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…]


Saint-James Cuvée 250 Ans

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Sep 102017
 
Saint-James Cuvée 250 Ans

*** Rumaniacs Review #055 About the only place this rhum falls down is that for all the information we have on it, it leaves us begging for more.  It is a heritage (or “halo”) edition rhum, a bland of six millésimes, those years considered to be of exceptional quality – the legendary 1885 (R-010, remember that?), 1934, 1952, 1976, 1998 and 2000, and yeah, what else could we possibly want? Well, how much of each was in the blend, for one, and how old each of those components was, and further, how much (if at all) the final blend was [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Small Batch Collection – Port Mourant 1999 17 Year Old – Review

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Sep 062017
 
Rum Nation Small Batch Collection - Port Mourant 1999 17 Year Old - Review

#386 Let’s be honest – 2017 is the year of FourSquare.  No other company since Velier’s post-2012 explosion on the popular rum scene, has had remotely like this kind of impact, and if you doubt that, just swim around the sea of social media and see how many references there are to Triptych and Criterion in the last six months.  Which is admittedly an odd way to begin a review of a competing product, but I wanted to mention that for all the (deservedly) amazing press surrounding the latest hot juice in the rumiverse, there remain equally solid names as [Click here for the full review…]


Neisson L’Esprit 70º Blanc

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Sep 042017
 
Neisson L'Esprit 70º Blanc

Rumaniacs Review #54 The fourth in the Rumaniacs Neisson lineup (though I’m sure they will be more), this thing is a massive falling anvil of oomph, and takes Le Rhum Par Neisson (R-053), also a blanc, out behind the schoolyard and whomps it with an extra twenty degrees of proof…and while the previous blanc elicited strong opinions for and against its quality, thus far I think the general consensus of this one is that it it one hell of a white rhum, to be had with a mixture of caution and enjoyment. Colour – white Strength – 70% ABV Nose [Click here for the full review…]


Mombacho 1989 19 Year Old Central American Rum – Review

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Aug 312017
 
Mombacho 1989 19 Year Old Central American Rum - Review

#385 Perhaps it would be better to start with the straightforward tasting, lest my snark bend your mind were I to lead in with the commentary instead of finishing with it. The Mombacho 1989 Central American rum does, admittedly, boast and flourish some impressive chops on the label: 19 year old rum (1989-2008), finishing for the final two years in armagnac casks, reasonable strength of 43% (I said ‘reasonable’, not ‘outstanding’). Looking at other bottles of their range it seems within the bounds of reason to assume it’s from Nicaragua, though the ‘Central American’ noted on the label might suggest [Click here for the full review…]


Le Rhum Par Neisson (Blanc)

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Aug 272017
 
Le Rhum Par Neisson (Blanc)

Rumaniacs Review #053 Another Neisson in the series, one to leave a drinker scratching his head in bafflement.  It’s not a bad rum, just an odd one, exhibiting some of  the characteristics of other unaged whites, then going off to check out some side roads…not always to its advantage Colour – White Strength – 52.5% Nose – Hello Sajous…I mean Neisson, sorry. Whew, quite a bite here – salty, briny, and then…labneh, or fresh yoghurt. And sugar, so weird, like sucking tea through a white sugar cube. Some tar, herbals, iodine and medicine, and light (very light) florals and fruit. [Click here for the full review…]


Chantal Comte L’Arbre du Voyageur 2001 Reserve Speciale – Review

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Aug 242017
 
Chantal Comte L'Arbre du Voyageur 2001 Reserve Speciale - Review

#384 The rhums of Chantal Comte have been of consistently high quality throughout my relatively brief acquaintanceship with her brand.  Mme Comte, you may recall, is an independent bottler with the twin advantages of having a long association with spirits (she is the owner of a wine making chateau in France) as well as a boatload of familial connections and wasta in Martinique.  The La Tour L’Or HSE, the 1980 Trois Rivieres and the 1977 Trois Rivieres rhums were all products that impressed, and I had thought so even when my experience with agricoles was more limited.  There was something [Click here for the full review…]


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