Mar. 5: Drammers Baltimore...
Baltimore Drammers!
We’ve finalized the bottle lineup for our upcoming Drammers Baltimore event, which will take place on Saturday, March 5th! As always, anyone who has been to one of our events is welcome to invite friends to join as well. We’ve got some exciting whisky and mezcal bottles that we’ve secured for this event, checkout our lineup for this event:
Glen Scotia 8yo Unpeated Campbeltown Single Malt Scotch, Single Barrel #740: (Drammers Exclusive). So excited about both of our single barrels, 2 of only 4 private barrels they've allowed out (in the US at least) in the last few years. And the timing is particularly good because Glen Scotia was just named a month ago as Distillery of the Year by the Scotch Whisky Association! We’ve got a fun event coming up with their master distiller Iain McAllister in February, but in the meantime we’ll get a sneak peak of these tonight! 56.1% abv (cask strength)
Glen Scotia 10yo Peated Campbeltown Single Malt Scotch, Drammers Exclusive Single Barrel. 55.6% abv. (see above)
Paul John – Drammers Exclusive Peated Single Cask #5882. Our 37th barrel pick was selected by our US members (our Mumbai members also picked a cask), and was unusual because it was one of the few barrels they’ve released from their famous underground warehouse (which is not surprisingly fairly small). We toured it as part of our online event last year when we selected the barrel. This cask of 100% peated single malt barley was also in a 2nd fill cask, whereas almost all of Paul John’s barrels are aged in first-fill casks. 56.5% abv.
Sazerac Rye - Warsaw Chapter Pick. Our first private barrel pick from the Sazerac company, this one made of course at the legendary Buffalo Trace distillery. It uses the base 6yo rye, same recipe as goes into their normal release, but this is a single barrel that our members in Warsaw, Poland selected. Bright confectionary sugar notes on the front end (much more pronounced than their usual release), and if you let it sit for awhile, it gives way to orange marmalade notes that we don’t usually associate with Sazerac Rye. Of course, we would have had it barreled at cask strength if we’d been given the chance, but Sazerac only allows people to bottle at 45% abv, which is what we’ve got here. This barrel sold out quickly, but we set aside a few bottles for tastings like this one.
Rezpiral Mezcal – 100% Tepextate from Berta Vasquez. We love mezcal here at Drammers Club, and organize an annual event down to Oaxaca for Day of the Dead each October (which everyone in the club is invited to). As part of that, we have visited with many of the most celebrated mezcal producers in Mexico, and we had the pleasure of visiting with Berta Vasquez a couple years ago. She blew us away – she is widely seen as one of the world’s greatest mezcal master distillers (and one of the few maestra mezcaleras !). The independent bottlers Rezpiral have released a bunch of her mezcal batches, and we love working with Rezpiral, they have incredible integrity in the way they operate, even giving back 20% of the profits to the producers, which is unheard of. But finding 100% tepextate is very rare these days (it takes 20+ years to just grow the plants!), and while Berta’s blends of Tepextate with other agave types have been released in the US, to our knowledge this is the first time a 100% tep batch has been released States-side. Special stuff, and we bought the entire batch just for our members.
Reina Sanchez Madrecuishe Mezcal from Rezpiral. We had the pleasure of visiting Reina, widely recognized as one of the greatest mezcal producers, and one of only a small handful of women recognized as such, during our recent group trip to Oaxaca this past October. We'll have some great photos and stories to share from her palenque. This is as good as it gets for mezcal, and one of our two newest Drammers exclusive batches. 46.6% abv
Tio Chico Sotol from Rezpiral. This is the other Drammers exclusive batch pick, this time a sotol instead of a mezcal -- typically more associated with the North of Mexico, though this was produced in Oaxaca, where it is known as cucharillo. Tio Chico was widely recognized as the best producer of sotol in the region, and since he sadly passed away this past Summer, his final batches have been heavily sought after, though as chance would have it, we had committed to one of his batches a couple months prior. 45.9% abv
Dakabend 4yo Oaxacan Rum. Produced by the makers of Mezcal Tosba, which is available in the US alongside an unaged Dakabend rum, made from pure cane sugar (as opposed to the more common molasses -- so this arguably more in the "rhum agricole" vein of rums, though the 4 years of barrel aging has rounded the palate our enormously. As an experiment they aged 3 barrels of it 4 years ago, which we stumbled upon when we visited their distillery in October of 2020, and they were kind enough to sell us one. These are the only bottles of this to ever leave their distillery in the Sierra Norte mountains, and even if they start making more now, their won't be any for at least 4 years. Hard to get much rarer than that. 49% abv.
That’s our lineup! We hope you can join us. We’ll have food on hand as usual (likely pizza).
Cheers,
Charlie, Katie and Drammers Club
WHEN: Saturday, March 5th
FORMAT: In person tasting
PRICE: $40/person for Drammers Members / $50/person for Drammers Observers