Jun 252018
 

Part 1 – Influences & Developments to 2005

Introduction

Take a look at the rum world in 2018, and several aspects jump out immediately. The top-end rums getting most of the press and user approbation are almost all rums issued at cask strength; many, if not most, are made by an ever-increasing stable of independent bottlers, with Foursquare being one of the few primary producers making such strong rums as part of their core lineup, and others hastening to catch up. Rums are often being made “pure,” which is to say without additives, labels are much more informative than ever before, and unaged whites are becoming more and more popular (and appreciated). The major large-company rum brands of ten years ago – many of which were and are aged blendsremain enormously popular but have almost all been relegated to second-tier status in the eyes of knowledgeable aficionados. And the dissemination of information regarding rums – whether via news stories, magazine click-bait, blogs, review sites, Reddit forums or Facebook rum clubs – has enabled the trend in this direction exponentially.

When one considers the state of the rum world prior to 2005, this ninety-degree turn in the drinking habits of the tippling class seems well nigh unprecedented. It is my considered opinion that the Demerara (and to a lesser extent the Caroni) rums issued by Velier in the years 2005 to 2014 were instrumental in altering the rum landscape in a way few rums before ever had, or ever will again. To this day, many consider them among the best rums from Guyana ever issued, and that includes the independents (of which Velier was surely one in spite of being primarily an importer). Many of the concepts we take for granted when choosing top-shelf rums from Guyana – indeed, from anywherewere encapsulated and brought to a wider audience by the Demerara series. We live in the world they helped make, and it is our loss that they ceased being issued almost before we even properly acknowledged their existence.

In this first portion of a rather long three-part essay I’m going to look at the trends, influences and developments that I believe laid the foundations for what is unofficially called the Age of Velier’s Demeraras. I argue that these were the release of the El Dorado 15 year old in 1992, the rise of the internet, three books, a website, proliferating independent bottlers in Europeall of which led to a more informed and rum-educated drinking cadre, some of whom went on to form the first websites devoted to rums and reviews. Also, oh yes….there was a small Italian importer….

As it was then

The rum world in the 1980s was a rather staid one, moving along very much as it had for years before. Major rum companies from around the Caribbean were issuing more or less the same rums they had been for decades – then as now, 40% ABV was practically a standard, age almost uniformly under ten years (if mentioned at all), and the market was full of familiar brands, similar recipes, incremental development, and with column still blends being the majority of sales.

As with all such general conditions, there were exceptions at the margins. Many small companiesmaderum for sale around the worldbut they were really rebottlers and independents, not primary producers with sugar estates and/or distilleries of their own. Too, although 40% was a common sort of strength (especially in the United States), it was not an absolute. The French Caribbean islands made more than their fair share of rums around 50% ABV and rums made for export to European countries often boosted the strength to 43-48%

When it came to market domination, Bacardi was the undisputed leader, and lighter Spanish-style rums seemed to be everywhereI even found them and not much else in Central Asian bazaars in the early 1990s. The great Asian houses like McDowell’s and Tanduay were unknown except in their region. Most rums in production at the time were considered mixing drinks at best, which was a state of mind deriving from the misconception that it was a pirate’s booze, a sailor’s hooch, a drink to have fun with…not something to be taken seriously. Not to be had by itself, or to be savoured on its own. Unlike, for instance, whisky.

Although some independent bottlers issued more seriously aged rums in limited quantities, they didn’t expand production or really take it furtherthe market was a small one, and such bottlings were mostly bought by whisky aficionados and some hard core rum enthusiasts-cum-collectors, who were intrigued by the variationspeople like Steve Remsberg, profiled here and here or Luca Gargano, or Martin Cate or the Burrs. Rum culture in the general publicboth in perception and consumptionwas primarily about cocktails, the mythmaking of Hemmingway-esque muscularity…today’s social-media-enabled rum clubs, where reviews of the latest bottling of a favoured company go up in days, hours or even minutes after formal release, where minute variations of favourite styles or individual rums are endlessly bickered over, and where discussions about additives erupt every other post, were not even a cloud on the horizon.

This is not to say a wide variety of rums was not being made – quite the opposite. South and Central America had a long and proud history of rum production. Companies like Varelas Hermanos, Vollmer, Zacapa, Zaya, Dictador, Travellers, Flor de Cana, Juan Santos, and Cartavio were issuing softly blended and solera-style rums since the early 1900s and some even predated the turn of the century. Cachacas had been made for hundreds of years in Brazil. In the East there were almost unknown rums from India and Thailand and Indonesia. Cuba had its national production arm sending rums to Scheer and began working hand in hand with Pernod Ricard to produce the Havana Club line in the 1990s; and while booted out of Cuba itself, Bacardi was selling rums by the tankerload globally (largely due to subsidies provided by the US government). The French islands, with their plethora of small and fiercely individualistic distilleries sold primarily to the European market (France in particular), and even with the slow demise of sugar and rum production, distilleries in Jamaica, Trinidad, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Guyana, Antigua and Barbados (to list but some) struggled gamely on.

Aged rums made by primary producers from the pre-1990s eras were on the market, sure, and there was no shortage of them….but one had to look carefully for the specific trees in the forest (nowadays even more so when most exist in private collections or in memory alone). Fernandes Distillery in Trinidad made the Ferdi 10 Year Old from as far back as the 1930s and was still making it in the 1960s and 1970s; Appleton produced a 12 year old and a 20 year old from way back in the 1960s, issued a limited 25 year old in 1987, and old gaffers will remember the Dagger 8 Year Old and Three Dagger Jamaican 10 Year Old from J. Wray, also hailing to the 1930s; and going back even further in time, Jamaica at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London, 1886 by Sir Augustus J. Adderley lists 10, 15, 25 and 31 year old rums from merchant bottlers like D. Finzi & Co. and Wray and Nephew (before they acquired Appleton). I know there was an 18 year oldOld New England Rumfrom the USA in 1934; Beenleigh in Australia made a five year old rum (and supposedly supplied the Royal Navy); Banks DIH in Guyana made a five year old as far back as the 1950s (though I don’t know when the 10 year old first appeared). La Favorite on Martinique had a ten year old back in the 1950s and 1960s, but like most agricole makers, were much more into millesime rhums, and while I’m sure the agricoles had more than my research uncovered, their naming convention of vieux, tres vieux and XO makes it difficult to see what is aged beyond, say, six to ten years. Most aged rums around the world seemed to be ten years old or less. A twenty year old was unheard of, thirty the stuff of dreams. (We had to wait until 1999 for the G&M 58 year old, another ten years for the Courcelles 37 year old).

Anyway, much of the primary producersrum production went to Europe in bulk (a lot went to E&A Scheer, which was and remains one of the largest brokers buying rum stock in the world) and was then blended into European producers’ rums, of which there were many, none of which achieved any sort of lasting fame (unless it was the navy style of rum made by UK companies like Watsons for the local market). There were many small merchant bottlers, shops and back-street independents who released extremely limited and now-often-forgotten bottlings of aged expressions into the marketplace. And so the West Indian distilleries consolidated, shuttered, closed, changed focus, modernized, diversified, found new markets…and somehow the rum continued to flow.

But underneath this relatively placid existence of blends and unquestioning rum-is-fun-no-questions-need-be-asked, several seemingly unrelated events occurred which were to lay the foundations of whole new directions for the rum world.

1992 and the El Dorado 15 Year Old

In 1992, what proved to be an enormously influential rum came on the scene – the El Dorado 15 Year Old and its brothers up and down the line, the 5, 12 and 21 and (later) the 25s. It may not seem so now, when so many aged brands are sold around the world, and where every distillery has a few in its portfolio. But it sure was then.

Bearing in mind the (very) abridged list of older rums mentioned above, it doesn’t entirely surprise me that whatever the age, few or none seemed to ever make a huge worldwide splash. The market wasn’t there, the connoisseurship was lacking, and information interchange was by magazines and snail mail, not the internet (see below). People just didn’t know enough and had few avenues open to self-education that characterizes today’s fanboys. Remember also, most of the aged rums were issued by small rebottlers in Europe or their agents in the producing countries/islands on behalf of the originating distilleries, and that kept outturn relatively small. Independents like Samaroli and Veronelli had been making such rums since the 1970s, and Scottish whisky makers and re-bottlers certainly issued their fair share, though they were rare in the pre-1992 era.

And a downside to the independents was that they didn’t always made it clear where they originated – bought directly from the distillery of origin, or through a European broker like Scheer. Only occasionally was it unambiguously stated where the ageing had taken place. They varied from expression to expression, and long term consistency was rare. They were not always specific, and commonly labelled as “aged” or “country” rums – Superior Rum, Extra Old Rum, Barbados Aged Rum, Guyanese Rum, Jamaican Rum, and so on. The concept of making the estate the selling point was almost ignored. Many were, in fact, blends of uncertain age, mixing several estates’ marques into a single product. The consumer was certainly not helped to make an informed choice in the matter because exclusivity was the key selling point – you took what you got, trusted the skill of the producing company, and were grateful.

What made the El Dorado 15 (and its brothers) so seminal is that for the first time and over an extended period, a rum was made the same way every time, with an outturn not of a few hundred bottles, but in the tens and hundreds of thousands, year in and year out. Consumers were getting a true fifteen year old rum of distinctive taste and consistent profile, not some supposedly exclusive and high-priced limited edition of a “Manager’s Reserve” or “Private Family Stock” or “My Dog Bowser’s Anniversary Blend.” Now anyone could buy this rum, which was a cut above the ordinary, had really cool antecedents, and was an absolute riot to drink neat. Best of all, the El Dorado 15 was approachable – it retailed at an affordable price, had a taste the average consumer would like (toffee, caramel, licorice, citrus and raisins remain in the core profile), could be mixed, swilled or sipped, had great marketing and was issued an unthreatening 40%. The greater rum drinking audience went ape for it.

