Drammers Club: Balvenie Tasting with Naomi Leslie

January 24, 2024

Liz and I are slowly starting to attend more Drammers events. We started off with Scotch Malt Whisky Society outturn events, and started to hear a bit more about Drammers events through Elhan – the host of the Society events, and who is also one of the first four Drammers Chicago chapter members.

I need to go back and add better tags for the events, but many of them have been really fun and quite exceptional. Specifically, I’m thinking about the Glenrothes tasting and the Teeling tasting.

Tonight’s event took place at a new venue. I’m used to events taking place at the Event Room at Warehouse Liquors, so this was my first Drammers event at a different site.

We took a Lyft to Birch Road, in Lincoln Park… and settled in a tasting in a completely new space.

An assortment of Balvenie. It’s difficult to see here, but there were some rare bottles that were being shared tonight!

Elhan, pouring drams for the crowd.

Liz and I ended up sitting along a large couch, and got comfortable with some newer folks. We sat next to a father and son (Mark and Kramer). The two were Society members, but Kramer had just recently started to attend more events.

Next to them was Wendy, someone we had seen at a few other events. She had this impressive small container with tiny vials… for all the drams that she didn’t end up finishing, but wanted to keep. Throughout the night, Wendy was taking extensive notes on a notepad.

Next to Wendy was Jake, who I didn’t get to talk to much. Though I do recall him asking a few interesting questions during the event.

We had about five drams to sample, with an empty sixth glass for us to taste some of the additional bottles that were brought in.

The first dram was the Balvenie Caribbean Cask (14). And next to it, we got a small sample of the actual rum they used to season the Caribbean cask release (something that’s not actually available to the public, but we got a taste of it thanks to Naomi).

After that, the Balvenie French Oak (16).

And the last two were really special/rare: the first was an unreleased cask pull from their Master Distiller Kelsey – a 17 year old Sherry cask, with a 59.3% ABV. This was, by all definitions, an absolute sherry bomb.

After that, we got a sample of a bottle from the DCS Compendium (a series of releases from David C. Stewart, who has been a malt master at Belvenie for 54 years). The Compendium is a total of 25 rare single cask whiskies, meant to be released over the span of five years.

Tonight, we got to sample a bottle from DCS Chapter 4, a 26 year old that was aged in an European Oak Oloroso Puncheon. During this tasting, we heard a few numbers bandied about – and the estimate was that this bottle alone would cost about $2,000.

Balvenie brand ambassador Naomi Leslie, talking in detail about the drams we’re sampling. I started following a few whisky accounts/brands on Instagram, and it was very interesting to see her in person (after primarily seeing her through my phone/photos).

Folks checking out some of the other Balvenie bottles, for our sixth dram. Very fun to see Peter Kim (beverage director for the Franklin Room) in attendance.

Peter is someone we see often at the Society events. But we’ve started to see him at other Drammers events, and it always makes me feel like I’ve got some inside track into some rare/serious whisky conversations.

Of course, Liz is the one who reads up on whisky, and someone I feel has more knowledge (I’m more of a tourist). But I feel like I’m part of some secret club, attending these sorts of events. Given the provenance of some of the other participants.