Overeem Collective Club Exclusive
Maple Syrup Casks Release | 52.3% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Almost the most expensive whisky I almost never had
When a butterfly flaps its wings…
…or when, somewhere in Glasgow, someone pushes the ‘go live’ button on YouTube with the words ‘Hello, whisky folk’ for the very first time, back in 2017.
In both cases, fair to say, there have been consequences. In the case of the former, a perfect storm thousands of miles away erupts while, in the latter, a wonderful community across all corners of the globe emerges.
The things that have been made possible because of the vPub are hard to overstate. There’s lots of ‘tangible stuff’ that’s been a direct or indirect result of it: such as the OSWA’s, collaborative projects with other whiskytubers and even this very site we call Dramface. Also, so many things are happening around the Glasgow Whisky festival weekend, the Independent Spirits Festival in Leith, Roddy Graham emerging to take on the status of the world’s most famous booze monger and countless Barfly meet-ups all over the globe. The less tangible stuff has taken shape in a quite frankly astonishing and unexpected, possibly inexplicable even, sense of community, friendship and camaraderie.
Because of this whole vPub thing, where people tuning in can chat away with anyone also ‘attending’, at some point, three or four years ago, I got in touch with someone living literally at the opposite side of the globe from where I’m located. Let’s call him Glenn.
He lives in Australia (Tasmania, to be precise) and, in chatting along, we became virtual friends. Most of our contacts and exchanges, for obvious reasons, still take place in a virtual, digital environment: direct messages, mostly. Then, for no other reason than him being an absolutely wonderful human being, last year, just around the time of my birthday, a bottle of whisky showed up at my front door.
Not just any bottle of whisky, but a 30 year old single grain vintage from my birth year. Turns out he had been in contact with vPub host Roy to find out what my birth year was. Then he went online to a European whisky auction site, and a short time later, the bottle showed up at my front door. Fair to say I was speechless. Literally lost for words. Someone I had until then never met in real life and who, if it weren’t for Roy saying those three magic words, would have no right knowing in the first place, went to the trouble to part ways with some of his money to surprise me with what is arguably the most considerable gift a whisky geek could ever hope for.
Glenn is also an invested supporter of his local distilleries, one of which is Overeem. And when they launched a special bottling for their ‘Overeem collective whisky club’, he was adamant I too should have one. I obviously warned him about the fact that, post Brexit, the EU has imposed new tax and customs regulations making it considerably more expensive to ship goods, particularly highly taxable goods like alcohol or tobacco, from outside the EU. But he insisted on covering those costs too. Costs I would be more than happy to cover in the face of such tremendous generosity. So he paid for the bottle at the distillery and had them ship it over to me. All at his own expense. I did mention he’s a generous soul.
However, this is where things went horribly sideways.
During November last year, I received a notification from the shipping company that a parcel was on its way from Hobart, Australia and would be with me soon and that import taxes and custom duties were due. Nothing new so far. I’ve ordered a few bottles from the UK in the past and pretty much made my peace with the fact that with the increased fees and taxes, it’s now pretty much a case of ‘buy two, pay three’. When you’re eager for certain things, so be it.
A few days later I literally woke up to a text message from the shipping company that the parcel had arrived and that it had been cleared with customs. Total cost of import fees, duties and taxes: €652.
At first I thought I wasn’t fully awake yet and had misread it and it should be €65.20. But no it really said six hundred and fifty two euros (and 18 cents, to be precise). Talk about a rude awakening. I notified Glenn, explained that I had no intention of paying that and would never expect him to cough up that amount of money either. Clearly it had to be a mistake and I would be in touch with the shipping company immediately.
On their website you have different options if you want to ask questions or file a complaint. One of them being the possibility to point out that there has been a mistake with the charges added to the shipment. I filled in the form, left my details and explained that if it’s not a mistake - and those were the actual costs - I would have no other choice than to decline receiving the shipment.
As these things go nowadays, you get a polite auto reply with a case number that’s been logged to your form for future reference. Obviously that didn’t really give me peace of mind as it said the parcel had already been cleared with customs. With the rather significant costs involved this was another thing which, in my experience, is quite unusual. The go practice is – should be – that the receiver gets notified of extra costs and pays these before it gets cleared by customs.
So the next day I decided to call them up. The lady on the phone was very understanding as I explained that it either had to be a mistake and if it wasn’t then I would really like to decline receiving the parcel. She explained that if I clearly stated I would decline the parcel, I couldn’t be held accountable and wouldn’t be charged any costs. Two days or so later I got a reply on the form I filed confirming to me that I declined receiving the bottle and that it was already back on its way to sender – the Overeem distillery in Tasmania. Not one mention of there potentially being an error on their behalf when calculating the custom taxes and fees.
Overall, I did feel sorry and guilty towards Glenn because of the way it turned out, but at least no one would be coughing up a ridiculous amount of money on extra charges.
Peace of mind… for a while at least.