Within a few years, just about every primary rum producer with a well known brand caught the wave, and the 1990s and 2000s saw an explosion of older rums. Companies all over the western hemisphere rushed to bring out aged expressions, and such rums soon became staples of many companies’ lines (and Appleton finally got the respect for its 12 YO it deserved, as well as beginning the regular issuing of older variations). The South and Central American and Spanish Caribbean islands’ rum makers took their time with it: they were blenders for the most part, a few solera-style makers, and they saw no reason to go full bore in this direction (many still don’t). The French islands with their millesime approach and their own ideas on what constituted a good aged rum dabbled their toes, but with a few exceptions (I saw a 12 YO dating back to the 1970s once, so they certainly existed) they rarely ventured over ten years old – and bearing in mind the quality of what they achieved and the recognition their brands already had and have always maintained in their primary markets, it was and remains hard to fault them for this choice.

So the aged rum market almost by default landed, and has remained, with some exceptions, in the British West Indies, led by Appleton and also DDL, the company whose work would produce the next great wave of rums ten years down the road….but not under its own banner.

Books

One development that also raised the profile of rum was the publishing of three bookstwo in the early 1990s, the other nearly ten years later. To some extent they have been overtaken by events, yet they remain quiet classics of the genre, and carried with them not only the promise of other books written in the decades that followed, but a resurgence of interest in rums as a whole. They remain cornerstones of the literature, not least because they were among the first to try and provide a deeper background to the variety of rums represented without overwhelming the readers in technical minutiae of the rum-making process most neither wanted nor understood.

Released in 1995, Ed Hamilton’s book “Rums of the Eastern Caribbean” was a rich and varied survey of as many distilleries and rums as Mr. Hamilton found the time to visit and try over many years of sailing around the Caribbean. Because of its limited focus, it lacked a global perspective, but it was a treasure trove of information of the rum producing world in the eastern Caribbean at that time, it was based on solid first hand experience, and many rum junkies who make distillery trips part of their overall rum education are treading in his footsteps. If nothing else, it elevated the knowledge of the curious and made it clear that there was an enormous breadth in rums, so much so that historical info aside, anyone could find something to please themselves. (It was followed up in 1997 by another book calledThe Complete Guide to Rum”).

Dave Broom’s 2003 book “Rum” was a coffee-table sized book that combined narrative and photographs, and included a survey of the rum producing nations and islands and regions to that time. It was weak on soleras, missed independents altogether and almost ignored Asia, but had one key new ingredientthe introduction and codification of rum into styles. Then as now, the debate over how to classify rum was a problem. Colour was still used as a main marker and gradation of type (the additives and coloration debate had yet to reach wide attention, and was all but unknown to the drinking public), stills were not considered a way to distinguish rums. Mr. Broom’s contribution to the field was to at least attempt to stratify rums: in his case, regions that had broad similarities of production and profile: Jamaican, Guyanese, Bajan, Spanish and French island (agricole) styles. Cachacas were not brought into the classification and there was no real way to incorporate multi-regional blends or rums from outside the system (like, oh, Australia) – but it was an remains enormously influential, though by now somewhat dated and overtaken by events (he issued a follow-up “Rum: The Manual” in 2016, the same year as “Rum Curious” by Fred Minnick came out).

What these books did was make rum interesting and more appreciated in the eyes of the larger public, in a pre-internet world where whisky prices were just starting to climb. They showcased something of the variety that rum provided, and educated many neophyte rum lovers into the foundations of their favourite drink. It showed them the varieties and differences and production methods that allowed a more sophisticated understanding of the spirit. Rum was clearly not just some blended bathtub moonshine for the sweet-toothed who didn’t appreciate a single malt, or a bland and boring mixing agentbut a spirit with a long and technically rigorous, geographically broad-based history that deserved mention, if not respect.

The Internet

To some extent the remarks here are a subset of larger cultural shifts around the world which were enabled by the internet and the world wide web itself. Access was available in 1995, but nowhere near as ubiquitous as it became over the subsequent decades. The internet enabled web pages, those pages enabled blogs, blogs became review sites and fora for interactionand all of it created a communications revolution for rum lovers. What this allowed and promoted was a new understanding of the spirit, a grasp of its enormous stylistic range and geographical dispersion, as well as quick dissemination of information on rums, brands, companies, personalities, reviews, and opinions. It’s no accident that the sugar imbroglio (see a brief discussion in Part 3) arose only after the internet permitted such exponential interaction and news-exchange among drinkers; or that the first rum festivals began springing up just as the first review sites did, in the mid 2000s. The importance and impact of the web on rum appreciation simply cannot be overstated.

It took more time for the first write ups of Velier to come out the door on such websites, but before that happened there came one website that proved to be enormously influential, which all bloggers from that era remember.

Ed Hamilton and the Ministry of Rum

It took years after its launching in 1995 for the Ministry of Rum to acquire the central status it held for the next decade, and in its heyday it was one of the key places for aficionados to meet and share information (Capn Jimbo’s site was the other), and likely the most popular. While it possessed a fair amount of articles and searchable information on distilleries, brands and countries – a first at that time, and a godsend to the researchers – the real basis for its influence and popularity was the forum and discussion area, and, to a lesser extent, the Connoisseur’s Cabinet where occasional reviews would be posted (with Ed’s permissionand for the record he refused it to me when I asked after passing review #50, notingcorrectlythat too many new and aspiring writers folded after a couple of years). At its peak, there would be new discussion threads and posts springing up daily, sharing information, raising issues, offering advice and opinions. Even now in 2018 there’s a steady trickle of people on that site, posting “Hi I’m a new rum lover from ____”.

In these days of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, Tumblr, Pinterest, blogs, aggregators, instant messaging and full-time online presences, it’s difficult to remember how groundbreaking this trend actually was. Now rum lovers did not have to create websites (a difficult and often confusing task in the early 2000s) and then hope that they would be found – they could simply post on the Ministry. Many of the older names in the rum writing game started their careers by commenting – extensively – here. This one original website did more than most other avenues to help disseminate information and news about rum, and introduced the vocal, dedicated fans to one another, a process that has accelerated with the advent of social media.

Independent Bottlers / Private Labels

If you put aside the 151 overproofs that Bacardi, Lemon Hart, Cruzan, Don Q, Goslings, Matusalem and a handful of others were releasing, the limited edition “cask strength” market was all but nonexistent until a decade ago, and these 75.5% mastodons were all you got. All were considered cocktail bases, not rums in their own right: they were certainly not premiums. Such cask-strength rums as were considered a cut above the ordinary were mostly issued by independents, not by major producers (who limited themselves to powerful cocktail mixers like the 151s), and the independents weren’t looking to make overproofs but echoed whisky maker’s full-proof ethos.

Almost alone in the world, then, the Europeans issued a few high-proof bottlings, released by re-bottlers and spirits companies such as Cadenhead, Gordon & MacPhail, A.D. Rattray, Berry Brothers & Rudd among others; as well as smaller concerns like Illva Saronno (Italy), Vaughan-Jones (UK), EH Keeling (UK), Antoniazzi (Italy), John Milroy (UK), Frederic Robinson (UK), Austin Nichols (USA), A.A. Baker (US), Nicholson (UK), Watson’s (UK), Sangster, Baird-Taylor, Gilbey & Matheson, Henry & White, Lemon Hart, (among many many others). The Germans had their own such companies such as those around Flensburg (Rendsburger, Dethleffson and Berentzen Brennereien for example, who made long forgotten rums under brand names like Asmussen, Schmidt, Nissen, Anderson and Sonnberg). And there was a scattering here and there, like Walter Reid in Australia, la Martiniquaise and Bardinet in France, a smattering of Americans…and quite a few small outfits in Italy.

It was a lonely occupation for these rebottlers and small operations, because the rums they createdwhether aged, blended, high-proofed or all these at oncenever really sold very well even at standard strength. Fabio Rossi, who started Rum Nation in 1999, told me it took more than two years to sell the first Supreme Lord and Demerara series of rums he started off with; and as recently as 2012, one could get the entire Velier Caroni outturn to that point for a couple thousand euros (on ebay’s Italian site), a situation which could certainly not happen today. It was the hard-to-shake perception of rum as not being “premium” that was at the bottom of it, a situation it took another ten years to rectify, and it was the small, nimble companies who we now refer to as “independents” who led the way.

A word should be spared for the work of the Martinique and Guadeloupe rum producers which don’t conform to the title of independents, but which also laid some of the groundwork for the renaissance of strong and singular rums that was about to take off. These small estate distilleries sold their rums primarily on the local market and exported to France through their own distribution arms there. Among all their lightly aged rums and blends and whites, they also and occasionally produced millesimes which were specific years’s limited productions, bottled when such outturns were considered a cut above the ordinary. And while these were never very consistent (each one was different from the last), never really aged beyond all reason, only occasionally issued beyond 50% – they did showcase that a particular year’s output of rum might be considered a connoisseur’s drink and could be said to be grand-uncles of the single barrel releases by others. And that is why the Clement 1952 and 1976, the Damoiseau 1953, Bally 1939 and 1960 and 1970, Montebello 1948 remain hugely expensive, yet still-sought-after exemplars of craft rum making by the producers of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

However, it’s the Italian companies which were to some extent key to the emergent Age, because although many were simply importers and distributors, some also dabbled in blending and reissuing of rums under their own labels. They created the culture of Italian independents that dated back to the 1960s when sweetened “rhum fantasias” were in vogue in Italy, produced by companies like Pagliarini, Toccini and Seveso; they were accompanied by importers and rebottlers (Veronelli, Soffiantino, Martinazzi, Antoniazzi, Pedroni, Illva Saronno, and Guiducci are just a few examples) which led to their more successful inheritors, Samaroli, Moon Imports, Silver Seal and Velier, just about all who started with single barrel whiskies before turning their attention to rums.

Which leads us to that little importing company from Genoa, and its ownerLuca Gargano.

Luca Gargano and Velier

In the 1980s, Velier was a small family-owned Genoese spirits distributor with perhaps a quarter million dollars a year turnover and a staff of less than ten. It had been formed in 1947 by Casimir Chaix and concerned itself primarily with importing and distributing wines, spirits, brandy, tea and cocoa. Luca Gargano changed all that by buying it in 1986, when he was still only in his twenties. He had been a very young brand ambassador for St. James (from Martinique) and the experience had left him with a deep appreciation for rums, especially artisanal ones. When the time came for him to start a company of his own, he used Velier as a vehicle for his deeply held beliefs and the outpouring of his ideas.

