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Fellow Drammers!
We're thrilled to welcome back our friends at the always-awesome Bruichladdich Distillery! As many of you who have been members for a while now, you'll recall that several years ago we had the honor of hosting their master distiller Adam Hannett, shortly after he took on that role, along with many other wonderful nights celebrating this awesome scotch, including with our longtime friend and fellow Drammer Jason Cousins! This time, we'll have the pleasure of welcoming to Drammers Club for the first time Lynne McEwan, the Global Senior Brand Manager for the distillery, as well as Joshua Strainic and Jefrey Greenstein from the Bruichladdich team!
Well, you know what I'm going to say next, we aren't about to introduce our club to Lynne without first securing a murderer's row of awesome Bruichladdich bottles. Well, it was a team effort, and we've been securing these bottles for over 6 months in anticipation of our next celebration with Bruichladdich, and this is truly a jaw dropper. Again, you'll have to choose SET A or SET B -- choose wisely. So here's the bottle lineup, and I'll follow up with a more detailed description soon -- I honestly don't even know where to start, let's see, how about...
Cask Strength 1965 Bruichladdich from Gordon & Macphail (SET A ONLY). Definitely a contender for our headliner -- 54.2% abv, distilled in '65. What more do you need to know? Hopefully not much, because at the moment that's all we know, ha. No age statement, looks pretty dark. We'll research more...
WMD III: Yellow Submarine 25yo (SET B ONLY). Is this the best Bruichladdich bottling ever released? Many die-hard Bruichladdich fans think so. Released in 1991, and so working backwards from the age statement, I'm guessing this was distilled in 1966, so similar to the bottle above, but bottled at 46% abv.
The Stillman's Dram Ltd. Ed. (SET A will get the 27yo, SET B will get the 26yo). We've got the 27yo in hand, should have the sister 26yo bottle in hand in about 10 days. Both bottled at 45% abv. Released mid-1990s as far as I can tell, but will research further.
Octomore (either the X4+10 or the Elements of Islay Oc6) (PLEASE NOTE BELOW RE SET A vs SET B). These are both very highly regarded and sought after. The X4+10 is brand new, is definitely the hottest new Octomore around -- quadruple distilled, 70% abv (the highest abv they've ever released), aged 10+ years in a combo of ex-bourbon, ex-sweet wine and ex-sherry casks, and of course like all Octomores, it is pushing the boundaries of what is possible in terms of the maximum amount of peat influence, here logging in at 162 ppm. Only 3000 500ml bottles were produced, we secured 2 of them, which means we're 500ml short of what we need. We were able to secure 2 of them, so to fill in the gap on the missing 500ml, we sourced an unusual bottle of young Octomore distilled in 2011, aged in ex-bourbon barrels for more than 8 years, bottled at 58.1% abv, and only 870 of these 500ml bottles were produced. This was selected/released by Speciality Drinks by their maestro Ollie Chilton, who we had been set to welcome in person last month before the whole shutdown, now delayed. SO, SET A will get the X4+10, SET B will get either the X4+10 or the Elements of Islay, completely at random, I won't even know which is in which box.
Bruichladdich 15yo Brown Ceramic Bottle (SET A ONLY). This looks like another gem from the 70s or 80s, but right now we don't know a lot about it. Details to come as we learn, 43% abv.
ELD VATTED, Distilled at Bruichladdich (SET B ONLY). This appears to have been a single barrel pick perhaps, one of 282 bottles, distilled July 2006, bottled January 2016, so a 9yo. It's not entirely clear, but appears to have been matured entirely in a "fresh" ex-Oloroso sherry hogshead and bottled at 59.5% abv.
Plus what the distillery is contributing! Details on that to come, I'm guessing that both SET A and SET B will get an additional 3 pours on top of the 4 above that our club secured, so this is a lineup in progress, but wanted to let you know the good news right away so you could save the date and sign up!
Cheers!
Charlie