D&M's American Whiskey Club

We are in the midst of a Whisk(e)y revival. While this seems to be a worldwide phenomenon, American Whiskey distillers seem to be embracing it with extra zeal. New craft distilleries are opening, established distilleries are expanding, and everyone is experimenting – whether it be with mash bill, age, blending (marriage-ing) or additional cask finishing or enhancing. It would be foolish of us not to take advantage of the opportunities that American Whiskey distillers are presenting. With the aim of exploring a wide scope and searching out some of the best and the most interesting American Whiskey, the idea of D&M’s American Whiskey Club was born. We’re still working out the details, but here are the basics:

*The American Whiskey Club will go out quarterly. So we’ll have a new selection for you every three months.

*The price will top out at $100. Five times out of six, the price will be well below this mark, but we’d like to not catch you off guard when we find a particularly special bottle that costs a little more.

*Like our other clubs, we request a year commitment. This is so we can source an accurate amount of Whiskey for our club members, as we will be procuring spirit well in advance.

We hope that you’re as excited about our new project as we are! Give us a call, send us an email, or drop in the store to ask us any questions or let us know that you’re interested. And remember, we’re still working out the details, so if you have any input or suggestions, feel free to mention them.

.jake/oboe.

The Black Bowmore

The third and last release. Only 827 Bottles, from this Olorosso Sherry Cask. Dark mahogany color with slow, thick legs. The nose offers classic Bowmore ozone and peat smoke with sherried sweetness behind it, quite complex. Thick, almost viscuous on the tongue, with carmamelized custard, peat smoke and a splash of sea salt to the flavors. It just slides down your throat, coating it with malt and sherry flavors.

John Hansell from Malt Advocate says...

In short, this is one of the most fascinating whiskies I have ever tasted! It’s better than the original Black Bowmore trio. ...What I think impresses me most is how the whisky evolves. On the nose and palate, this is a thick, viscous, whisky, with notes of sticky toffee, earthy oak, fig cake, roasted nuts, fallen fruit, pancake batter, black cherry, ripe peach, dark chocolate covered espresso bean, polished leather, tobacco, a hint of wild game and lingering, leafy damp kiln smoke. Flavors continue on the palate long after swallowing. This is what we all hope for (and dream of) in an older whisky! I have now tasted this whisky twice: last night before dinner with Iain McCallum, Bowmore’s whisky “nose”, and this morning, in my hotel room before posting this. My opinion is the same. My rating for this whisky, which will be published in the next issue of Malt Advocate magazine, is: 97. (That’s the highest rating I have ever given a whisky.)

Our Night at WhiskeyFest

We had an amazing time at the WhiskyFest event! Our table was very popular and we got to meet so many interesting people, and saw some familiar faces as well. The whiskeys that we had the honor of sampling were out of this world and unforgettable. So many stellar whiskeys with so little time, how can one choose a favorite it just would not be fair. Glenlivet's table poured several different vintages all fantastic and one super special 1959 Vintage bottling, the cost $4,000 a bottle and is not available for sale. Springbank's table was one I frequented because I'm such a big fan of the Longrow 14 and the Hazelburn. The guys from Pappy Van Winkle poured their whole line including the 23 Year Old Bourbon, what an outstanding whiskey! We're already looking forward to next year's event!

BUILDING A COGNAC

So there we are, most of the D&M staff, sitting around Mike and Karen’s dining room table with the semi-legendary Alain Royer. He’s the man who saved Fussigny Cognac for a while, at least, among many other things. We’re going to blend a Cognac for an upcoming club under his tutelage.

He has a kit, with a graduated cylinder just like you used in high school chemistry, and a bunch of miniature bottles of cognacs of various ages and provenance. First we pour each into a glass and pass them around. Everyone takes a sniff and mentions something about what they smell. It’s too soon to start tasting.