Luca, who came from a family that was both close to the land and well connected in Italian commercial and political society, had spent years traversing the Caribbean in his time with St. James. His filial connection with traditional farming and agriculture, his observation of the way technology was changing the world (not necessarily for the better), his feelings about politicians and the slanted biases of the news, led him to create his now-famous Five Principles: nothing happens in specific chunks of time; newspapers and the media are there for sales and not truth; politicians are in it for themselves; telephones tie you to themselves but offer little except conversations that were better and more enjoyably conducted in person; and why stress out about driving a car when one can use taxis? And as a consequence he stopped watching TV, didn’t waste his time with newspapers or personal vehicles, chucked away his watch and never bothered with a cell phone of his own.

But there was a sixth principle, not often stated, yet deeply held. And that was that food and drink should be as natural as possible, organic, free from the interferences of technology, fresh from the land. When one applies that to food it’s one thing, but few before him sought to apply the concept to rums (except perhaps out of necessity). He felt that rum should be bottled as it either came off the stills or out of the ageing barrel without further messing around. He may have known more than we did in those more innocent times, because although it is now common knowledge that many old favourites which came to the market in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s were dosed with additives, back in the day there was a lot more trust going around between consumers and producers.

Whatever the case, Luca wanted to put his name on pure rums that were as close to the still as possible, and if aged, fresh out of the barrel. He started by finding some old Guyanese rums, continentally aged, and put them out the door in 1996, with a further set of three in 2000. Neither entirely satisfied him, because the first set was diluted down to 40% and the second to 46%. A third series was released in 2002, also at 46% by which time he was in a better position to negotiate barrels with DDL.

And he needed to go further with his ideas on rums, because these early Demerara rums, to put it bluntly, made no mark, no splash, and fell flat. They sold, but not well (I’ve been able to pick a few up as late as 2017), and in any event were not exactly what he wanted. The continental ageing and dilution in particular dissatisfied himhe felt something of the intrinsic character of the underlying distillate that showcased the stills and their uniqueness, had been lost. He pulled in his horns, gave it some thought and was much more personal and involved in his future selections. He wanted to issue a rum that was at the full proof of the barrel, not some milquetoast please-the-most rum which he himself did not appreciate.

He was still wrestling with whether this was a workable commercial concept when he found a stored 18 year old rum at Damoiseau in Guadeloupe which was so spectacular, that he released it at 60.3% ABV in 2002, crossing his fingers as he did so. The success of the Damoiseau 1980 made it clear that among people who knew their stuff, such rums would sell and find their own audience and he not limit himself in the future, as he had with the past three releases.

He issued no new rums for the next three years, and then emerged with the next outturn in 2005. Four rums, one of them almost a legend. The Age can be said to have begun here.

In Part 2 I’ll look at the rums of the Age, and in Part 3 make some points about the aftermath of their issue and revisit some of thesehistoricalfigures to see where they’re at in 2018.


Notes

Much of this is written based on my own writing and thinking and life experiences, though I have dipped into other bloggerspublished work here and there (like Matt Pietrek’s essay on Scheer and Marco Freyr’s background essays on Barrel Aged Mind). The research done in writing my own rum reviews and company biographies for nearly ten years has provided much of the remainder.

It’s hard to find people whose memories stretch back that far, to recapture the flavour of what the pre-1990s rum world was likeso some artistic license has been used to describe those times, though the facts are as accurate as I could make them.

The section on older aged rums and independents is by no means exhaustive. It’s surprising how difficult it is to find exactly when a particular ten- or twelve- or fifteen-year-old rum first emerged on the scene, and to find discontinued variations becomes an exercise in real Holmesian diligence. I used my own photographs from Velier’s 4000+ rum warehouse for some of the examples in this section, and I would be remiss if I did not mention Peter’s Rum Labels in Czechoslovakia, which is an amazing resource, the best one of its kind in the world. I hope that people with large rum collections built up over many decades will one day allow people like me access to their stocksto photograph and catalogue them (and maybe even to try a few) and for sure to write about them, as I do for the Rumaniacs. Too much history is being lost just because we don’t know enough, forgot too much, and never thought to record things properly.

Needless to say, if any mistakes or errors (especially of omission) are noted, please let me know and I’ll make amendments where required.

Jun 032018
 

Rating a rum against comparators is an invaluable tool for any reviewer because it allows differences and similarities, strengths and weaknesses to not only snap into focus more clearly, but to buttress one’s memory of other rums tried in times gone by. And although Guyanese rums are losing some of their lustre these days as the Age of Velier’s Demeraras fades to black and Foursquare is the name du jour, DDL’s killer app is still going strong, and the various permutations of the stills’ output may be the most recognizable, distinctive rum style around (bar perhaps the current New Jamaicans or Reunion islanders’ work). So when a halo rum comes around, it needs to really be run through the wringer to ensure a proper placement on the leaderboard.

For those who felt I was being unfair to DDL and their 50th Anniversary rum, or overly critical of the El Dorado 25 Year Old from 1988, let me show you what it was up against that day and give you a rum flight of as-yet-mostly-unwritten-about Demeraras which will be posted in the months to come. I don’t do enough of these and always enjoy doing a lineup for the curious; and here I think it might be a useful piece of background reading for the 25 and 50. And indeed, the more I wrote about the results, the more occurred to meI hope you find my remarks below the thumbnails informative and not overly lengthy.

So here we are. Note these are just tasting notes, with few opinions, and no scoresthose can be found on the full reviews. The purpose here is to rank them against each other and provide some conclusions for examination and discussion.


El Dorado Rare Collection PM <SVW> + Diamond Velier 70th Anniversary 16 YO

54.3%, tropical ageing

NPerfumed rum. No, really. Hot pencil shavings, rubber, sawdust and the flowery notes of esters looking for Jamaica. It noses sweet and fruity, in a really intense way. Develops into a musky, fruity and deep series of aromas, including strawberries in cream, vanilla and a little licorice.

PStrong spices: nutmeg and cinnamon. Also caramel, coffee, creme brulee, molasses and anise. Goes deeper and fruitier as it opens upraisins, ripe apples, peaches. Also woody, sweet sawdust (I know that sounds weird) and lighter flowers.

FLovely, long, lingering, lasting. Molasses and coffee are dominant, with subtler flowers and fruity backgrounds, and a bit of candied oranges and mint.

El Dorado Rare Collection 2nd Batch Port Mourant 1997 20 YO

57.9%, tropical ageing

NoseA more elemental version of the Velier 70 PM <SVW>, perhaps a smidgen better because it is more focused. Represents the PM profile in fine style, a little dialled down and not as furious as some others I’ve had. Bags of dark fruitraisins, dark grapes, datesanise, vanilla, flowers, also peaches and prunes and plums, very deep, very rich.

PalateCoffee, sawdust and pencil shavings are instantly and initially dominant, but fade over time, replaced with more of those dark fruit notes of blackberries, plums and prunes, all very ripe. Background flavours of coconut and chocolate ameliorate these, taming it a little without obscuring the sharper flavours. Easy to sip, warm rather than sharp.

FinishSpices emerge here, mostly cinnamon. Also oakiness (not too much), coffee grounds. Bitter chocoolate, anise and vanilla, some lighter fruits.

El Dorado Rare Collection 2nd Batch Enmore 1996 20 YO

57.2%, tropical ageing

NoseFor a rum at cask strength, this Enmore is almost gentle. Rich, pungent aromas of freshly sawn lumber, damp sawdust. The smells of coffee, chocolate and vanilla are offset somewhat by a nice sweet acetone background. Softer blancmange and creme brulee provide a soft contrast and it’s almost like a gentle PM.

PalateSoft and generally quite approchable, without losing any of the qualities imparted by the robust proof. Fruits are forward this timecherries, raisins, grapes, fried sweet bananas, and that haunting memory of hot dry earth being hit by summer raindrops. More caramel and molasses, quite genteel in its own way. Can’t help but wonder about dosage, but lacked the equipment to test for it, and frankly, I have to admit that this works really really well in spite of such questions.

FinishLong and langurous, giving back some musty, musky flavours that are mostly raisins, anise and vanilla.

El Dorado 1988 25 YO

43%, tropical ageing

NoseWarm, well rounded, with opening notes of coconuts, bananas, molasses, caramel and some anise. Some fruits emerge almost reluctantlyraisins, prunes, fleshy apricots. Too much sweetness, it smells thick in a way that is just short of cloying

PalateSweet and thick. Vanilla, molasses, caramel, some licorice. White chocolate, flowers, indeterminate fruits, a little citrus. It’s all very tamped down and muffled, and the adulteration is clear and evident, lending a liqueur-like aspect to the entire experience.

FinishUnclear, melded and something of a nonexistent affair. Some caramel and toffee, a bit of citrus. Short and very sweet.

El Dorado 50th Anniversary 33 YO

43%, tropical ageing (33 YO)

NoseRich, well balanced. Deep aromas of molasses and licorice and raisins. Coffee grounds, cherries, vanilla, leather, some smokiness, followed after opening up with salt caramel and ripe fleshy fruits.

PalateMore of that salt caramel, pencil shavings, apples, guavas, more licorice, chocolate and coffee, plus a little citrus for bite and some vanilla. The sweetness starts to become more noticeable here, and the promise of what it started out as, is lost.

FinishShort, rather easy (possibly a function of the relatively low strength). Molasses, toffee, white chocolate and anise for the most part

Velier Uitvlugt 1996 “Modified GS” 18 YO

57.2%, tropical ageing

NoseRefined, gentle and easy, and that’s not something I say about Velier’s or cask strength bruisers very often. Very distinct: molasses, brown sugar, caramel and vanilla t start. Adds licorice and a lot of dark fruits (mostly prunes and plums, I would say). Some light citrus peel and brine.

PalateSomehow the nose is easy while the taste is sharp, not sure how that happened. Salt caramel, brine, olives, brown sugar, combining with tart fruits: red currants, apples, raspberries, prunes, as well as smoke and well-worn and oft-polished leather.

FinishCrisp, distinct and clear. Orange peel, vanilla, molasses and some of the fruits noted from the plate returning for a last bow. Solidly traditional profile with a character all its own.

Habitation Velier PM White Unaged

59% (unaged)

NSharp and fierce, almost jagged. Rubber, sugar water, watermelon, pears, nuts and fruits. No caramel or toffee flavours here.

