A Whisky Benefit for Hurricane Sandy Relief -THIS SUNDAY in NYC

First – please tweet and re-tweet this.  It’s extremely important!

As many of you know, my beloved New York City & the surrounding areas were recently hit very badly with Hurricane Sandy.  Personally, we were without power, heat & cell towers for 5 days.  Business came to a screeching halt and I’ve been trying to re-coup ever since.  My 101yr old grandmother’s beach cottage on the NJ Shore was completely destroyed.  What’s left of the roof is being held up almost entirely by one single 2×4.  The bed pushed through the structure and is sitting partially on the street, the couch is in whatever is left in her tiny kitchen.  The home will have to be leveled and there were very few mementos that were salvageable.  It may sound “fancy” to say that this was our family’s modest vacation home but anyone who owns property knows the kind of investment that is and the kind of sacrifices you do to make that happen.  The little money my Grandparents saved during their years working as a school teacher (her) and an insurance sales man (him) they invested in this humble property with the intention of passing it down through the generations.  Like my father, I spent my childhood summers there with my sisters and cousins and it’s a place our family retired to every chance we had.

This is my family’s home. You can see the bed coming through the wall onto the street.

Our neighbor’s beach home. So very sad.

Our other neighbor’s home

Our home BEFORE the storm:

Our home before Hurricane Sandy

Our home AFTER Hurricane Sandy

Our beach home on the New Jersey shore after Hurricane Sandy

But as sad and as hard as the recovery will be for my family – we didn’t even get hit with the worst of it.  There are many people who lost their permanent homes or who couldn’t return to their homes for weeks due to flooding and unsafe conditions.  These people were living in the shelters set up in the NYC public schools.  The conditions were terrible – it was not like a ‘forced camping vacation’ by any stretch of the imagination. Many more people were stranded for weeks inside their apartments – especially the elderly and disabled – who couldn’t climb the 5, 12, 15 or more flights of stairs to get in or out of their apartments. They were stranded with no running water, no way to flush their toilets, no heat or food.

There are many recovery efforts underway but you all know how this typically goes … it’s hard for the money to get to the people who really need it.

Not this time!  The whisky community of NYC has rallied together with the amazing leadership of Robin Robinson, the wonderful brand ambassador of Compass Box to unselfishly put together a benefit: a combination 2hr whisky tasting and auction to raise money for the incredible Tunnel2Towers organization.

Click HERE to download the below invite as a PDF

Here’s the info on the tasting portion of the evening

Here’s the info on the INCREDIBLE list of whiskies available at the auction

Just LOOK at that list!!!!!  There are some bottles that will be available for auction that are rarely, if ever, available anywhere else in the world.  People have dug down deep into their private collections to donate some truly remarkable whiskies.

We need to continue to rally.  This is going down THIS SUNDAY

DECEMBER 2nd

4-6pm @ Astor Wines & Spirits

399 Lafayette St. , (at E 4th), NY, NY 10003

I’ll be there pouring Brenne!  It’s only $25 to enter and enjoy what will be an incredible 2 hour tasting & auction event.  Come one, come all!  Support the rebuilding of the greater New York area!

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS!!! ONLY $25!

Please share this with anyone you may think might be interested in attending. (And seriously, when else can you attend a whisky tasting event in NYC like this one for only $25?!?)

With love and many thanks,
Allison

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WhiskyLive NYC 2012 – REVIEW

Anyone who knows me or who follows me on twitter probably knows that I attended the WhiskyLive NYC show this past Wednesday as I was practically jumping out of my skin with excitement! And this year surely did not disappoint.

It’s one of my favorite nights of the year – a time to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and drink some seriously stand-out drams.   And may I just give my sincerest apologies to everyone who I either didn’t mention here or didn’t have a chance to visit.  I could have easily used another 4 hours!

Photo (c) of The Whisky Woman, 2012

My first stop was quite intriguing … Notch Single Malt Whisky from Nantucket.  Notch partners with Cisco Brewers who makes a special beer for them from Maris Otter malt (which has an interesting history for a grain & according to Wikipedia, is “acknowledged right across the brewing world as the finest-quality malt available”).  This beer, or wort, is then moved to the Triple Eight Distillery to distill in a small copper pot still where just the heart cut of the distillate is used and aged for 8 years in ex-bourbon and finished in French oak Merlot wine casks from local Nantucket wineries.

Now, this was a really enjoyable dram but what I can’t understand is the price.  $888 for a 750ml bottle.  I am sure they didn’t have the price match the name of the distillery to be cute … but I just can’t get my head around this!  Remember, this was my first stop so I know my brain was still quite sharp – but I didn’t hear them mention the addition of 24k gold or a unicorn horn as a “gift with purchase” so not wanting to further interrupt the interview they were doing with Gregg from DistilleryAge.com, I snapped the above photo promised them I would be following up … and you bet I will be!  Asap.

Next stop, Balvenie!

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman, 2012

Now you know you’re a #WhiskyBadAss when you show up to an event with your own malting floor!  David Stewart and team, you guys are my heroes. (If you missed it, check out my earlier post of my visit to this distillery HERE)

I always enjoy my time with the happy and wonderfully talented Balvenie crew.  David and I caught up over a beautiful glass of their 14yr Caribbean Cask Single Malt which was divine.  They actually bring rum over from the Caribbean in tanks – not in casks – and fill their casks with the rum for 6 months.  Once they have their barrels perfectly seasoned with the rum, they remove it and replace the rum with their 14yr single malt to finish for 6 months prior to bottling.  Pretty cool, huh?

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman

Hey – are we taking each others photo!? Silly social media whisky geeks (myself included)! Smile!

