2020 Murch Whiskey Club Glasses

2020 Murch Whiskey Club Menu

2019 Tasting Menu

2019 Glasses Have Arrived!

Imagine your glass is always half full....

2018 Auction Menu

2018 Menu

Greetings Murch Whiskey Club Founders,

Auction night is fast approaching and once again, we're ready serve up our premium whiskeys.  After extensive research and laborious tastings, we have a final menu.  You can view the list on this link. (or paste this in to your browswer https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qChZNMoWDvXhG1syjdWaGRWpA-vXjL6Skl4XFxbbg5M/edit?usp=sharing)

Louis has coordinated with Magruder's, Calvert Woodley and Bassins to make sure these bottles are available.  Only Magruder's offers Murch a kick-back on everything we buy there, so if you shop there, please ask for Bill Townsend or George so they can give us credit.

As always, here's how it works.

• To be a Founder, all you have to do is donate a bottle off the list or one of your own favorites.
• Once you're a Founder, you get to sample all the other whiskeys all night long on auction night. Plus;
• Your name gets mentioned on the printed tasting menu at the auction
• If we have any leftovers, you'll get invited to the exclusive "finishing off" events
• If you'd prefer to shop for the bottle yourself, just put your name next to the bottle of your choice in the "Founder" column on the google sheets list and then go buy it!  I'll make arrangements with you to pick it up or drop it off.
• If you'd rather have me get the bottle for you, just let me know and you can PayPal me the donation amount.
• Please use the "Send Friends" feature of PayPal with your linked bank account so neither of us pays a fee.
• Don't forget to add 10% DC tax
• My paypal account name is elijah.marentette@gmail.com or 6175130660.

That's all there is to it.  You can email me with questions or suggestions.  Bottoms up!

Do it for the kids and Reach for the Best!

Elijah, Louis, August & Dave

2018 - Another Epic Bar

As of early March, this year's menu already contains some exquisite and exclusive bottles.  Whistle Pig has donated 2 bottles, Chatter has donated a bottle.

Murch Dad Sandy Wood, owner of One-Eight Distilling, is donating a bottle of something special before it even hits store shelves!

Several founders have banded together to procure rare and greatly unavailable bottles.  So far, we have:

1.      Braeval Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky 1994 – 22 years old, only 222 bottle were ever made and Murch has one.

2.      Samaroli Blend 2008 – 86 proof, 8 years old, only 600 ever bottled and Murch has one

Plus, we're looking forward to our usual list of premium whiskeys.  Check back here regularly to see what's been donated and get ready for auction night!

2017 Whiskey Menu

Bottoms Up!

Sign up for bartender shift

Our bar is almost complete and, as always, the selection will be epic.  The only thing missing now is bartenders!

So, here's your chance to be the most popular guy (or gal) at the auction.  Sign up to pour whiskey for our members and have a bunch of fun with the other bar-keepers.  

Check our  sign-up sheet.  Just put your name in a slot and then show up for your shift.  No training is necessary and there isn't really a limit to the number of people we have behind the bar.  So, if the shift you want is already taken, just add your name in another row.

The 2017 list is here!

Once again, Murch Whiskey club aficionado in residence, Louis Yacob worked with local retailers to put together this year's epic list. You'll see some old favorites as well as some new additions to our bar. The list is located here.  Take a moment to choose a great bottle to donate to Murch. If you don't see your favorite brand here, feel free to add it. Your donation is your ticket to enjoy tastings of all the premium whiskeys on auction night.

This year's menu has some pricey (but delicious) options on it.  Teamwork is encouraged, so pair up with a friend (or two) and you all reap the benefits of being a Founder!

This year, to make it even easier to continue the Murch Whiskey Club tradition, you can be a Founder without ever leaving your home.  The club's chairmen will pick up your selection for you!

If you want to take advantage of this great option

1. Choose your whiskey by putting your name next to it on the list
2. Send the amount via PayPal to Elijah Marentette at 6175130660.
3. Please use the "Send Money to Friends and Family" feature and use your bank account to fund the transfer so nobody pays a fee.
4. You're done until Auction Night!

If you're in more of a shopping mood, please visit Magruder's, Calvert Woodley or Paul's to select your donation.  Mention that your purchase is for the Murch Whiskey Club at Magruder's and they will make a cash donation to Murch based on the total sales of whiskey.