PVegetable soup and salt beef with brine and olives. Also licorice, leather, flowers, floor polish. Some green apples, lime zest and an odd vanilla twist. Complex, crisp, clear, seriously intense. Not for everyone, but for those who like itoh yeah.

FLong and dry. Soy sauce, more veggie soup, sugar water.

Velier Port Mourant 1972 36 YO

47.8%, tropical and continental ageing

NoseHeavenly. Sweet deep raisins and licorice, soya, coffee, bitter chocolate, leather and smoke. There’s just so much going on here it’s amazing. White pepper, dates, light briny notes, aromatic tobacco, overripe cherries.

PalateLicorice right up front in fine style, blended in with vanilla, some light caramel and white pears. Flowers, sawdust, ripe mangoes, raisins, black grapes, oakthe nose wasn’t lying, I could go at this for another couple of hours.

FinishAll of the above. Plus some mint.


Having given you a precis of each of these rums, let’s just sum up the ranking (scoring will be in the full reviews, since that’s not the purpose of this flight):

  • 1stVelier PM 1972 36 YO
  • 2ndEl Dorado Rare 2nd Batch Enmore 1996 20 YO
  • 3rdHabitation Velier PM White Unaged
  • 4thEl Dorado PM+Diamond Velier 70th Anniv 16 YO
  • 5thEl Dorado Rare 2nd Batch PM 1997 20 YO tied with Velier Uitvlugt 1996 18 YO
  • 7thEl Dorado 50th Anniversary 33 YO
  • 8thEl Dorado 1988 25 YO

What can we glean from such a lineup, small as it may be?

Well, first of all, this is a flight that could be done blind and the lower proofed El Dorados (the 33 YO and 25 YO) would have stood out immediately, with the 1988 falling down dead last because of its additives and less complex profile when compared to the 50th Anniversary, which itself was given away by both strength and dosage. Also, the PM White would have been self explanatory; and the Uitvlugt 1996 because of its “non-PM/EHP” taste profile could easily be identified. The depth and colour and rich taste of the Velier 1972 would distinguish it in any company, so the only real difficulty would be to separate out the Enmore from the other El Dorado Rares, and then figure out which was the PM+Diamond and which the pure PMin point of fact, I did indeed do this tasting blind, though I knew the 8 rums which were in the mashup.

To me it’s clear that DDL has exactly zero need to adulterate its aged rums. The Enmore was really quite a lovely piece of work and the unaged PM white makes the point even more clearly. In this day and age, given the quality of the Rares and the track record of Velier in issuing ultra-aged rums from DDL (and remember, Luca never got to choose freely, just from what DDL themselves allowed him to see, implying that they knew of old stashes squirrelled away elsewhere which they thought of using themselves one day), there is simply no need for adulteration. Taming cask strength blends with distilled water would, I think, be quite enough. Yet DDL keeps on churning out the dosed Old Dependablesthe 12, 15, 21 and the really-quite-oversugared 25 year olds from 1980, 1986 and 1988 — perhaps because they really are such dependable sellers and if it ain’t broke why fix it, so why mess with a good cash cow? But I honestly hope they will one day reduce or eliminate the practice entirelyit’s an exercise in pandering to the audience, and the days for that are behind us (my opinion). (Note: in 2020 Shaun Caleb of DDL mentioned that the practice was indeed being phased out).

Of particular note is the PM unaged white, which is admittedly a rather fearsome drink to have on its own. Habitation Velier created this entire “unaged white” series for one purposeto showcase familiar rums from various countries (or estates), but with the twist that this was it was all pot still rum, and in the unaged ones, as close to the original state of the juice as it came dripping off the still as possible, and how excellent (in their opinion) they were, even in that nascent unaged condition. Having had oodles of PM rums over the last ten years, I can absolutely assure you that it may be hot and fierce, but many of the markers we look for in that profile are there, right from the get-goin the various aged expressions in this lineup we see the many branches of the tree that this elemental seed grows into.

The Uitvlugt 1996 also comes in for some mentionit’s easier and quieter and lighter than the others (which is why it can be picked out with relative ease), and it may be one of the better all-round sipping rums which is specifically not from a wooden still. Myself, I really enjoy the licorice and woody notes of the PM, VSG and EHP, but that should not blind anyone to the quality of what the other stills can do.

The stories I heard about the second batch of the El Dorado Rare Collection being better than the first are really truethey are. Not by leaps and bounds, no, but incrementally and demonstrably so nevertheless (I wish I could have tested them for dosage, even so). If the third batch (it’s now in prep, three marques, all interesting) keeps at this level of quality, then all those who rent their robes and gnashed their teeth about the booting out of Velier in 2015 can at least be comforted that there is some kind of replacement on the horizon, even if, with their usual odd marketing, DDL never lets on what the outturn is (or was). There remains one caveat…I’m still seeing them on store shelves and online rum emporia too often, and that to me suggests they are not selling wellso I think some price adjustment had better be made and a more targeted marketing strategy laid outbecause if they see poor sales then no distributor or store will want them and then DDL might just give up the whole ideawhich is not exactly what any of us want to see.

Lastly, note the preponderance of topical ageing here; and in particular, the bifurcated ageing of the PM 1972 which was the top rum of the day. Luca is a fierce believer and proselytizer of laying barrels to rest in the tropicsand always has beenand scorns continental ageing that so many independents go for when plumbing the works of Scheer for their European indie bottlings. The 1972 shows that other approaches are possible and work in spectacular fashion. Me, I’m somewhat on the fence about this and lack his dynamic laser-like focus on tropical only (though of course, we approach the matter from differing perspectives). Brutally quick tropical maturation gives quick returns and amazingly rich and robust profiles, but I’ve had enough really interesting continentals of similar equivalent age (1 yr tropical can be said to be 5-6 yrs continental, give or take) to appreciate the quieter subtleties they impart as well. And as I remarked humorously to him some time ago, there’s no way we could have ever gotten a Longpond 58 year old rum in the tropics (an Appleton 75 due in 2037 and an El Dorado 75 in 2041 will let us see if this is true).

Anyway, the rankings I’ve done show how the preceding paragraphs impact the placement and hint at the eventual scoring, to be added in here when the real reviews are written. Age and the still and strength are less indicators of quality on their own than complexity and originality of taste and the way these come together in a cohesive whole. No one element dictates quality, they all do. The PM white is unaged but beat both the 43% offerings; it is stronger than all the rest, but slipped in relation to the Rares, and the 1972 was standard proof (almost) but came out on top. Just about every rum tried (aside from the sweetened abominations of the 25 and 33) scored in the high eighties and snapped at the heels of the exceptional Velier 1972. Now that’s a wonderful rum, and it’s not that it fails, but that others succeeded and are getting better all the timeand that probably shows the full proof concept and aged rum ideas Velier gave us, have been learned by DDL (now if they could only forego that damned dosage…).

If nothing else, this brief look at eight rums from Guyana demonstrates to us all that the future remains a bright and vibrant and experimental and interesting one for Demerara rums, and they won’t be relegated to second class status any time soon. And that should give us all reason to hope for more in the years to comeeven if they’re not the Veliers we remember so fondly.

Nov 012017
 

*

All apologies to those who like the Bacardi Superior, Lamb’s White and other filtered, smooth, bland (dare I say boring?) 40% white rums in their cocktails, or who just like to get hammered on whatever is cheap to get and easily availablebut you can do better. For anyone who likes a massive white rum reeking of esters and funk and God only knows what else, one of the great emergent trends in the last decade has surely been the new selection and quality of white rums from around the world. Almost all are unaged, some are pot still and some are column, they’re usually issued at north of 45%, they exude badass and take no prisoners, and in my opinion deserve more than just a passing mention.

Now, because aged rums get all the press and are admittedly somewhat better tasting experiences, white (or ‘clear’ or ‘blanc’) rums aren’t usually accorded the same respect, and that’s fairI’d never deny their raw and oft-uncouth power, which can be a startling change from softer or older juice. They aren’t always sipping quality rums, and some are out and out illogical and should never see the light of day. Yet we should never ignore them entirely. They are pungent and flavourful beyond belief, with zesty, joyful profiles and off-the-reservation craziness worthy of attention, and many compare very favourably to rums costing twice or three times as much.

So let me just provide the curious (the daring?) a list of some white rums I’ve tried over the last years. It’s by no means exhaustive, so apologies if I’ve left off a personal favouriteI can only list what I myself have tried. And admittedly, not all will find favour and not all will appealbut for sheer originality and gasp-inducing wtf-moments, you’re going to look far to beat these guys. And who knows? You might even like a few, and at least they’re worth a shot. Maybe several.

(Note: I’ve linked to written reviews where available. For those where the full review hasn’t been published yet, some brief tasting notes. Scores are excluded, since I’m trying to show them off, not rank them, and in any case they’re in no particular order).


[1] Clairin SajousHaiti

If creole still haitian white rums not made by Barbancourt had a genesis in the wider world’s perceptions, it might have been this one and its cousins. In my more poetic moments I like to say the Sajous didn’t get introduced, it got detonated, and the reverbrations are still felt today. There were always white unaged popskulls aroundthis one and the Vaval and Casimir gave them respectability.

[2] J. Bally Blanc AgricoleMartinique

What a lovely rum this is indeed. J. Bally has been around for ages, and they sure know what they’re doing. This one is aged for three months and filtered to white, yet somehow it still shows off some impressive chops. The 50% helps for sure. Apples, watermelon, some salt and olives and tobacco on the nose, while the palate is softer than the strength might suggest, sweet, with fanta, citrus, thyme carrying the show. Yummy.

[3] St. Aubin Agricole Rhum BlancMauritius

New Grove, Gold of Mauritius and Lazy Dodo might be better known right now, but Chamarel and St Aubin are snapping at their heels. St. Aubin made this phenomenal pot still 50% brutus and I can’t say enough good things about it. It has a 1960’s-style Batman style salad bar of Pow! Biff! Smash! Brine, grass, herbs, salt beef and gherkins combine in a sweaty, hairy drink that is amazingly controlled white rhum reminiscent of both a clairin and a Jamaican.

