Sep. 24: Drammers Denver!......
Fellow Drammers!
We’re very excited to be having our next Drammers Denver meeting on Friday, September 24th at 7:30pm. It is certainly not a coincidence that the tasting is the day before the Cask Thief Festival at Stranahan’s - we attended last year and we were determined to come back! In fact, we' even hosted their national brand ambassador, Rick Edwards, at our Los Angeles meeting the night before. In any case, we’re coming hot off our visit to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival from last weekend, so we’ve brought along a special release that was only available at the festival for you to try, and plenty of other fun treats for us to try this Friday. Check out our lineup…
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.
Compass Box - Myths and Legends II (Single Malt Scotch). A blend of malt whiskies of different ages from the same Speyside distillery (they don’t say which, but reportedly Glen Elgin). 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 Single Malt Scotch. 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.
Mlody Ziemniak - 2020 Limited Edition (Poland only). 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 2020 special edition, 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 Zareen for organizing. And as we get our in person Denver 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 Friday.
Cheers,
Charlie
FORMAT: In person tasting
WHEN: Friday, September 24th, 7:30pm
WHERE: 1029 East 8th Avenue, Apt 1104 (80218)
PRICE: $40/person for Drammers Members or $50/person for Drammers Observers