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Fellow Drammers,
We are very excited to announce a very special event with Ashok Chokalingam, the master distiller of Amrut distillery. We have been fortunate to have had a long relationship with this great distillery and Mr. Chokalingam in particular. We had the pleasure of welcoming him in person to our chapter in NYC in October of 2018. A couple months later, when we decided to start our Mumbai chapter, we made a point to travel to visit him at the distillery in Bengaluru, where we told him about our plans and he was nice enough to give us a personal tour of both the old distillery and their brand new distillery which had just been completed (as chance would have it, we ended up being the first Westerners to tour it!).
Please note that due to the significant time difference (9.5 hours!), we will be starting earlier than normal, at 11:30am Eastern (which unfortunately is 8:30am Pacific, but it can’t be helped). As it is, Ashok will have to sign off an hour in, which will be 10pm his time, but happily we will also be joined by our longtime friend and fellow Drammer Raj Sabharwal, who will be able to continue with us after Ashok signs off. Raj of course is a founding partner of Glass Revolution Imports, which famously imports and really launched Amrut in the United States, arguably paving the way for a new era of world whisky. We’re enormously grateful to Raj for making this wonderful event possible!
Needless to say, we wanted an extraordinary lineup to go with an event this important, and we have been seeking out some of the rarest Amrut bottles at auction for years now for just such an occasion. Here’s what our club has secured as our contribution to the event, and it will likely be supplemented, but these bottles alone make this event a steal already. Drumroll please….
Greedy Angels 10yo Chairman’s Reserve - Peated Sherry Finish. Now THAT is a proper headliner. Given the intense, fast-maturation climate in India (angels share of 12%+/year), it’s remarkable there was any whisky left in this barrel, and needless to say, this is about as old as Indian whisky gets. As we understand it, the first Greedy Angels release was in 2013 in honor of the 60th birthday of the chairman of Amrut, and that was an 8yo bottling, which we had the pleasure of trying with Ashok when he was with us in person in 2018. But now we’ll be trying arguably their biggest release to date — the 10yo Peated Sherry Finish Chairman’s reserve. Only 324 bottles were released, and we’re going to be drinking one of them. 60% abv.
Greedy Angels 10yo Chairman’s Reserve - Ex-Bourbon Cask. And another one! A huge thank you to Raj and the team at Glass Rev imports for contributing this very precious bottle. Bottled June 2019, batch no. 1, Bottle #816 of 900 bottles. 55% abv.
Two Continents (2nd Edition). Next up we have another rare gem that was bottled back in July 2011, featuring an experiment what we wish more distilleries would try. Given the high rate of maturation in India as noted above, the innovation here was to first age it in India normally, but then have it age several years further “in Scotland or another undisclosed region in Europe” to finish. Essentially giving us a sneak peek into what Amrut might taste like if aged at a slower rate. Only 1252 bottles were released as we understand it, 360 in the US and 892 in Europe (we have bottle #870). This distillate is of a limited release with all bottles numbered. Only 360 bottles (mine is numbered 321) were sent to the USA with 900 going to Europe.
Ex-Rye - La Maison du Whisky Exclusive. Our friends at the great whisky shop La Maison du Whisky in Paris tipped us off to this bottling when we were there in the Summer of 2019, and we raced over and picked up 3 of them (only 132 bottles total). This is unpeated single malt Amrut aged in an ex-Rye cask (cask #484), and was exclusively available through LMDW’s Paris shop. Distilled in November of 2011 and bottled in August of 2019, so note that makes it nearly 8 years old! And the best part? Bottled at 60% abv. Oh yeah.
Ex-Caroni - La Maison du Whisky Exclusive. This is a more recent release in that same line, this time aged in an ex-Caroni cask, distilled in August of 2014 and bottled in August of 2020, making it a little younger than the ex-rye cask (though it’s still at that delightful 60% abv!). 1 of 156 bottles, cask #5143.
Bagheera. Batch number one! An exciting new single malt release that is hot off the presses, brand new, and we’re among the first to try it. It’ll be released as part of a gift set with 2 Amrut glasses. Similar to Amrut single malt, with a bit of peated malt and finished in a sherry cask. 46% abv.
Raj Igala Batch #9. This is another fun one we picked up at auction a while back. It is apparently made with Punjabi malted barley and aged in casks which previously matured bourbon, and was bottled back in September of 2016, making it a relatively early bottling. Although the distillery has been around since the late 1940s, the “Amrut” brand didn’t debut until 2004 in England. Obviously a bottling from 2016 has long since been unavailable in the US, and don’t hold us to it, but it’s not clear that it was ever released in the US. 40% abv, but still, pretty darn rare.
In any case, that’s our lineup so far, and we’re expecting to expand it, but wanted to share the big news right away so that folks can save the date and sign up if they like. We hope you can join us!
Cheers,
Drammers Club