Murch's own whiskey club will once again be present at the 2017 Auction.  For many Murch parents, the Auction just wouldn't be the same without the opportunity to sample some of the best Whiskeys, Bourbons, Ryes, Scotches and other regional forms of our favorite brown liquor.

If you know Murch families that are new to the school or new to the Auction, please help spread the word about the Whiskey club.  We are always looking for new Founders to donate a bottle and help bartend throughout the event.  It's great fun and, for the first time last year, we crossed the gender barrier and had a female bartender [who totally helped reel in the donors]. 

Look for a list of requested whiskeys coming soon from our globe-trotting connoisseur Louis Yacob.  But, in the meantime, if you have a favorite bottle that you know you want to donate, just email murchwhiskey@gmail.com and let us know what it is.  I'm happy to report that we already have commitments for:

1. Jameson Gold Reserve (thanks Ed Caspar & Courtney Woolridge)
2. Whistle Pig Straight Rye 10 or 15 yr. (thanks Scott Kozar) 

We're off to a great start.  As with last year, if you'd like to be a Founder but don't have time to get to a liquor store, you can pay with PayPal and one of the Club Chairmen will pick up the bottle for you. More details on that coming soon with the list.

As always, Reach for the Best and remember - we do it for the kids!

2016 Auction Poster

With many thanks to Jen Sessums for the outstanding artistry, we proudly thirstily present to you the 2016 Murch Whiskey Club Poster.  Cheers!

2016 Whiskey Club Menu

The 2016 whiskey bar menu is out and, once again, it's going to be epic!!

Add caption

2016 Commemorative Glasses Arrived - Secure Yours Today

The 2016 glasses will sport both our own Whiskey Club logo and the Auction Logo.

All Founders do not pay the $30 fee at the auction to taste premium whiskeys from these one-of-a-kind glasses.  Secure your place as a Founder today by donating one of these great bottles to the Whiskey Club.

Murch Whiskey Bar Is Back! Drink From The Epic Whiskey Bar

Murch Whiskey Club Scotch Glass

The Murch Whiskey Club is back with the most epic "Whiskey Bar" ever assembled for a school auction. And you can become a Member of the Club! 

The Club’s Founders have scoured the city assembling an amazing flight of whiskeys for the Auction’s “Whiskey Bar”. Club Members can sample the assorted whiskeys that include single malt scotches, rare bourbons & ryes, and even an exclusive Irish whiskey (see list below). Members also receive a receive a commemorative Murch Whiskey Club glass (shown to the right).  

How do you become a Member of the Murch Whiskey Club?

You can become a Member by simply by providing a $30 donation. On Saturday night just belly-up to the Whiskey Bar, provide your auction bid number to the barkeep, get your glass, and let your palate be amazed. You can take home your Murch Whiskey Club glass at the end of the night.

Whiskeys include:

• Jameson 18, Irish whiskey (about)
• WhistlePig Boss Hog 12 (about)
• Johnnie Walker Blue Label, scotch (about)
• Mortlach Rare Old, scotch (about)
• High West: A Midwinter Night Dram, rye (about)
• Lock Stock & Smoking Barrel 13, rye (about)
• Glenlivet Nadurra Oloroso, scotch (about)
• Mortlach Rare Old, scotch (about)
• Bowmore 18, scotch (about)
• Macallan 18 Sherry Oak, scotch (about)
• Highland Park 18
• Abraham Bowman, Virginia bourbon (about)
• Four Roses Private Selection, bourbon (about)
• Blanton's, bourbon (about)
• Bookers, bourbon (about)
• Jefferson's Ocean, bourbon (about)
• Basil Hayden, bourbon (about)
• Wathen's Old Medley 12 (about)

For more information about how you can support the Whiskey Bar at the Auction contact Tim Lordan tlordan@gmail.com.

Credits: Murch Whiskey Club logo designed by Jenifer Sessums. 

Murch Whiskey Club Commemorative Glass 2015

Murch Whiskey Club Scotch Glass

Dear Murch Whiskey Fans:

Here is the Murch Whiskey Club Limited Edition scotch glass that Members will receive at the Murch Auction on March 21. For $30 Members will receive this collectible scotch glass along with five samples of premium scotch or bourbon. 

There are a limited number of glasses and drams and it's first come / first served.  