We build the Cognac from a base that is a blend of a 40 year old and a 45 year old brandy. You’ve got to start somewhere. The cylinder shows 50 cls. of volume. We put a little bit in a glass and taste that, so we know what we’re working with. Next we add 10 cls. of a Cognac from 1900. This dramatically adds to the aromatics.

We pass that blend around, and then add another ingredient, another Cognac that adds a pretty, fruity note, but we decide it needs something for backbone. Another little bottle comes out, and we put 10 cls. of that into it. At this point Karen announces “Allspice!”

The advantage to doing this at our proprietor’s home becomes clear right away. Karen runs to her spice shelf and produces a jar of allspice and passes it around. We confirm her judgment. And we’re having fun.

Of course, through all of this, Alain is keeping up a running commentary about how this is done, and how long he’s been doing this sort thing (close to 40 years). He is, it goes without saying, a charming Frenchman with a rich accent and a wealth of stories.

Now all of the cognacs we are using are at cask strength. Well, not exactly, because most of them have been out of cask for a while, and been stored in glass demi-johns, which is the custom in Cognac. If that 1900 Petite Champagne had been in a barrel all that time, it would only taste like wood. Still, the point is these are powerful brandies, all over 45% alcohol by volume. As we stack the brandies in the cylinder, even taking the tiny sips we take while blending, we’re noticing that. Once we’ve achieved the flavor profile we’ve chosen, Alain produces a tiny bottle of distilled water to lower the proof, just a little. After tasting that, one of us points to an earlier ingredient, the aromatic brandy. We add 5 cls. of that one, and we think we’ve gotten the job done.

“Of course,” Alain tells us, “when I go back home and put this blend together for you, I won’t be using water to bring down the strength.” He chuckles. “That would be silly. I’ll be using older Cognac of much lower proof.”

We all taste our finished product, and pronounce it good. We have a miniature of our blend sitting back in the office. In a month or so, Alain will send us a full bottle of what he’s put together in France, and we’ll compare it to what we composed on that foggy day in San Francisco. If we still like it (and I’m sure we will) it will become an exclusive bottling for our Cognac Inner Circle members. We can’t wait!

THINKING OVER A GLASS

Last night, over a glass of Armagnac (Dartigalongue XO, if you must know—a sturdy, commercial Armagnac that represents real value) about my high school Latin. It was the famous first words of Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars--GALLIA est omnis divisa in partes tres—All Gaul is divided into three parts.

The line came back to me because Armagnac is divided into three parts. There’s Bas Armagnac, to the west, Tenareze, in the center and Haut Armagnac to the east. Two out of three of those regions wind up on the labels of a lot of bottles of brandy, of course. Bas Armagnac is probably considered the sexiest sub-region, because of its high concentration of sables fauves, or iron rich sand. This seems to produce the best grapes for distilling, although the boulbenes, sand with pieces of clay, is also good for long-lived spirits; Tenareze is blessed with a fair amount of that kind of soil. Haut Armagnac produces grapes for brandy, but they mostly go into blends offered by negociants.

Most of the vines that produce Armagnac come from the rolling hills where the Bas Armagnac meets Tenareze. This is picturesque country, dotted with bastides, walled villages dating back to the wars with the English in the Middle Ages. It’s pretty country, and good for agriculture, great for brandy; however, the industry seems to be dying. As we drove through the villages, you could see abandoned vineyards everywhere—gnarled, venerable vines suffering from neglect, just waiting to collapse back into the soil. Many of the healthiest looking vineyards, we were told, are not producing Armagnac, but wines from Gascony, which can be sold every year, without waiting for the long aging process that makes a profound spirit.

Maybe that’s why my rudimentary Latin came back to me over the glass. That language is long dead, but there are remnants still with us. It seems that Armagnac itself may be going that way. Certainly there’s enough to last a while, we saw chais holding row after row of barrels containing aging spirit, but it seems like it is fading fast. Maybe the Slow Food folk can put this stuff on their ark and save it. Meanwhile, I’ll sip mine slowly and ponder the lessons I learned long ago.