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Fellow Drammers!
Want to help us pick a barrel? FEW Distillery in Chicago has long been heralded as one of the most exciting and innovative craft distilleries in the country, and on Saturday, August 1st, our club will proudly select one barrel of bourbon and barrel of rye, and everyone who signs up will help pick either one or the other. So the key question you’ll need to decide is, are you on team bourbon, or team rye? Everyone will get a whopping 12 pours, and 9 of them will be the same. But team Rye will have to choose between a malbec finish, a port barrel, and a pinot noir finish. Team bourbon on the other hand will have to choose between some seriously wacky stuff — bourbon with a vermouth barrel finish (their founder and distiller Paul Hletko has warned us he doesn’t think it’s great today, but he thinks it just might be great in the future), bourbon finished in an ex-peated scotch barrel, and bourbon finished in a non-peated scotch. At the end of the event, we’ll take a vote, majority wins and decides what barrels we’ll pick.
The event will also be a virtual distillery tour. In fact, Charlie, Summer and the head of our forthcoming Chicago chapter, Shekhar, will head to the distillery in Chicago to do the tour, which we’ll share over Zoom.
A little background on why we’ve got such exciting, unusual options to pick from: when we were discussing picks with Paul, he asked us "do you want to try something in the usual range, or do you want to go wild?". Haha, well, of course we said we want to go as wild as possible! After we got off the phone, we got this email from him: "I changed my mind on the single barrels, and two of the samples are going to be even weirder and wackier than I thought when we chatted. I think the members will LOVE it, but it won't strictly speaking be a single barrel. They will be a whiskey that is unlikely to ever see the light of day without Drammers Club though!". Music to our ears.
Of course, our Club never wants to show up empty handed -- we've secured some really special stuff. Check out the other 9 pours, which everyone on team bourbon and team rye will get to try:
Jack Rose Pick: An early 53 gallon barrel pick done by our friends Bill Thomas and the team at Jack Rose Saloon in DC. We understand this is the ONLY 53 gallon single barrel you have ever released, and one of the first ones you ever did. Very grateful to Bill to be pulling this out of the cellar to let us try.
Flaming Lips - the famous, hard to find collaboration with the band of the same name, it’s a rye, 40% abv. Excited to see what the fuss is about..
Immortal Rye - Not yet released, Paul is really treating us here with a pre-release chance to try this special new rye, which is brought from barrel strength to 46.5% abv by using not water by cold-extracted Eight Immortals Tea. Pretty incredible honestly.
Cold Cut - Similar concept to the Immortal, and wildly well-received. This time it’s a bourbon brought to proof using cold brew coffee, though reportedly the coffee flavor is fairly mild. Again 46.5% abv.
Rye Barrel Pick - by our fellow Drammers Andre and Mike. Back when they were working at Ambassador Wines, they picked this barrel, and of course we wanted to try it! Bottled at 50.5% abv, barrel no. 16-0938.
Espana - Available exclusively at Binny’s in Chicago, this sis a bourbon finished in Spanish wine barrels and bottled at 46.5%. We have Shekhar to thank for securing a couple of these for us to try.
Italia No. 3 - This one is also only available in Chicago, this time at the Eataly there, it’s a bourbon finished in Italian wine barrels and bottled at 46.5% abv (again, thanks to Shekhar for securing this for us).
Straight Bourbon and Straight Rye - Of course we need to try their core range that made them famous to begin with. The bourbon is made with northern rye and a touch of malt. Bottled at 46.5% each.
That’s our lineup, and an incredible lineup at that! We hope you can join us. Now for the hard part: are you on team bourbon or team rye?
Cheers!
Charlie