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Fellow Drammers,
Here are the details for the benefit event on Tuesday for Travel Bar, which starts at 7pm EST (Zoom login details below). This is the second event in our Save Our Whiskey Bars! series. Our friend and fellow Drammer Mike Vacheresse owns and runs Travel Bar over in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood in Brooklyn, and obviously I don't need to tell you how hard the COVID situation is on bars right now. So of course we wanted to try to do our part to help ensure that this amazing whiskey resource is still there for us when things go back to normal (hopefully we can join them in person for their 6th year anniversary this November!). Did you know that Travel Bar has over 450 whiskies? And great prices too, gotta love it. So, all the proceeds from this event will go to Travel Bar, we're essentially buying the whisky from him, and our friends at Cotswolds (which he carries at his bar!) generously donated 3 expressions to help the cause. We're also delighted to welcome the brand ambassadors for Canadian Club, Chita and Cotswolds, as well as Joshua Hatton from Single Cask Nation. Ok, on to the whiskies we'll be drinking in no particular order, drumroll please...
- Canadian Club Chronicles 42yo and 41yo -
Not every day that we get to drink 40+ year old whisky! Canadian Club launched the Chronicles series in 2018 with the 41yo, celebrating the Water of Windsor, and it was named by Jim Murray as the Canadian Whisky of the Year in his 2019 whisky bible. The 42yo was announced this past November, and labeled "Issue No. 2", this one named in honor of "the dock man". According to CC, it “celebrates the dock worker of years past who consistently delivered quality whisky to bar owners and drinkers when counterfeit whisky ran rampant during the Prohibition era”. And we'll have the Canadian Club brand ambassador joining us to tell us all about it! We've got one bottle of the 42yo and one of the 41yo, so the first 33 to sign up will get the 42yo, the next group will get the 41yo (we're at about 29 sold as of this email). 45% abv
- The Chita, Distiller's Reserve -
This is Suntory's grain distillery (they also own Yamazaki and Hakushu). Like a lot of grain distilleries, this one mostly stayed in the background, it was essential to Suntory's blended whiskies, but as far as I know prior to the release of this product in the Fall of 2015, the only branded release from the distillery was called Chita Grain and was thought to be about 12 years matured. Well you know what happened next -- Japanese whisky exploded in popularity, stocks of older Japnaese whiskies went down to near zero, and presumably that's why this was launched as a new product. No age statement, clearly a younger, lighter whisky, and quite tasty. Aged in a combination of ex-wine, sherry and bourbon casks, and like all grain whiskies it includes a variety of grains in addition to barley, likely a lot of corn. Apparently they are the rare distillery to produce this using a combination of two, three and four column stills. Luckily we'll have the Chita ambassador joining us to tell us all about it! 43% abv.
- Single Cask Nation: Clynelish 23yo -
Ah, we love Single Cask Nation, and obviously we've been talking about them a lot lately (they put out so much great stuff!). This one is a 23yo, aged in a 2nd fill oloroso sherry butt, cask #8660. Distilled in September 1995, bottled March 2019. Per Joshua and co., it shows us the heavier side of Clyenlish, with notes of warm figs, date bread, burnt chocolate nibs and sweet guava paste (how about that for a tasting note!?). Happily, Joshua will be joining us on Tuesday to tell us more. And btw, the podcast they recorded live at our Drammers Club event is up on our website and on theirs, check it out! 52.4% abv.
- Cotswolds English Single Malts -- both the 2014 Odyssey Barley and the Peated Cask releases (Plus the dry gin)! -
Cotswolds is an exciting new distillery from the UK, located about an hour outside London, and we'll be trying through 3 of their expressions generously donated by the brand to support Travel Bar (who also carries them) and their brand ambassador will be joining us! I first learned about this distillery in Paris actually, where we met their French brand ambassador Hugues Robert-Baby through our friends at La Maison du Whisky, and I was blown away! We followed that up with a tasting through their entire line at our Paris chapter back in February (seems like a million years ago now). Anyway, they have a range of hefty single malts, and we'll be trying two of them on Tuesday, both their more approachable 2014 Odyssey Barley (46% abv) and their more advanced Peated Cask (59.3%, yeehaw!). And here's something I don't say very often: I was also blown away by their gins (they have several), so we're including their dry gin in the mix on Tuesday as well, and their brand ambassador Brett will be joining us!
- Octomore 10.1 from Bruichladdich -
Our closer needs little introduction, and obviously no way we could taste anything on Tuesday after drinking this, so it was always going to be our closer! We love all things Bruichladdich here at Drammers Club, and not just because we love their team and had the privilege of hosting their master distiller Adam Hannett at our club a few years back. No, it's of course because the liquid tastes so damn good. Like all Octomores, this is as super heavily peated as it gets, with a peat parts-per-million score of 107. Aged for 5 years and released I believe towards the end of last year. Yummy. And keep an eye out for a separate Bruichladdich event soon, probably May. Note that we only have one bottle of this currently, so the first 33 folks to sign up will definitely get it, and I'm tracking down a separate bottle of Octomore for the next 30. And hey now, 59.8% abv...
That's our lineup! 7 pours in total, approximately 0.5 ounce to 0.75 ounce each. We hope you can join us!
Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87662709233?pwd=RmFIWVZZK3g0VXZiQW1NQ0lOVm9Pdz09
Meeting ID: 876-6270-9233
Password: 04282020
Please note that unlike our other meetings, we are opening up this benefit event to non-members to help raise more money for Travel Bar, so feel free to share this with your friends, and please explain to them we’ll drop samples off if it’s within reasonable citibiking distance of my apartment, otherwise they can pick up their samples at my apartment in the village or at Travel Bar.
Cheers!
Charlie Prince
President, Drammers Club
+1 (646) 245 8400