I had all but forgotten about the entire thing when in January this year, I received a letter from the shipping company. It contained an invoice for the exact same bottle. Costs this time: €2640. The mild annoyance and slight irritation I experienced with the way it was handled in November now made way for something else entirely and sat on the crossroad between downright fury and blind panic.
Back on the chat with Glenn it was - and I of course got in touch again with the company and filled out yet another form. The thing is they don’t really have forms for complaints about how you declined a shipment on account of ridiculous fees and taxes in the first place - yet still got sent an invoice, so I was led to another form. Which I filled in. Only to receive the next day another very polite message saying how sorry they are for the inconvenience and if I could please fill out yet another form, so they could look into it and get back to me as soon as possible. Also, back on the phone it was.
This time with a clearly rather bored and possibly even slightly annoyed help desk operator (frankly, I can’t blame him). He explained that he couldn’t do anything about the actual invoice on account of the parcel being cleared with customs and that I needed to fill out yet another form and that they would look into it. He didn’t seem to care one bit that I never actually received the bottle and that I had a parcel number for the return shipment to prove it. Let alone the fact that they couldn’t explain how it was initially €652 and now suddenly pretty much four times that amount. I sort of got the impression at this point that the words customer service might be something they were only vaguely aware of and only complied to because it was mandatory to do so.
Meanwhile on the other side of the world, Glenn had gotten in touch with both the distillery and the local offices of the shipping company. And while they pretty much confirmed that somehow there clearly had been some mistake, there was not an awful lot they could do about it from where they were sitting.
I got in touch with my wife’s best friend who happens to work for Belgian customs and she too confirmed that I couldn’t be held accountable for the costs seeing how I declined the parcel to begin with. Something reassuring at least. So I did what I had been doing for a number of days now and filed in - for the fourth time - yet another form on their website.
All came back with the usual bog standard replies about how they would look into things and get back to me, as soon as possible. The only thing is, they never did.
Six weeks later I received an email from a debt collecting agency, politely yet firmly reminding me of how I’m €2640 in debt and that this is my last chance to pay up without there being extra costs or possibly legal charges. Pardon my French, but at this point I’m going completely apeshit. Whisky was supposed to be fun, about connecting and interacting with people while enjoying something truly wonderful in your glass. Now, because of this nonsense, it has made me furious, unnerved, scared and anxious all at the same time. More than anything, it completely ruined my appetite for whisky.
So for the umpteenth time, I get my bearings straight, and reply to the debt collecting company and explain what I have been explaining and pointing out, repeatedly, for the past four or so months. They actually do reply within two days and explain that my counter claim is being looked into and for the time being their invoice is being put on hold until things get figured out. But when debt collecting companies come knocking on your door, it’s seldom that’s a good thing, so I get in touch with a lawyer I know from work and explain the whole thing once more.
She in turn explains that the debt collectors have an obligation to sort my claim out before they can pursue collecting the ‘debt’, confirms how my previous objections about me being charged are sound and solid and advises me to await the outcome of their ‘investigation inquiries’. To be honest, at this point in time, I was seriously considering paying for the whole bloody thing just to get some peace of mind. If I was to battle them over it in court, I did fancy my chances of being proven right, but honestly I didn’t know if it would be worth it, both financially (lawyers cost money, as I’m sure you know) but also emotionally.
By now, I had lost more than a fair bit of sleep over this, and consequently I wasn’t exactly the most agreeable or nicest person in the room. My mood was downright set in doom and gloom mode and I really didn’t feel as if it would be fair on my family to have me in that state for much longer.
Deus Ex Machina. As fortune has it (and I’m due a bit of fortune at this point), we had two friends coming over for dinner that weekend. My wife’s best friend and her boyfriend – who also works for Belgian customs (he does the ‘dangerous/cool stuff’ intercepting counterfeit and illegal goods in the port). Quickly the topic lands on the pending invoice and they offer to take a look at it.
They looked up the official website where the tax rates are to be found (essentially a very long list of data in an online excel form) and it took them all but a few minutes to spot the error. There is indeed a truckload of taxes and fees imposed on alcohol and the way those fees are calculated is more or less as follows: cost of the goods involved, cost of the shipping and then all the taxes are slapped on, and then VAT is added to that. There is actually a 2769% tax rate on whisky and other spirits, and another tax rate of 223.1% (because, reasons). The only thing is: those are to be calculated in hectoliters; i.e. per amount of 100 liters.
This is where whoever is supposed to take care of custom fees at the shipping company clearly got their decimals wrong. Because what they did was take 70% of those tax rates and then slap those on to my bottle of 70 cl. But obviously 70% of a tax rate on 100 liters applies to 70 liters of whisky, not 0.7 liters of whisky. In other words: they overcharged me by a factor of a hundred and the actual fee should have been closer to €67. The next Monday they dug out the original customs declaration by the shipping company from their files, which indeed confirmed they calculated the whole thing wrong. They also explained how the shipping company could fully reclaim the custom fees, seeing how the actual bottle was sent back to Australia and had never physically entered the EU.
