might change your mind. The logic goes that by definition, the spirit needs to be tasteless and odorless, so what's there to be proud of? The culprit here is that vodka is by definition distilled up to at least 96% alcohol, thereby eliminating a lot of the potential flavors. But what if you took the same distillate, and only distilled it once, stopping at 60% abv? And what if Poland's most prestigious craft vodka distillery made a point to do it in a special limited edition series to highlight flavor differences among potato varietals? That's exactly what Chopin did, and we were so blown away by the results, we flew to the distillery in Poland to do an event live with the founder, where our US members tried samples and voted to pick an exclusive batch for our club. That batch hasn't arrived yet, but in the meantime we've secured the very limited 2019 and 2020 special editions, released under their "Mlody Ziemniak" (or "young potato") line. These bottles can only be found in Poland currently, and in our opinion, they're a game changer.
That’s our lineup, we hope you can join us! We’ll also provide yummy pizza as usual. A huge thank you again to Bino for hosting us. Since we will be meeting inside his home, he has kindly requested that everyone be either vaccinated or have a negative PCR test within 72 hours to attend.
And as we get our in person LA events going again, we're looking to continue to grow our chapter, so if you know anyone you think might be a good fit for the club, please feel free to invite them to join us on Thursday.
Cheers,
Charlie
FORMAT: In person tasting
WHEN: Thursday, September 23rd, 7pm
WHERE: 4501 Don Arturo Place, LA 90008 (the space is indoors)
COVID PROTOCOL: It is kindly requested that everyone be either vaccinated or have a negative test within 72 hours
PRICE: $40/person for Drammers Members or $50/person for Drammers Observers