Smith & Cross Traditional Jamaican Rum – Review

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Oct 112017
 
Smith & Cross Traditional Jamaican Rum - Review

#394 Yeah, I’m chugging along behind the other reviewers, pulling late into the station on this one.  The Smith & Cross Jamaican rum has been on people’s radar for ages now, so it’s not as if this review will do much except to raise its profile infinitesimally.  Still, given its reputation, you can understand why, when I finally came across it – courtesy of a great bartender in Toronto who, by stocking stuff like this somehow manages to defeat the LCBO’s best attempts to dumb down the Canadian rum drinking public – both excitement and expectation warred in the cockles [Click here for the full review…]


Gordon & MacPhail Demerara 1974 25 Year Old Rum – Review

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Oct 092017
 
Gordon & MacPhail Demerara 1974 25 Year Old Rum - Review

#393 By now just about everyone knows that the Gordon and MacPhail Longpond 1941 58 year old walks and talks de Jamaican like a boss.  That thing gave super-aged rums a massive boost in visibility, showing that the patient, off-the-scale ageing of rums can be done with some care in Europe and come out at the other end with a profile that zooms to the top of the charts.  I seriously doubt a tropical aged rum could survive that long without being reduced to a thimbleful, and rarely with such quality.  Alas, the feat has almost never been replicated (except [Click here for the full review…]


Revisiting the El Dorado 21 Year Old Rum

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Oct 052017
 
Revisiting the El Dorado 21 Year Old Rum

#392 As the years roll by, I have come to the conclusion that the last decade will be regarded as the Golden Age of Rum – not just because of Velier, Silver Seal, Moon Imports, Rum Nation, Ekte, Samaroli, Compagnie des Indes, Secret Treasures (and all their cousins), but also because of the amazing writers who have emerged to chronicle their adventures with rum.  Somehow, social media and blogging software have formed a nexus with rum makers that allowed previously niche brands to simply explode onto the stage, raising awareness and knowledge to unprecedented heights. However, an unanticipated side effect [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum Barik Premiere Cuvée ESB Brut de Fût – Review

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Oct 032017
 
Rhum Barik Premiere Cuvée ESB Brut de Fût - Review

#391 When in your cups, you could argue that Haitian clairins parallel the development of rum as a whole.  Just as rum (and rhum) was ignored for a long time, so were the indigenous likkers of Haiti.  And I posit that just as rum worldwide is going through a new golden age, so are clairins (with cachacas coming on strong). So far we have met amazingly pungent, raw and tasty white lightning from the stills of Sajous, Casimir and Vaval, which were promoted and given great visibility by Luca Gargano of Velier (to his lasting credit) and I’ve been fortunate [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Barbados 2006 9 Year Old Rum (Denmark) – Review

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Sep 292017
 
Compagnie des Indes Barbados 2006 9 Year Old Rum (Denmark) - Review

#390 After messing round with other Bajan rums for a while, I finally came to the Compagnie des Indes FourSquare 9 year old, and had to concede that even setting aside the headline-grabbing 2006 or Triptych or Criterion releases, this was what I was looking for and which almost none of the three other caskers — the Cadenhead BMMG and 10 year old and the Isla del Ron — had not provided.  Mount Gay’s indie fullproof bruisers were certainly interesting and made powerful statements for their distillery of origin, but either Florent picked more judiciously than Cadenhead or the Isla [Click here for the full review…]


Ron White Cat Caribbean Light White Rum

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Sep 262017
 
Ron White Cat Caribbean Light White Rum

Rumaniacs Review #057 Behind the please-don’t-hurt-me facade of this sadly underproofed excuse for a rum (or ron) lie some fascinating snippets of company and rum history which is a bit long for a Rumaniacs review, so I’ll add it at the bottom.  Short version, this is a German made rum from the past, distributed from Flensburg, which was a major rum emporium in north Germany that refined sugar from the Danish West Indies until 1864 when they switched to Jamaican  rum. But as for this brand, little is known, not even from which country the distillate originates (assuming it is [Click here for the full review…]


Isla del Ron 2000 12 Year Old Barbados Rum – Review

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Sep 242017
 
Isla del Ron 2000 12 Year Old Barbados Rum - Review

#389 Based in Germany, Isla del Ron is not a very well known indie, and as of this writing seem to have only done 17 different single cask rum bottlings, from as wide afield as Barbados, Jamaica, Panama, Fiji, Brazil, Guyana, Cuba, Martinique, Nicaragua, and Reunion. Initially founded in 2009 by Thomas Ewer, it concentrated on bottling small quantities of Scotch whiskies, and began with rums in 2013. In the paucity of their history and selections, and their slim-pickin’s website, I get the impression they have a small operation going, something a bit bigger than, oh, Spirits of Old Man [Click here for the full review…]


Cadenhead Green Label Barbados 2000 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Sep 212017
 
Cadenhead Green Label Barbados 2000 10 Year Old Rum - Review

#388 Marco Freyr, in between his densely researched articles on Barrel-Aged-Mind, indulges himself with tasting independent bottlers’ wares, all at cask strength.  Marco does not waste time with the featherweight Bacardis of this world – he goes straight for the brass ring, and analyzes his rums like he was a Swiss watchmaker looking for flaws in the Vacheron Constantin Reference 57260.  Some time back he shipped me some Bajan fullproofs – being amused, perhaps, at my earlier work on Mount Gay’s XO, and feeling I should see what others did with their juice, both now and in the past.  This [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum Negresco “First Quality” Very Old

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Sep 172017
 
Rhum Negresco "First Quality" Very Old

Rumaniacs Review #056 Strictly speaking this is not a true Rumaniacs rhum, since I got it through separate channels and it’s a mini-bottle insufficient to allow me to share it to everyone…so, sorry mes amis.  Still, it’s one of these delightful mystery rhums about which just about nothing turns up on a search, except an old French eBay listing which suggests this is a French West Indian rhum from 1953 (unconfirmed, but how cool is that year, right?) bottled at 44% ABV, so in that sense it conforms to all the reasons the ‘Maniacs exist in the first place – [Click here for the full review…]


Cadenhead Barbados Rum “BMMG” Mount Gay 2000 8 Year Old – Review

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Sep 142017
 
Cadenhead Barbados Rum "BMMG" Mount Gay 2000 8 Year Old - Review

  #387 Mount Gay out of Barbados is somewhat in the background of Bajan rum-making these days, maybe feeling like Huzur in Satyajit Ray’s 1958 classic “The Music Room”.  Understandable, since all the headlines these days are about the 2006 ten year old, the Criterion, Triptych and all the other amazing FourSquare releases.  And that’s a shame because there are some interesting indie bottlings out there from the island, as well as Mount Gay’s own recent cask strength work which I’ll get to one of these days. Today, then, let’s discuss the mastodon of the Cadenhead BMMG 66.3% which was [Click here for the full review…]


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