Oct. 4: Drammers Dallas! ......
Dallas Drammers!
We’re excited for ur next Drammers Dallas tasting, which will be Monday, October 4th at 7pm. We always pride ourselves on having rare bottles, but this time we've really outdone ourselves -- we're coming hot off visits to both our chapters in Europe and to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, so we've got a bunch of fun festival-only and distillery-only exclusives! We’ll also provide yummy pizza as usual. Ok, on to what we’ll be drinking, we’ve got 8 rare expressions…
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.
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.
2 Expressions of Buzzard's Roost Rye. Bourbon Bistro was arguably the first major whiskey bar in Louisville, a game changer that was way ahead of its time, and today it is rightly celebrated as one of the powerhouse drivers of bourbon culture in Kentucky. So it was particularly exciting to learn on our recent trip that they have launched their own line of of whiskies - Buzzard's Roost! We'll be trying two of them this evening -- a straight rye in a peated barrel (!), bottled at a delicious 52.5% abv (batch 1), and another straight rye in a toasted barrel, also bottled at 52.5% abv (batch 2). These releases were limited to 800 and 1100 bottles respectively, and our understanding is that they are really not available outside of Louisville or maybe one other nearby market. We've tasted them, and we're really excited about them.
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 (2020 Limited Ed.). 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. Of course, we're only getting started here in Dallas, and 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.
Cheers,
Charlie
FORMAT: In person tasting
WHEN: Monday, Oct. 4th, 7pm
WHERE: TBA
PRICE: $40/person for Drammers Members or $50/person for Drammers Observers