[4] DDL Superior High WineGuyana

Nope, it’s not a wine, and it sure isn’t superior. I’m actually unsure whether it’s still made any longerand if it is, whether it’s made on the same still as before. Whatever the case, Guyanese swear by it, I got one of my first drunks on it back in University days, and the small bottle I got was pungent, fierce and just about dissolved my glass. At 69% it presents as grassy, fruity, and spicy, with real depth to the palate, and if it’s a raw scrape of testosterone-fuelled sandpaper on the glottis, well, I’ve warned you twice now.

[5] Novo Fogo Silver CachacaBrazil

Fair enough, there are thousands of cachacas in Brazil, and at best I’ve tried a couple of handfuls. Of the few that crossed my path, whether aged or not, this one was a standout for smooth, sweet, aromatic flavours that delicately mixed up sweet and salt and a nice mouthfeeleven at 40% it presented well. Josh Miller scored it as his favourite with which to make a caipirinha some time back when he was doing his 14-rum cachaca challenge. Since it isn’t all that bombastic or adversarial, it may be one of the more approachable rums of its kind that isbest of allquite widely available.

[6] Neisson L’Espirit 70° BlancMartinique

Breathe deep and easy on this one, and sip with care. Then look at the glass again, because if your experience parallels mine, you’ll be amazed that this is a 140-proof falling brick of oomphit sure doesn’t feel that way. In fact there’s a kind of creaminess mixed up with nuts and citrus that is extremely enjoyable, and when I tried (twice), I really did marvel that so much taste could be stuffed into an unaged spirit and contained so well.

[7] Rum Fire VelvetJamaica

Whew! Major tongue scraper. Massive taste, funk and dunder squirt in all directions. Where these whites are concerned, my tastes tend to vacillate between clairins and Jamaicans, and here the family resemblance is clear. Tasting notes like beeswax, rotten fruit and burnt sausages being fried on a stinky kero flame should not dissuade you from giving this one a shot at least once, though advisories are in order, it being 63% and all.

[8] Charley’s JB Overproof (same as J. Wray 63%) – Jamaica

A big-’n’-bad Jamaican made only for country lads for the longest while, before townies started screaming that the boys in the backdam shouldn’t have all the fun and it got issued more widely on the island. Very similar to the J. Wray & Nephew White Overproof with which it should share the spotlight, because they’re twins in all but name..

[9] Nine Leaves Clear 2015 – Japan

If Yoshiharu Takeuchi of the Japanese concern Nine Leaves wasn’t well known before he released the Encrypted for Velier’s 70th Anniversary, he should be. He’s a Japanese rum renaissance samurai, a one-man distillery operation, marketing manager, cook and candlestick makerand his 50% unaged whites are excellent. This one from 2015 melded a toned down kind of profile, redolent of soap, cinnamon, nutmeg, apples and other light fruits, and is somewhat better behaved than its Caribbean cousinsand a damned decent rum, a velvet sleeve within which lurks a well made glittering wakizashi. (the 2017 ain’t bad either).

[10] Cavalier Rum Puncheon White 65% – Antigua

Same as the 151 but with little a few less rabbits in its jock. Since the Antigua Distiller’s 1981 25 year old was review #001 and I liked it tremendously (before moving on) I have a soft spot for the companywhich shouldn’t dissuade anyone from trying this raging beast, because in it you can spot some of those delicate notes of blackberries and other fruit which I so enjoyed in their older offerings. Strong yes, a tad thin, and well worth a try.

[11] Rum Nation Pot Still White 57% – Jamaica

One of the first Independents to go the whole hog with a defiantly unaged white. It’s fierce, it’s smelly, it’s flavourful, and an absolute party animal. I call mine Bluto. It’s won prizes up and down the festival circuit (including 2017 Berlin where I tried it again) and with good reasonit’s great, attacking with thick, pot still funk and yet harnessing some delicacy and quieter flavours too.

[12] Kleren Nasyonal Traditionnal 22 Rhum BlancHaiti

Moscoso Distillers is the little engine that couldI suspect that if Velier had paused by their place back when Luca was sourcing Haitian clairins to promote, we’d have a fifth candidate to go alongside Sajous,Vaval, Casimir and La Rocher. Like most creole columnar still products made in Haiti, it takes some palate-adjustment to dial in its fierce, uncompromising nature properly. And it is somewhat rough, this one, perhaps even jagged. But the tastes are so joyously, unapologetically there, that I enjoyed it just as much as other, perhaps more genteel products elsewhere on this list.

[13] Toucan 50% Rhum Blanc AgricoleFrench Guiana

This new white only emerged in the last year or two, and for a rum as new as this to make the list should tell you something. I tried it at the 2017 Berlin rumfest and liked it quite a bit, because it skated the line between brine, olives, furniture polish and something sweeter and lighter (much like the Novo Fogo does, but with more emphasis)…and at 50% it has the cojones to back up its braggadocio. It’s a really good white rhum.

[14] Rum Nation Ilha de Madeira Agricole 2017

Lovely 50% white, with an outstanding flavour profile. Not enough research available yet for me to talk about its antecedents aside from it being of Madeira origin and “natural” (which I take to mean unaged for the moment). But just taste the thinga great combo of soda pop and more serious flavours of brine, gherkins, grass, vanilla, white chocolate. There’s edge to it and sweet and sour and salt and it comes together reallly well. One of those rums that will likely gain wide acceptance because of being toned down some. Reminds me of both the Novo Fogo and the St. Aubin whites, with some pot still Jamaican thrown in for kick.

[15] A1710 La Perle

A1710 is a new kid on the block out of Martinique, operating out of Habitation Simon. This white they issued at 54.5% is one of the best ones I’ve tried. Nose of phenols, swank, acetones, freshly sawn lumber, bolted onto a nearly indecently tasty palate of wax, licorice, sugar water, sweet bonbons and lemongrass. It’s almost cachaca-likejust better.

This list was supposed to be ten but then it grew legs and fangs, so what the hell, here are a few more Honourable Mentions for the rabid among you…

[16] Marienburg 90% – Suriname

This is Blanc Vader. With two light sabers. Admittedly, I only included it to showcase the full power of the blanc side. It’s not really that good. However, if you have it (or scored a sample off me) then you’ve not only gotten two standard proofed bottles for the price of one but also the dubious distinction of possessing full bragging rights at any “I had the strongest rum ever” competition. Right now, I’m one of the few of those.

[17] Sunset Very Strong Overproof 84.5%)

The runner up in the strength sweepstakes. Even at that strength, it has a certain creamy delicacy to it which elevates it above the Marienburg. Overall, it’s not really suited for anything beyond a mix and more bragging rightsbecause the hellishly ferocious palate destroys everything in its path. It’s a Great White, surelike Jaws.

[18] St. Nicholas Abbey Unaged WhiteBarbados

This is another very approachable white rum, unaged, a “mere” 40% which blew the Real McCoy 3 year old white away like a fart in a high wind. Part of it is its pot still antecedents. It’s salty sweet (more sweet than salt) with a juicy smorgasbord of pretty flavours dancing lightly around without assaulting you at the same time. A great combo of smoothness and quiet strength and flavour all at once, very approachable, and much more restrained (ok, it’s weaker) than others on this list.

[19] Vientain LoatanLaos

Probably the least of all these rhums in spite of being bottled at 56%, and the hardest to find due to it hardly being exported, and mostly sold in Asia. On the positive side is the strength and the tastes, very similar to agricoles. On the negative some of those tastes are bitter and don’t play well together, the balance is off and overall it’s a sharp and raw rhum akin to uncured vinegar, in spite of some sweet and citrus. Hard to recommend, but hard to ignore too. May be worth a few tries to come to grips with it.

[20] Mana’o Rhum Agricole BlancTahiti

Not so unique, not so fierce, not so pungent as other 50% rums on this list, but tasty nevertheless. Again, like Rum Nation’s Ilha de Madeira, it’s quite easily appreciated because the 50% ABV doesn’t corner you in an alley, grab you by the glottis and shake you down for your spare cash, and is somehow tamed into a more well-behaved sort of beast, with just a bit of feral still lurking behind it all.

[21] La Confrérie du Rhum 2014 Cuvée Speciale Rhum BlancGuadeloupe

A hot, unaged, spicy 50% blanc, with an estery nose, firm body and all round excellent series of tastes that do the Longueteau operation proud. It’s lighter than one might expect for something at this strength, and overall is a solid, tasty and well-put-together white rhum. La Confrerie is a quasi-independent operation run by Benoit Bail and Jerry Gitany and they do single cask bottlings from time to timetheir focus is agricoles, and all that knowledge and promotion sure isn’t going to waste.


So there you have it, a whole bunch of modern white rums spanning the globe for you to take a look at (as noted above, I’ve missed some, but then, I haven’t tried them all).

I used to think that whites were offhand efforts tossed indifferently into the rum lineup by producers who focused on “more serious work” and gave them scant attention, as if they were the bastard offspring of glints in the milkman’s eye. No longer.

Nowadays they are not only made seriously but taken seriously, and I know several bartenders who salivate at the mere prospect of getting a few of these torqued up high-tension hooches to play with as they craft their latest cocktail. I drink ‘em neat, others mix ‘em up, but whatever the case, it is my firm belief you should try some of the rums on this list at least once, just to see what the hell the ‘Caner is ranting on about. I almost guarantee you won’t be entirely disappointed.

And bored? No chance.


Other notes

Consider this a companion piece to Josh Miller’s excellent rundown of 12 agricoles, taken from his perspective of how they fare in a Ti Punch.

Two years after publishing this list in 2017, I found others, and so published a list of 21 More White Rums in 2019, and would you believe it, the niche expanded sufficiently to add yet another 21 in 2022.

Aug 222017
 


So the other day a guy on reddit wrote that he was was due for surgery and bored out of his mind and could us redditors perhaps post some facts about rum which he didn’t know? Well, now, that was a challenge, and while I may have missed the US National Rum Day, the idea took hold of me and after jotting down maybe ten or fifteen points of my own, I sent off a blast to all my rum chums, asking them for small anecdotes and trivia and facts they might know of, which are not all that well known

In the interests of full disclosure, it must be confessed that I’m a nut for inconsequential information-nuggetsmany of them, throwaway or useless factoids though they may be, are often the first threads that lead right down the rabbit hole into the labyrinth where great gnarled old stories are to be found, like abstract minotaurs who prey upon my free time and interests and happily consume both.

