As people in the Washington DC metropolitan area and around the world are sheltering at home in response to COVID-19, more and more people are looking to virtual events to fill their social calendars and need for connection. As it turns out, whiskey tasting is one in-person event that has been relatively easy to transition to a virtual format. (Bonus, no need to pick a designated driver.)

In early April, Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira joined one of our virtual tastings, which he describes as making him feel like he’d entered a “password-protected speakeasy:”

How do we decompress when calamity surrounds us, when news of coronavirus case confirmations and first-person accounts of E.R. doctors at crushed hospitals rightfully command our attention? We have our families, our friends, but also our homebound passions. Netflix. Nintendo Switch. Bread-making. Or, if you’re a certain kind of geek who likes speaking in terms of corn and barley — who delights in high-alcohol heat at their noses and down their throats — then, obviously, clearly, whiskey.

The session was organized by the Whiskey Library, a District-based outfit that law firms and other companies hire to conduct tastings at small gatherings or large events. That day, Whiskey Library’s co-founder Brian Thompson, a lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency, dropped off five small, unlabeled vials of whiskey at the homes of people who had signed up for the tasting; or, they picked them up at his home in Silver Spring, Md.

Read more about Ian’s experience and what our virtual tastings are like in, Swirl, sniff, mute, sip: Inside a virtual whiskey tasting at the Washington Post.

Then, head over to our Virtual Tastings to register for a tasting and join our password-protected speakeasy yourself.