Spirited Cocktails

I love a good tweetup. As you probably know, I’m a Twitter addict, and I’ve met so many great people on the Twitter machine. Every once in a while though, it’s nice to crawl out of one’s cave and actually hang out with people in person!

Last night, we were lucky to have two amazing tweetups back-to-back. The first was the evolution of what has become our awesome monthly event (which began with our brown liquor tweetup in Brooklyn, followed by our clear liquor tweetup at Double Crown last month). This month’s tweetup focused on Rum – Tiki-style cocktails in particular. @Sweetblogomine was kind enough to get things organized at Elettaria in the West Village, which has a Mahalo Monday tiki special. My favorite of the evening was the Black Pearl – a twist on the Old Fashioned which includes Old Forester bourbon, Curzan black strap rum, demerara sugar and bitters. Outstanding.

As the tiki tweetup started to wind down, it was time to move on to Keen’s Chophouse for a tasting of The Dalmore, an excellent Highland single malt scotch. Organized by our good friend @livethelushlife and hosted by whiskey expert @the_nose, we were fortunate to receive an expert education on the proper way to taste scotch. Turns out I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time. We tasted both the Dalmore Gran Reserva and the Dalmore 15, both of which are outstanding single malts. The Gran Reserva spends time in both sherry and bourbon barrels, and turns out a bright, intense flavor with a sweet finish. The 15 year spends its time exclusively in sherry barrels, resulting in a more rounded, balanced flavor with a beautiful aroma.

Our good friend @halw also received an exclusive taste of a 1936 single malt, said to be one of the most expensive scotchs on the planet (at around $160,000 per bottle). He seemed to enjoy it :-)

You can read all of our tweets about the event by searching for #TheDalmore on Twitter.

Thanks again to @sweetblogomine, @livethelushlife, and @the_nose for hosting wonderful events! It was also great to see (and in some cases, finally meet!) so many Twitter friends, including @brooklynwino, @shotsandcuts, @halw, @daisy17, @meredithmo, @csmcbride, @paystyle and @selenawrites.

Cheers!

I had the good fortune to attend a tasting last night of Macallan scotch. This wasn’t any ordinary tasting though – this was a Twitter Tasting! My cocktail-blogging colleagues and I took a break from our AA meetings to all get together in one place, taste amazing scotch, and broadcast our feedback via Twitter in real time. Our tweets were projected onto the wall so we could keep up with each others feedback, and the best part is, the entire conversation is preserved under the Twitter hash tag #Macallan. So even if you missed us last night, you can relive the entire event (including my feedback on the Macallan, and some great conversation with @halw, @livethelushlife, @nybarfly, @ekeyNYC, and many others) on Twitter. It’s a beautiful thing.

Once you’ve caught up, send me a tweet and let me know what you think.

Cheers!

Head on over to The Wednesday Weekly where our friend @EkeyNYC provides a round-up (and some great pictures!) of our brown liquor tweet-up earlier this week. @livethelushlife, @ekeynyc, @sweetblogomine, @csmcbride and I hit the bars in Brooklyn to sample some fine whiskey at Char 4, and some fine cocktails at the Clover Club. Check it out.

Many thanks to @EkeyNYC for the round-up and the pics!