So here’s a listour listof a whole raft of such trivial pursuit winners, which won’t be unknown to rabid cognoscenti but which are interesting nevertheless; compiled for the benefit of MaxwellHouse5, and I’m hoping his surgery went well, and my huge thanks and hat tips to all those rum lovers out there who added to it.

****

  • The country with the most distilleries in it is Haiti, with over 500 (I’ve heard it may be much higher). Most of these are backyard, backhouse, Mom-and-Pop operations and sell to the local market.
  • The strongest commercially available rum is made in Suriname (90% ABV)
  • Sugar cane originated in South-East Asia, not the Caribbean
  • Although rum is made from sugar cane (juice, syrup (“vesou”), molasses), the distilled spirit is sugar free.
  • A Muslim from Persia (now Iran) named Muhammad ibn Zakaria Razi invented the first pot still, called an alembic, in the 9th Century AD. He was the first to write, draw and describe it, and it should be noted that it lacked a cooling ‘coil’ for a condenser and used a tube instead; moreover, it was not used for distillation of alcohol. The principle of distillation was, mind you, known for centuries before that.
  • The slang word for rum – “grog” – was named after a coat worn by a British Admiral. The same Admiral was who George Washington’s estate was named after.
  • In Germany, cheap supermarket hooch that isn’t very good (except for a headache) is referred to asfusel”, which comes from the wordfuselstoff” (for fusel oils).
  • The first website devoted to rum was created (as far as I can tell) in 1995.
  • Luca Gargano, the famed boss of Velier, does not wear a wristwatch, own a cellphone or drive a car. He canbut choses not to. As a further aside, Tatu Kaarlas, the Finn who runs the Australian rum wesbite Refined Vices, doesn’t wear a watch either.
  • The Coffey (or columnar) still in its original form was not invented by Aeneas Coffey, but by Robert Stein, whose 1828 still was in turn channelling Sir Anthony Perrier’s patented 1822 whiskey still. Aeneas perfected the design of both.
  • The Zacapa 23 is not 23 years old, and the Opthimus 25 ain’t 25.
  • The only successful armed takeover of an Australian Government was called the Rum Rebellion (though whether it really had anything to do with rum has been questioned) and overthrew William Blighyes, that William Bligh.
  • Rum used to be distilled (illegally) in small boats off the coast, in Australia
  • The South Pacific Distillery on Fiji is actually owned by the Coca-Cola Company (it’s part of their diversification strategy)
  • One of the reasons copper stills are so popular among rum makers is because they effectively remove sulphur compounds from the wash
  • Although copper stills are very common, stainless steel stills are also used. However, there are two stills in Guyana which are made out of wood, and they are the only ones in the world.
  • Almost all boilers on the estates in Martinique run on bagasse, the residue of cane crushing. The eco-champ might well be Rivers Royale in Grenada, which uses a water wheel for crushing cane.
  • The French call their sugar cane juice rhums agricoles (or agriculturals) and rather disdainfully refer to molasses based rums as Industrielles. Every rum maker who uses molasses, in turn, calls their rums “the best.”
  • The revamped Barik Distillery in Haiti was built from scrap metal which included washing machines and car doors.
  • Due to its inland location, St Lucia Distillers receives its molasses deliveries from tankers that anchor in Roseau Bay via a 2km long pipeline that follows the Roseau River. These molasses are from Guyana, and the story goes that when one such shipment was held up some years ago, causing a shortage of rum, riots nearly broke out.
  • In Barbados each still is given a Registration number. Even if removed from use, the still number is never re-assigned to a different stillwhich would sure as hell interest the guys who obsess over which still produced Velier’s famed Demeraras.
  • Barbados has four Rum Distilleries, but only St. Nicholas Abbey uses fresh pressed sugar cane juice for their rums; they do, however, reduce it to syrup first.
  • The initial rums of St. Nichloas Abbey were sourced from FourSquare, until their own stocks matured. They are primarily in the original 10, 12, 15 and 18 year old rums.
  • The most expensive commercially available rum in the world is the Appleton Estate 50 year old (retails for around US$5000 when it can be found). Honourable mention goes to the El Dorado 50th Anniversary bottling (which is not 50 years old) at around $3,500. Thecommercialcriterion excludes the single bottle of a 1940s J. Wray & Nephew (US$54,000), the 20-bottle Angostura Legacy (US$25,000), the ~US$6,000 St James 1885 or the 1780 Barbados rums found at Harewood. It also excludes the secondary market values of rums like the Velier Skeldon 1973, or the 1-bottle outturn of the Caputo 1973 which may well be priceless.
  • The rum which has been aged the longest remains the Gordon & MacPhail 1941 Longpond, at 58 years, bottled in 1999. For the deep-pocketed, it sells for around two thousand euros these days.
  • According to the Spirits Business, Bacardi remains the top selling rum brand, with Tanduay (Phillipines) and McDowell (India) in 2nd and 3rd. Both of the latter sell primarily to their local markets and Asia. There’s a story that Tanduay buys pot still rum from DDL to mix in small quantities into its rums, but this is unconfirmed.
  • In Jamaica, Captain Morgan is made by J. Wray & Newphew (i.e., Appleton). In the USA, if one strictly adheres to the TTB rules, Captain Morgan is not a rum at all.
  • The last distillery on the small island of Montserrat closed in the 1950s. It was called Farrell’s Estate.
  • Social media, engagement and festival speakers have pushed the matter of additives and adulteration to become perhaps the single most-discussed issue in the rum world. However, adulteration of rum has been around at least since the 18th century and is nothing new. (It’s good that we’re not letting tradition get in the way of reforming the practice).
  • Pusser’s rum is named after the purser, that gent who was in charge of giving sailors their daily tot in the British Royal Navy
  • The daily rum ration (the ‘tot’) began in the British Navy because of the inability to source brandy from France, which was often at war with Britain. Beer took up too much space. Lemon or lime juice was often added to rum to combat scurvy, which is why Brits were sometimes called ‘Limeys’. The German navy used sauerkraut (”sour herbs”, mostly pickled cabbage) for the same purpose, hence the pejorative “kraut.”
  • Guyana, which was called British Guiana prior to independence in 1966, and home of the famous El Dorado brand, was once a Dutch colony. As was New York.
  • Epris, one of the larger distilleries in Brazil, is now distilling primarily fermented rice for vinegar and sakein Brazil!
  • With respect to the 2-, 3- and 4-letter codings on Cadenhead’s rums, nobodyincluding Cadenheadactually knows what they all mean. One online wit supposed the Trinidadian rum moniker TMAH stood for “Too much alcohol here,
  • Black Tot Day is generally taken to be July 31st every year, and commemorates (mourns?) the date in 1970 when rum rations were discontinued in the British Royal Navy. However, the US abolished it far earlier in 1862 (!!). And the Canadian Navy only stopped the practise in 1972 (March 30th), and the New Zealanders (bless their hearts for holding out as long as they did) finally bowed to the inevitable and ceased the ration in 1990 (28th February, but couldn’t they have waited until April 1st?)
  • The progenitor of all rums is supposedly arrack, made in Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) with yeast strains mixed in with fermented red rice
  • Batavia Arrack is used in the spirits market to this day, but also as a flavour/aroma enhancer in the confectionary, tobacco and perfume industries.
  • Jim Beam (the whiskey maker out of the US, whose parent company is Beam Suntory) owns and bottles Cruzan rum
  • There are very few rum producers who have an actual Solera system like the one used in sherry production (this is where the solera method comes from). Santa Teresa in Venezuela and Cartavio in Peru are some of the only producers who uses a Solera to produce some of their rums. Almost all other producers who claim to be making soleras, are in fact just blending rums.
  • Although the term “Angel’s Share” is commonly used in rum to denote the losses due to evaporation during the ageing process, this is actually ported over from the whisky world. Some parts of the Caribbean use the term “Duppy’s share”a duppy being a sort of malevolent spirit who drink’s honest people’s rum (among other assorted evils); the word is of Bantu origin.
  • On Game of Thrones, whisky is never mentionedbut rum often is. Mr. Clegane is not a fan.
  • In spite of the amusingly named Rumdoodle Peakwhich is, alas, not named after rum of any kindAntarctica remains the one continent where rum is not made commerciallythough I’m sure someone has a bathtub over there and is brewing some.
  • The fastest selling rum in Compagnie des Indes entire stable of expressions is the Boulet de Canon No. 2, which is a blend.
  • In Jamaica, it is mandatory for distilleries to buy molasses from the government, which in turn buys it on the global commodities exchanges. This led to the following bizarre situations: in 2016, Jamaican distilleries had to distill molasses from Fiji that the government sold them, as it was cheaperand the government sold the homegrown Jamaican molasses to other countries. And, Worthy Park had to sell its own molasses to the governmentand then buy it back for distillation.
  • The Swedish Government initially refused to sell and distribute Compagnie des Indes Caraibes rum, as they felt the picture on the label promoted slavery. The situation was resolved when it was proven that the picture hearkened back to a period after slavery had been abolished
  • 1% of Alcohol duties collected on any rum imported to the United States is returned to every American distiller producing rum (a big part therefore going to Baccardi). Which means that every bottle of rum coming from around the world and sold in the USA effectively subsidizes and helps the American rum producers to grow against imported rums.
  • Virgin sugar cane juice” (or honey) is a marketing term for reducedboiled downsugar cane juice. It’s nothing special, except in so far that it allows the honey to stay fresh longer without spoiling, as pure juice would.
  • Ageing rum in ex-Bourbon barrels is actually quite recent, being mentioned as a new practice back in the 1940s. Before that different barrels were used: fortified wine, port and sherry barrels. Also madeira barrels were likely used back in the 17th and 18th centuries because Madeira was a regular shipping stop on the way to and from the British West Indies and the spirit was popular there at the time.

So there you have it. Feel free to add a few of your own, or send me a PM to include it. It’s a lighthearted break from the seriousness of our world and I sure hope MaxwellHouse5 liked it.