For more information about how you can support the Whiskey Bar at the Auction contact Tim Lordan tlordan@gmail.com.

Credits: Murch Whiskey Club logo designed by Jenifer Sessums. 

Bourbon Prices Expected to Rise in 2015

The new year may not be so happy for many of you since bourbon prices are expected to rise dramatically in 2015 according to this story. 

The saving grace for 2015 will be the Murch Whiskey Club bar at the Murch Auction. The Chairmen are busy at work preparing for this year's whiskey bar. Stay tuned for more details.

- The Chairmen

As Bourbon Booms, Demand For Barrels Is Overflowing

By Noah Adams

Originally published on Mon December 29, 2014 6:35 pm
Listen: Here
If you could make a lot of bourbon whiskey these days, you could be distilling real profits. Bourbon sales in this country are up 36 percent in the past five years.

But you'd need new wooden barrels for aging your new pristine product. Simple white oak barrels, charred on the inside to increase flavorand add color, are becoming more precious than the bourbon.

Making these barrels is a very old craft, almost an art, called cooperage. The Scots-Irish who settled in Appalachia could do this: Cut the white oak boards into staves, steam them to bend, make metal hoops to hold the barrel tight.

You can see this process is the small town of Lebanon, Ky. This cooperage is one of several owned by a company called Independent Stave, which is based in Missouri and is the largest maker of whiskey barrels in the world.

As the barrels take shape they are carried, rolled, and conveyed — sometimes overhead — to the different work stations. Starting out as a collection of oak staves, they are fitted together, steamed, bound with steel and seared with flame before arriving at the end ready for inspection.

"The barrel has water and air in it," says Leo Smith, the supervisor for the last stop on the production line. "They're looking for any kind of leak or defect in the barrel. ... He's gonna put a plug in that barrel where it's leaking, a small plug in it, and stop that leak."

The plug is a simple piece of cedar, whittled by hand.

Independent Stave is a family-owned company and they don't talk much about how many people work there or how many barrels they make. But plant manager Barry Shewmaker does say that production has doubled in the past two years.

"Once we have the toast layer we'll let the barrel ignite," says Paul McLaughlin of Kelvin Cooperage in Louisville, Ky.

"We're seen an increase, and it looks like it's ... there's no end in sight," Shewmaker says.
Independent Stave makes barrels for the big distilleries — Kentucky brand names you might have tasted — and so far Independent is staying steady with demand.
But there's another need for oak barrels: very small craft distilleries starting to make bourbon, vodka, gin or rum. Their output is low — sort of like a drop compared to the big brands — but someone does have to make the barrels.
Kevin and Paul McLaughlin moved to Louisville from Scotland and are joint presidents of Kelvin Cooperage here. For more than 20 years they've been crafting wine barrels, and they buy used bourbon barrels to fix up and sell to the whiskey trade in Scotland and Ireland.

Aging bourbon at a distillery in Kentucky.

But now a different market has come right to them: They're making white oak barrels for the new craft distillers. Paul McLaughlin demonstrates the charring process — they put oak scraps in the finished barrel — and soon the flames are visibile. In the beginning it's called "toast."

"We start smelling kind of a baked bread — that smell, that's what we like, that's when we know we're getting a toast layer, and once we have the toast layer we'll let the barrel ignite, like that" says Paul McLaughlin. "You get baked bread, you get kind of a marzipan — really, really nice smell."
There may be as many as 700 small craft distillers in the U.S. today, and that number is going up fast.
"Some of them call and say 'I'm making whiskey, I've got my stills going and I need barrels, and I didn't think there would ever be a problem getting barrels,' " Kevin McLaughlin says.

At the Kelvin Cooperage in Louisville they are working overtime, but there's so much demand that the company estimates they could sell all the barrels they could make next year, 10 times over.

Japanese Whiskey Obsession / Cherry Blossom Whiskeys of the Month

Murch Whiskey Club Founders and Members:

Continuing on with Cherry Blossom season we thought we would direct your attention to a fascinating NPR story about Japan's obsession with American nostalgia. The piece, which aired last night, described how a Japanese bar owner has accumulated perhaps the most expansive collections of centuries-old whiskeys in the world. You can listen to the story here and we have pasted an excerpt of the text below. The Smithsonian Magazine ran a longer piece about Rogin's Tavern [here]. The author's Flickr photostream is here. Perhaps the next Murch Whiskey Club outing can be to Rogin's Tavern, just outside of Osaka.