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman

The Whisky Peddler.  Only available online HERE out of the World Of Liquor store in New Jersey.  Unbelievably yummy.  Patrick is smart.  He purchased two very interesting casks from notable distilleries in Scotland; one from Glen Grant and one from Highland Park.  You may ask (as I did) why buy his whiskies over buying a 14 year directly from the producer?  Because for both of these malts, he purchased the casks and kept them aging only in their ex-bourbon casks – no sherry finish on these beauts – and let me tell you simply – wow.  I was really happy standing here.  And at $52 or $60 / bottle, it keeps me baffled by the $888 price tag on the Notch …

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman, 2012

Off to the Cocktail’s Live area!

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman, 2012

A toast with Kat Valentina – the fab mixologist from LA who was brought in to serve up a very tasty creamy-whiskey cocktail:

2 oz Jameson Irish Whiskey, .5 oz Sambuca, .75 oz Rum Chata & 2 oz of chilled coffee

… can we say mid-show pick me up?

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman, 2012

Whisky & chocolate – a great pairing.  Lucky for us, the hyper-talented chocolatier, Roni-Sue, was there serving up her unique bonbons and pairing them with such lovelies as Laphroaig and Basil Hayden!  I loved their Dark & Stormy truffle: dark chocolate ganache that features Goslings dark rum, fresh ginger and lime zest – all I tasted was pure deliciousness.

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman, 2012

Glen Garioch paired up with Murray’s Cheese, an excellent cheese shop in NYC (and luckily right down the street from me!) to create a cheddar that pairs specifically with the Glen Garioch whiskies.  HOW COOL IS THAT!?  I’ll be there tomorrow picking up a good wedge for this weekend!  The whiskies are great – balanced, smooth and perfectly complimented by the tangy-creaminess of the cheese.  At this point, though, it was too crowded and my glass was too coated with other whiskies to get accurate tasting notes but I’ll definitely be picking up a bottle on my next Scotch-run.

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman

Finish off with hug, dram and special (secret) Bourbon-Ball (a dark chocolate & Smooth Ambler bourbon bon-bon) from John Little, head-distiller at Smooth Ambler, and it was time for the after party!

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman, 2012

Now I don’t know how you travel to an after party … but I’m the kind of gal who likes to arrive in style so if that means negotiating a limo ride for some whisky for myself and my beloved whisky-family, like Balcones’ Chip Tate, Compass Box’s Robin Robinson and Kat Valentina … then so be it! 🙂

Photo (c) The Whisky Woman, 2012

Off to Ward III we went!  It was another amazing night!  Congrats Dave Sweet for organizing yet another stellar event!  Slainte!

Whiskey Gift: Compass Box Sample Set (& the journey I had finding it!)

I just spent a full week checking out the whisky scene in the sunny city of Los Angeles, California.  On my last day, I was driving around like a crazy person (as you do in LA) trying to squeeze in a few last store visits.

Beautiful, eh?

Up until then, I had really only be focusing on specialty shops (K&L for example) and authentic whisky bars (hello, Seven Grand) but I found myself sitting in a parking lot in Beverly Hills staring at a somewhat dingy looking store that, for whatever reason, I felt I was being gravitationally pulled to enter.

Sigh.  Ok!  I hop out of the car and go into what I would describe at first look as being a pretty standard American liquor store.  Neon signs, branded posters, old linoleum floors complete with a faint smell of cat (or is the cat smell only in my memory?).

A quick overview of the room tells me the liquid gold that I’m looking for is in the center of the store (interesting … whiskies are usually along the sides or back walls).  Hmmm.  I keep walking.

At the start of the aisle, there is a cheap, locked display case that I’m quite sure was been held together with discretely placed duct tape.  Now, here’s what I didn’t expect to see in it:

1 beautifully displayed 750ml Baccarat crystal decanter holding non-other than the Louis XIII cognac for around $2500 (see earlier post about this spirit HERE)

1 box (on the bottom shelf, tucked off to the side) of a Compass Box 50ml Sample Gift Set.

Gasp. WHAT!?!  I have never seen this kind of set in the States before… ever. SOLD!

(c) 2011 TheWhiskyWoman.com --- Glencharin glass not included

This is the perfect way to familiarize oneself with a brand, style, region, etc.  I picked up a few sets like this from La Maison du Whisky in Paris back in July (see earlier post HERE, reviews of the sets I bought to be posted in 2012).

In this Compass Box set, it contains five 50ml tubes, one of each of the following:

-1 x Hedonism

-1x Peet Monster

-1x Spice Tree

-1x Oak Cross

-1x Asyla

I also really appreciate the pull out information card that is secured on the underside of the box lid.  This is beautifully done, clean, well organized and a perfect gift … for oneself or someone special!

(c) 2011 TheWhiskyWoman.com --- Glencharin glass not included, used only as a point of reference for sizing

Sadly, a quick google search produced only one place online with stock and that is a single sellers on eBay (click HERE) but I’m not even sure that’s legal and that guy is selling his box for $89.99 (compared to the $49 I paid at full retail).

IF you can find one – I encourage you to buy it.  It’s a great set.  I’ll definitely be asking my local store later today to see about getting a few in stock!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Lastly, here’s the information for the store from which I purchased this awesome set:

Vendome Wine & Spirits

9153 W Olympic Blvd
Beverly Hills, CA 90212

(310) 276-9463

www.Vendomestore.com

 Hopefully they can ship to you!

1 ADJUSTMENT SINCE I FIRST PUBLISHED THIS POST:  I HAVE SINCE HEARD FROM COMPASS BOX AND THEY OFFER THIS SET FOR SALE IN THEIR ONLINE SHOP HERE: http://compassbox.specialitydrinks.com/

WITH SHIPPING TO THE USA (FROM THE UK) YOU CAN GET IT HOME FOR AROUND $64 USD.