***

A lot of patient, funny, knowledgeable people helped put this together, or I’ve sourced the points from their published / posted work, or their notes to me. In no order, thanks to Josh Miller, Marco Freyr, Alex Van Der Veer, Tatu Kaarlas, Cyril Weglarz, Steve James, Paul Senft, Robin Wynne, Gaetan Dumoulin, Laurent Cuvier, Steve Leukanech, Rob Burr, Matt Pietrek, John Gibbons, John Go, Johnny Drejer, Florent Beuchet, Luca Gargano, Fabio Rossi, Richard Seale, Marcus Stock, and if I’ve left anyone out, really sorry, send me a note and I’ll add you to the Roll of Honour.

Jul 292017
 

In July 2017 the French rum wesbsite Coeur de Chauffe, as part of the Agricole 2017 world tour, issued a two part post where members of the rum and blogging community were invited to submit some brief words regarding their experiences with the French Island agricoles. Well, most people wrote a couple of generally positive sentences, waved goodbye and moved on, but I felt that perhaps more could be saidand wrote, as is my wont, a complete essay where I tried to summarize my feelings about and experiences with this fascinating subset of the rumworld.

The French language Agricole Tour 2017 Part 1 can be found here, and the essays by myself and Sascha Junkert in Part 2, is here. The paragraphs below represent the original English language version of my section.


Sooner or later, every rum lover comes to agricoles the way every film fan eventually arrives at Ozu. Although better known and always appreciated by the French due to their originating on the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, these quietly amazing rums have only started to become more widely available, and more praised, in the last ten years or so.

Partly this situation arose because of the domination of molasses based rums over the centuries. Those rums were and are made more easily and more cheaply, have a quality of their own, and have commanded the attention of the rumiverse up until now. Agricoles are made different, taste different and are priced differentbut are also among the best rums currently being made, and can take their place at the forefront of any top-end lineup, not just because of their intriguing and tasty flavours, but because they have escaped the opprobrium of misleading labels, convenient number statements and adulteration which is the stain on far too many traditional rums. They have always been pure, unmessed-with, traditionally-made rums and are appreciated for precisely that reason.

Others have written in greater depth about these unique rumsthe Cocktail Wonk’s deep dive is a case in pointso I won’t go into the details here beyond some basic facts. Agricole rumsor rhums, as they are termedare made from freshly pressed cane juice which goes to the still within 48 hours of harvesting the cane. They are made in column stills and have a light, herbal, almost grassy flavour that often comes as a shock to those more used to, and comfortable with, the relatively darker, fruitier profiles of the Jamaicans, Bajans, Guyanese and other English-speaking islands; and they are clearer and crisper than the light and floral Spanish rons like those from Cuba or Latin America.

Agricoles are commonly associated with the French islands in the Caribbean, but what the name describes is more a method of production than a geographical point of origin, and by that standard, no discussion of the type can be complete without noting the Brazilian cachacas, which are a subset of the genre, distinguished by their being aged in local woods (e.g. Balsamo, Jequitiba or Umburana), which give them a distinct (and occasionally off-putting) taste profile that many non-Brazilians have difficulty coming to grips with. One should also note that makers from around the world are increasingly making rums from freshly pressed cane juiceLaodi from Vietnam is a case in point, Madeira is another, and there is also Ron Aldea from the Canary islands, and several US micro distillers, among others.

Like traditional rums made from molasses, agricoles are aged, in various kinds of barrelswhite oak, ex-bourbon, Limousin oak, cognac casks, the Brazilians as noted and so onbut unlike most of the molasses brigade, they have a very high quality even when made as “white”. Such colourless rhums are, however, not usually filteredas is the case with various bland mixing agents like the Bacardi Superior or the Prichard’s Crystaland mostly unaged and issued directly off the still. Haiti is the poster boy for such rhums, which are called clairins there and they are pungent, fierce and joyously off the reservation. Lovers of softer fare shy away from such rhums, but connoisseurs have been snapping them up in increasing volumes for years now, ever since Velier came out with the three clairins from Sajous, Vaval and Casimir back in 2014.

My own experience with agricoles began in 2010 when one of the first rums I bought was the Clement Tres Vieux from Martinique, just about the top of their line; I wasn’t entirely sold on it, yet it had an aroma and taste that was surprisingly evocative, even if I did not feel it dethroned the other rums I liked more to that point in my education. Over time I managed to try two Barbancourts from Haiti, a couple of Karukeras from Guadeloupe, and a Rum Nation and Renegade independent production. My opinion began to change. I appreciated their flavours more, enjoyed the lightness and complexity of the assembly, saw that they pointed to a different style of rhum to what I had been used to, one that was off the main road, yes, but with treasures heretofore unimagined.

I became a true agricolista in 2012, when an amazing 37 year old rhum from Guadeloupe was presented to me for a sampling in Berlin’s famed Rum Depot. The Courcelles 1972 was a rhum simply off the scale (and even if there were reasons to believe it was not a true agricole, I persist in thinking of it as one), and it led to other discoveries in the years that followedthe clairins from Haiti, the Liberation series from Capovilla (the 2012 Integrale might be among the very best five year old rums ever made, by anyone, anywhere). Getting more impressedor should that be obsessed? — with each new rhum I tried, I began actively seeking rhums from those distilleries from Martinique and Guadeloupe which have become more widely known and appreciated in the last yearsJ.M., HSE, Trois Rivieres, St. James, Depaz, Dillon, Bellevue, Damoiseau, J. Bally, Longueteau, Neisson are a few, the independent bottlers are gearing up big time, and I’m just getting started.

In short, from a sort of passing interest, agricoles have now taken their placeand not just in my estimationamong the best rums in the world. There is variety and failure here, sure, just as they are in traditional (or industrial) rums, and perhaps it is not surprising that my journey mirrored that of the fans worldwide as well. Nothing shows this more clearly than the popularity of the agricoles in the various European and other rum festivals, where they are commanding increasing attention and appreciation by the public. It is no accident that the agricole world tour organized by Jerry Gitany and Benoit Baila sort of combination of masterclasses and grand exposition of many agricoles which toured the festival circuit in 2016 and now in 2017 – drew large crowds and many positive comments from the online community.

Agricoles are not a fashionable current trend, nor are they only now emerging from the shadows of obscurity: they have always been there, quietly and exactingly made. What has changed is that over the last decade the explosion of social media and committed bloggers have brought them to a new, wider audience. For the foreseeable future traditional molasses-based rums will continue to command the heights (and the wallets of the global purchasing public) – based on price and availability and all-round quality that’s unavoidable. But just as any list of the classics of the film world would never be complete without Besson, Ozu, or Bergman (to name just three), no serious connoisseur or simple lover of rum would ever consider their journey to be complete without, at some point, sampling, appreciating and understanding the variety which agricoles add to the sum total of the universe of rum.

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Mar 112017
 

Moscoso Distillers (also known as Barik) is a third-generation Haitian rum-maker whose klerens caught my attention as I was researching rums from there that were specifically not Barbancourt or distributed by Velier. You’d think that some enterprising producers would extoll their family ancestry by tracing it back to Toussaint L’Ouverture’s great grandfather’s first cousin as part of the company legend, but as with many other things, Haitians do seem to enjoy confounding expectations. In fact, the official founder of the company, Jules Moscoso, came over from the Dominican Republic in the early 1900s and settled in a small town called Léogâne in Haiti (just SW of Port-au-Prince, the capital), which was a centre of the sugar economy for centuries and which remains the source for the current company’s cane.

Marie Mascoso

That’s just a convenient sort of dating though, because Jules ended up marrying into the local aristocracy (or petit bourgeoisie, depending how you look at it) of the Vulcains, who were large landowners possessing several sizeable tracts of land and cane fields. Jules’s wife Marie confuses the timeline, since he established the distillerybut she and her relatives going back about five or six previous generations had been making and selling clairin the whole time (they also owned several general stores, which made distribution much easier). Jules and Marie’s descendantMichael Moscoso, the current ownercalls himself a third generation distiller because the paper trail only begins in 1925, with Jules and some old barrels that were importedthe company, such as it was, was never formally incorporated and was simply known as Mascoso’s. He does not recall if any single pot stills were utilized in making their clairins, but to his knowledge the original distilling apparatus consisted of combination of pot and creole column still of five to six plates, copper made, with direct fire or water baths (which was and remains very much the tradition across the whole island). As Haiti had once been a French colony, its influences came from the other French islands, explaining the Charentais alembics that were more common, as opposed to single pot stills used in other parts of the Caribbean by indigenous producers.

Jules was more than just a local hooch handler. He was in fact quite a talented tinkerer and very good with his hands: mechanical common-sense ran in the family, and much of the distillery was constructed with his direct input. The story goes that at one time, the French government donated a bleacher (those stadium like prefab metallic rows) to the Haitian government of the time. This bleacher was designed by Gustave Eiffel (of Eiffel tower fame), but for some reason the assembly instructions accompanying the bleachers came in Chinese (don’t ask). The minister of public words of the moment, a bona fide engineer, confessed to Julesa friend of histhat he couldn’t build it. Jules casually asked for the manual, came back seven days later and then built the thing in fourteen days. It was famously known as theEstrade du Champs de Marsand is unfortunately no longer in existencebut any Haitian from that era would know of it.

The whole family was in on the business and it did not limit itself to merely clairins. Over time they expanded to providing 95% alcohol and ethanol to hospitals and pharmacies, base rhum stock to other clairin makers on the island and even branched out into the manufacture of essential oils (one such oil went on to provide the base for what would become Chanel No. 5). Aunts, cousins and uncles were all part of the operation and were involved in running both wholesale and retail part of the company and its various sidelines.

The business passed on on to the second generation (Edouard Mascoso) in the late 1950s and Barik fared reasonably well. Clairin sales (bulk and retail) and manufacture held steady, but the industry on the half island was moving into the direction of larger distilleries using industrial sized column stills which left smaller establishments at a disadvantage. Barbancourt remains the best known, and the late 1970s also saw the increased scale of other major producers like the Nazon family who make rhums under the banner of Distillerie de la Rue in Cap Haitian, and Michael’s own uncle Gerald Moscoso (of Ayiti Aromatik SA) who with is partner bought press and plant from around the Caribbean, and make the Kleren Nacyonal and other brands out of St. Michel. Slowly the business stagnated and regressed in the 1970s to the point where Edouard was forced by both this and his own health to drastically ramp down production in the 1980s. There followed a period of about twenty years when Mascoso / Barik as a clairin maker almost disappeared, though as noted, other branches of the family did have rhum operations of their own (and with confusingly similar brand names). All the while, though, a trickle of the juice kept coming, even if only for local consumption.

