The Global Drammers Club

Have you ever wanted to start a whisky club? How about one that has members in over 45 cities around the world from the United States to Europe, the Middle East and as far away as places like India and Singapore? That’s just what Drammers Club has done, a “whiskey, mezcal and spirits club” that meets regularly in person and online, not to mention organizing group trips at whisky and mezcal festivals around the world. The club is the brainchild of Charlie Prince, who likes to tell members that they’ve “got drinking buddies waiting for them all over the world” (and he does actually connect members when they’re traveling so they can meet up!). At events, attendees taste rare bottles the club has curated, sometimes old bottles they secured at whisky auctions or special “Drammers picks” — distillery-only bottlings that you wouldn’t get to try otherwise and that are exclusively available to club members. It’s rare that their tastings feature any bottles you can find at your local liquor store.

Drammers
Drammers is pretty interesting. Each local “chapter” of the club meets every 6 to 8 weeks or so, and has a local leader who helps organize the events in that city. Between all the chapters, the club has meetings almost every night somewhere, often streaming them online so that out-of-town members can tune in to Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Portland, Mexico, Singapore, Mumbai, Barcelona, London and Paris. They also offer online tastings usually a couple times per month that feature conversations with Master Distillers. At the in-person events, sometimes Charlie presents the whiskies himself, and sometimes he invites guest speakers from distilleries (as part of his travels, he has developed a lot of relationships with distillers all over the world).
When you check out their website, you can see that you have to be invited to come to a meeting, which Charlie jokes is more of a safety precaution. As Charlie explains it, “you don’t really need to know a lot about whisky — we can teach anyone that easily enough. We primarily rely on existing members to invite new members.” But even if you don’t know anyone in the club, you can reach out through the website or Instagram to ask about getting involved. They attempt to price the events more or less at cost, and once you’ve been invited, you can join for free as a “Drammers Observer” to test it out, or you can pay a $99/year membership fee to get discounts to events and access to other tastings and the club’s rare single barrel program.

Trips With Charlie Prince
This year Charlie has organized trips to the New Orleans Bourbon Festival, the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, two big festivals in Scotland (the Campbeltown Malts Festival and Feis Ile on Islay), and a big annual trip to Oaxaca for “Day of the Dead” which features daily trips to meet the great mezcaleros and mezcaleras working today. (It’s obvious Charlie loves what he does, he took one week off this year from the club — only to attend the Springbank whisky school in Scotland!)

From Eve
I’m a member of more than one whisky group including LA Scotch Club and the Southern California Whisky Club. I don’t prefer one to another, but if I happen to be in Los Angeles or Las Vegas, or anywhere in the world for that matter, Drammers may be there. I like the small intimate groups, the wealth of knowledge presented and of course the array of whisky that I would have to look pretty hard to find on my own.
At a recent Drammers event in Las Vegas that I attended, we met the Glenmorangie National Brand Ambassador Daniel Crowell aka @GlenmoDan (he was one of the first in the world to be certified as a Master of Scotch among other esteemed certifications).  That night we enjoyed a bottle only available at the distillery in Scotland — “The Lighthouse” single malt Scotch, aged 12 years in sherry and bourbon casks. The 2nd was my favorite of the night: the “extremely rate” 18-year-old, with art by Azuma Makoto who had originally created a sculpture to commemorate the whisky. Our 3rd was “A Tale of The Forest”, a peated whisky, which is very unusual for Glenmorangie.  Other bottles we tasted at that event included the”Signet” single batch, where some of the barley was roasted giving it a distinct flavor and the headliner of the night was the “Grand Vintage” 1998, bottled just this year. 23 years in oak, for final 4-5 years it was aged in charred American oak, after 18 years in bourbon barrels, Grand Vintage Series (it sells for $900/bottle).

Other past Drammers meetings that I’ve attended included the distillery representatives from Oregon-based Westward Whiskey that makes single malt whisky in casks that previously held Sauternes, Pinot Noir and stout. Another meeting included tastes (and revisits!) of Stauning Danish Whisky, which was especially fun because before going to Drammers, I had never had the chance to try a Danish whisky before. The club recently bought two of their barrels – one a rye and the other a peated single malt, and as it turns out the first two single barrels the distillery had ever released in the United States.  At other recent Drammers meetings I’ve also tasted Kaiyo Japanese Whisky aged at sea in a “mizunara” oak cask, New Riff Bourbon (in particular a special single barrel selected by the famous Washington DC Bar Jack Rose Saloon), a very unusual grape brandy aged in a tequila cask from Copper and Kings distillery located in Louisville, KY, a bourbon made from a special Jimmy red corn by High Wire Distilling Co. in Charleston, South Carolina and a Thomas S. Moore Kentucky Bourbon from the Barton 1792 distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky, which was finished in Merlot casks.

Check Drammers Club out:
https://www.drammers.com/ 
https://www.instagram.com/drammersclub/

Eve Bushman has a Level Two Intermediate Certification from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET), a “certification in the first globally-recognized course” as an American Wine Specialist ® from the North American Sommelier Association (NASA), Level 1 Sake Award from WSET, was the subject of a 60-minute Wine Immersion video (over 16k views), authored “Wine Etiquette for Everyone” and has served as a judge for the Proof Awards, Cellarmasters, LA Wine Competition, Long Beach Grand Cru and the Global Wine Awards. You can email Eve@EveWine101.com to ask a question about wine or spirits.

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