Also, as you watch the Cherry Blossoms start to bloom after this brutal winter we recommend a couple of japanese whiskeys this April. The Hakushu 12 yo Whiskey [About] and the Nikka Taketsuru 12 yo Whiskey [About]. Some of you may have sampled the Hakushu, donated by Carl Bergeron, at the auction. The Nikka Taketsuru is a new whiskey to America and it's only been available in America for several months.

- Murch Whiskey Club Staff

Excerpt From:

Japan's obsession with centuries-old bourbon says a lot about the country's culture

There's the story of his visit to a small little town called Moriguchi where Rogin's Tavern is. The bar only serves centuries-old bourbon. Some bottles date back to the 1800s.

Downey tasted bourbon from 1904. He says the bar is a "time capsule of taste."

Seiichiro Tatsumi is the bartender at Rogin's Tavern.

Downey says, for 25 years, Tatsumi "had been driving the back roads of America, stopping in every liquor store he saw and buying up old bottles nobody else wanted because he saw the promise and possibility of old bourbon."

Click here for the full story. 

In Honor of St. Patrick's Day, An Article About the Cult of Irish Whiskey

Giles Coats' donation to the Murch Whiskey Bar was one of the most popular whiskeys served at the auction -- and it wasn't even close to St. Patrick's Day. Now that the 17th has arrived we direct your attention to this GQ article explaining the trend in Irish Whiskeys. And yes, Red Breast was included in the list. Thanks, Giles.

Master List of Whiskeys Served at the Auction

Founder                 Donation                 Type

                              

Greg Stohr                 Bowmore 18 yo                 Islay, Scotch [About]

Tim Lordan                 Cadenhead Caol Ila 22 yo         Islay, Scotch [About]

Joshua Winchell                Highland Park 18 yo              Northern Highlands -Orkney  [About]

Jeffrey Travers                Glenfiddich Gran Reserva 21 yo   Speyside, Scotch [About]

Charles Franklin                Macallan 12 yo                 Scotch [About]

Brendan Canty                Lagavulin 16 yo         Scotch [About]

Carl Bergeron                Lagavulin 16 yo                Scotch [About]wfew

Greg Jefferson                Glenlivet Nadura 16 yo         Scotch, Speyside [About]

Dan Liebman                Ardbeg Islay 10 yo         Scotch [About]

Jesse and Sara Kanach     Oban 18 yo         Scotch [About]

Louis Yacob                 Laphroaig 10 yo Cask Strength   Scotch [About]

Elijah Marentette         Laphroaig 10 yo                 Scotch [About]

Jacob Sesker Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban Scotch [About]

GP Penati Old Pulteney 21 Year Old Scotch [About]

Jeff Harris Laphroaig 18 yo                 Scotch [About]

John Cashman Macallan 10 yo Scotch [About]

Matt Marca Longrow 18 yo Scotch [About]

Jesse and Sara Kanach Johnnie Walker Blue   Scotch [About]

Jesse and Sara Kanach Johnnie Walker Gold Reserve Scotch [About]

Beth Colleye Balvenie 15 yo Scotch [About]

Dave Hollar Glenfiddich 18 yo Scotch [About]

Damian Saccocio         Widow Jane                 Bourbon [About]

Carl Bergeron                Michter's                  Bourbon [About]

Dave Watkins/Sue LorensonBaker's         Bourbon [About]

Gretchen Zucker                Blantons Single Barrel #4         Bourbon [About]

Gretchen Zucker                Noah's Mill                 Bourbon [About]

Josh Mintz Noah's Mill                 Bourbon [About]

Gretchen Zucker                Russell's Reserve Small Batch         Bourbon [About]                      

The Kovners                 Breckenridge Bourbon Whiskey      Bourbon [About]

August Imholtz Jefferson’s Bourbon [About]

Matt Weiss Neversweat Whiskey Bourbon [About]

Tony Faranesh Basil Hayden Bourbon [About]

Michael Davies/Jeff Gumbinner Bookers     [About]

Carl Bergeron                Hakushu 12 yo           Whiskey [About]

Paul Arnsberger                Whistle Pig 10 yo                 Rye [About]

Matt Weiss Prichard’s Rye & Single Malt Rye [About]

Giles Coats Red Breast Irish Whiskey [About]