Those moments where you experience a huge amount of relief and an enormous amount of anger all at once are weird, to say the least.
With the evidence in hand, I contacted both the debt collecting company and the shipping company and pointed out their error. I even proposed to cover that €67 as long as they would finally admit their error and apologize, even though I never actually received the bottle, if that’s what it took to get this whole unnerving affair behind me once and for all. And only now someone ‘higher up’ at the company replied, with an apology and explained how they would be in contact with customs and ask for a recalculation of the costs. Also, the original invoice was cancelled.
The whole process with customs could take up to 100 days, right about the time of me writing this entire thing down and, up to this moment, I haven’t heard back from them and don’t know if there will be either an invoice for that €67 or no invoice at all.
On principal, I probably should stand my ground and insist I be cleared of all costs involved in this whole dramatic affair. But also at this point, if I do end up with an invoice of about €70, I will almost happily cough that up just to put this whole thing behind me once and for all (emphasis on ‘almost’) in the knowledge I will never have to deal with them again. Not if they were the last shipping company on earth.
Review
Overeem Collective Whisky Club Exclusive, Tasmanian Single malt Whisky, Ex-Bourbon and maple syrup casks, Release 002, 2025, Natural Colour, Unchill filtered, 52.3% ABV
£gifted, sold out, only available to Overeem Collective Club Members
So how come I get to review a bottle that never actually made to my cabinet? Well, back to the positives of this whole global whisky thing.
Fast forward another three months. Glenn had a wonderful excuse to come over and visit, as one of his best friends was getting married in Marseille. And to make the most out of the occasion he followed up on that trip by traveling to Scotland with a two nights’ stay in Antwerp in between. It’s possible ‘distance’ becomes quite relative if you’ve just flown all the way from Australia to Europe.
As I write this, it’s been two weeks since I had the absolute pleasure to pick up Glenn from the train station and show him around my home town for two days. And of course he picked up another bottle of this very whisky and dragged it halfway across the world to gift it to me.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Almost the most expensive whisky I almost never had
Nose
There’s no mistaking the maple syrup casks as they make their mark with, well, syrupy notes. Sweet cherries, cola cubes, sweet roasted nuts, toffee apples, demerara sugar, honey: the works.
If you were to sum these up, you might get the impression that this might be a ‘heavy’ whisky in terms of flavour profile, but, possibly also partly due to a subtle grassy note that lingers through it all, this is, if not ‘light’ then definitely ‘mild’ and easy going. If you add a drop of water, it accentuates the caramel and red apples.
Palate
A toffee apple sweetness on the arrival, swiftly followed by a gentle, peppery prickle. As on the nose, all the syrup notes clock in with toffee, cherry, sugar and caramel. Where I would’ve guessed the mouthfeel to be sort of viscous, it’s actually medium-full and slightly dry, which also announces how things pan out in the finish. A bit of water adds, weirdly, a bit of cognac-like fruity vibe to it all.
The Dregs
I didn’t waste much time tucking in and, while this is by no means complex, it is deliciously tasty and so easy to drink and enjoy as it has plenty of flavour and delivers enough sweetness without going full candy land. All in all it makes this a very palatable whisky.
Needless to say when Glenn arrived I came prepared and had a gift for him ready as well. I put quite a bit of thought into it as I wanted it to be something fitting. Initially I played with the idea of gifting him a Belgian whisky, but eventually went into another direction and bought him a Glentauchers (obviously, it had to be a ‘Glen’ distillery) from a Belgian indie bottler with a fitting name; ‘Buds & Barrels’. I added a few other edible and drinkable local specialties including some of my favourite Belgian beers and chocolate because - and without any boasting or fake modesty - we’re quite good at that sort of stuff.
Meeting up with Glenn and getting the chance to show him around on home turf was a blast. I showed him around the historic part of our city, visited a museum, and semi-aimlessly wandered through the centre, obviously with plenty of bars and restaurants where they serve ‘the good local stuff’ in between.
Glenn is, and I’m sure everyone who met him will agree, every inch a nice bloke and a good egg. Which, I’m given to understand, are just about the highest forms of praise one can give in Australia.
I’ve come to learn that you can chat online as long and as much as you want and build a solid friendship on that foundation. I honestly believe that. But, once again, it also became clear that nothing quite beats shaking hands with someone and actually sharing a drink and a meal over a good dose of conversation, in which you can mix and balance life’s lessons and hardships with just about enough banter, jokes and wisecracks.
Because getting to know someone, truly getting to know someone, happens best when you get to learn and understand their life’s journey. But also, to truly connect with someone, finding out that you have a shared sense of humour, is of equal importance. The balance between those two: that’s where the magic lies. Intrinsically this bottle is probably a 7/10. Emotionally and because of what it means to me: this is a 10/10.
All because of ‘Hello, whisky folk…’
Score: 7/10
Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. EA
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