Michael Mascoso with two of his klerens

After some years of puttering around from job to job (including that of a DJ), Edouard’s son MichaelDidiMascoso, who had been brought up in the culture of his family’s businesses and had apprenticed with his uncle’s more modern clairin operation, took over the near-abandoned clairin distillery in 2008. From the inception, his ambition had been to move away from local bathtub-style popskull with poor quality controls and wide batch variations, to something more professional. In short he wanted to create a double-distilled and aged rhum that could not only elevate the product and sales on Haiti, but be of sufficient quality for export. It was of course not quite as simple as he had initially thought, but nevertheless he wanted to reopen a refurbished distillery with the same equipment, repaired and spiffed up, and tried to bring in more modern improvements and innovations over time.

It should be pointed out that it is almost a Haitian tradition to have one’s stills and factory infrastructure look as rundown and beat up as is humanly possible without actually ceasing operation. Part of that has always been the rather unsavoury, unglamorous, peasantlike back-country reputation possessed by the clairins themselveswhy spruce up the still when the juice is just being sold to the proles? But more importantly, it keeps the eyes of the authorities off one’s operations if is just perceived as some small fly-by-night family outfit brewing small quantities of moonshine. According to Michael, life under the dictatorial Duvaliers was never as brutal as the western media made out. “Under Duvalier I was not aware of any challenges. During that time if one minded his own business and walked a straight line they were safe.” But the taxman was something else again. The moment one’s operation looked a little too professional or the infrastructure too modern, and bottling became part of the company output (factory bottling in real bottles with labels and stuff), then the taxman came sniffing around. And that was the major reason why 99% of the Haitian rum industry stuck with their old fashioned stills, and steadfastly refused to move ahead and modernize.

For financial and resource reasons, to recreate or even upgrade a functional distillery was very difficult for Michael. However, humans are nothing if not inventive, and much like to soviets in the 1970s and 1980s who were known for putting together amazing inventions with string, baling wire and some vodka (or in modern times, having the tightest code due to limitations on available computer time in the old days), there was a lot of knowledge, passed-down-lore and plain experienceand a strain of Jules’s talent for mechanical tinkering and skill with his hands was still in the family tree. The distillery was repaired and refurbished, essentially by dint of diligent scrounging: abandoned kitchen equipment, commercial supermarket freezers, coolers (any source of metals that could be found, really), wires, electrical stuffsteel and copper and plate and everything else, down to the screws. And then, as Michael put it, not without a hint of pride, watch us do magic by building our own pot and column stills, tubular condensers…. We also took old gas or #2 oil steam boilers and converted them into burning bagasse. A typical modern distillery here in Haiti, with a steam boiler, pot columnmore than 90% built on the premises with scrap metal.”

Scrap and scrounging, begging and borrowing, doing it all manually, all this was fineit was, nevertheless, expensive. It took all of Michael’s savings, credit cards, personal loans, raiding the family treasure chests (when not locked or guarded by fierce aunties) and getting help from his father and his brother (also named Jules)…and eight months after taking over, the still was ready to begin production. At this point Edouard struck a co-production deal with a competitor which caused Michael to withdraw from operations for a while. In December 2008 a successful test run on the distillery was finally done, and commercial production began in January 2009, with the intention of making both bulk clairin distillate for the local producers and possible export sales, and a line of white, caramelized and infused rhums.

Bad luck seemed to dog the distillery at the inception. First there was the lack of funding for upgrades which had stretched the repair job into nine months; then there was the co-production deal that diverted attention and resources from the Barik brand; the earthquake hit in 2010 and shattered much of the island’s infrastructureand as if all this wasn’t enough, there was an increasing incidence of industrial scale ethanol being used to make cut-rate clairins. Clairins are enormously pungent and flavourful and what producers were doing was mixing in a small portion of true distillate with the ethanol to make cheaper, low quality “clairin” that dragged down sales of the real McCoy.

Michael: “Although we had the ambition of branding and bottling rhums since 2009, financials did not allow it. When things went from bad to worse in 2014, with the importation of industrial ethanol reaching its peak at that time, that was the end of selling bulk clairin. I therefore decided to switch my focus to bottling and move away from the bulk sales.” Michael noted that he had started working on his formulas and other blends since before the earthquake. “I started with my sugar mash premium rhum right off the still, filtered and straight in the bottle; a few other blends like the Marabou (a caramelized version of the premium), a mint infused one and a few other tropical fruits infusionand boom I was in business. Selling a few bottles privately to a few customers in Europe but mainly France, I noticed that they have a preference for white agricolesso I started bottling the Traditional 22 which is the pure juice version.”

So far the company remains (in accounting parlance) a sole trader operation and has not been officially incorporated. It is informally known and will one day be established in law as Moscoso Distillers, and under its umbrella have issued the Kleren Nacyonal and Rhum Barik brands, with additional variations of these (there’s also a rum-based Amaretto di Moscoso). Sales remain slow and relatively minimal as a consequence of both novelty and a nonexistent mass-marketing advertising budgetin that sense, as Michael observed, a debt of thanks is owed to Luca for putting clairins on the international map and raising the drink’s profile. He hopes that his prescence at the 2017 Paris RhumFest will establish his brand more firmly in the mind of the rhum loving public and perhaps lead to more investment and possibly another large Haitian brand. Having a personal thing for these potent unaged white rhums, as well as being interested in how the ageing would be handled, I for one will certainly be keeping an eye out on his products going forward.

 

Other notes

The word “Barik” means barrel in Haitian creole. The choice of the name for brand (and possibly the company) was deliberate, because it was such a strong, easily pronounceable title in any language (Rolex, as I recall, chose its name for similar reasons).

Originally Michael wanted to name his product “Rhum La Guldive” but felt it to be too challenging a name. It would be hard to ask for in a bar, the way one says “Havana Club” or “Bacardi”. Plus, Pere Labat next door might launch a lawsuit over the name since they have a product with that title.

All photographs are from the Barik Facebook page, used with Michael Moscoso’s permission

References

The short list below, of rhums Mascoso Distillers makes, is not exhaustive (I’ve excluded all flavoured and infused versions since my focus is not on such products) but it’s a start for those who are interested.

 

Sep 082016
 

300

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I feel like a literary flea next to someone like Serge Valentin on Whisky Fun, who just published his 12,000th whisky tasting note. But you know, given the slender reach of my purse, the way I write and the time available to do it all, I’m not displeased with reaching this little milestone.

“About two or three years,” the Last Hippie (who now runs the site AllThingsWhisky) and I remarked to each other many moons ago, when we were discussing longevity. “Maybe a hundred or so rums.” That’s how long it was thought I’d be able to write for our origin site Liquorature. I had counted all the rums available in our local stores, and never seriously imagined it could get beyond that. I started writing in mid-2009, began posting in early 2010, and with one break, have kept on ever since. The hundred rums passed by the wayside, and now, if you can believe it, reviews are into their seventh year, the ‘Caner is passing the three hundredth essay (more if you count the Rumaniacs) and the whole exercise has thrown off branches in all kinds of directions unforeseen at the inception.

Wow. 300 reviews. I still stand back in astonishment every now and then when I see a number like that. Such a miniscule output will never impress Serge (640+ rums and counting) or Dave Russell (~380), or whisky sites which boast hundreds, if not thousands of reviews. Yet I can’t help but thump my scrawny mosquito-physique chest a little, because even though I’m small-fry compared to those guys, I still recall that time when I thought a hundred would be cool to doand the idea of this many seemed beyond comprehension.

What accounts for it? Well, all kinds of thingsa genuine love and interest in the subject, of course. It’s not a job, really, or anything remotely resembling the drudgery of work. I don’t have a boss (always nice). Unlike employment, I actually get (mostly) positive feedback that shows others share this interest, this passion. People communicate. And it’s not just enthusiasts, but producers, other writers, bartendersI’m not a very sociable individual, but I now have more friends, in more countries around the world, then I ever imagined possible, and most are unstinting with advice, samples, corrections, assistance, background materials, commentary, photographs, or just plain old conversation. It was no accident that Henrik of Rum Corner, Cornelius of Barrel Proof, Gregers and I, were able to talk for six straight hours without repeating ourselves back in 2015, while damaging the hell out of some rums that for their age and price were utterly unobtainable for me back in 2009. Engagement with the broader community is alternately exasperating or educating. Most of the time it’s simply fun.

I always have this vision of some guy on a cold winter night, looking at a rum on a shelf, breaking out his phone to scan for a review, reading about it here, sighing at my long-windedness, but then maybe doing a double take, perhaps laughing, and then mumbling to himself, “This s.o.b. ain’t bad.” (Well, okayI can dream, right?)

So a big thank you for all of you who have taken the time to read along, and who touch base from time to time. It’s not only because of you all, but for you all, that this site keeps running.

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2015 Germany spread

***

Everything below is a review of what’s been happening on the site, some thoughts of my own, and some statistics for those who are curious:

1. Most viewed reviews

The Bacardi 151, which I still think is the funniest, followed by the Velier biography, the latter of which remains the fastest climbing post, everit hit a thousand views in under an hour the day I put it up. The other two highly viewed articles which always surprise me are the Austrian Stroh 80 and the Cuban Guayabita del Pinar, neither of which are sterling standouts or on anyone’s must-have list, yet they keep chugging along, day after day. Quite astonishing for such niche products.

 

2. Least read article ever

The Jamel cachaca review (quite recent, so no surprise) and also the Canadian Momento Amber rum, which few would ever have found, let alone boughtit really wasn’t that good, more a backyard rotgut in my opinion. The Renegade Jamaica 2008 is also on the list (and that’s been around for ages), which kinda confirms my opinion that they were ahead of the curve all those years ago, and should have stuck with their special edition rum lines. With the rise of indie bottlers in the last years, they could have maybe been not only one of the pioneers, but in the lead.

 

3. My favourite rums of these 100, and new discoveries.

Leaving aside all the Velier rums (we all know they’re good, so let’s give somebody else a moment in the sun), here’s what I liked or which enthused me:

D3S_3789Norse Cask Demerara 1975

An expensive purchase but worth every penny. Over thirty years of ageing of a Demerara rum, leading to a magnificently rich and pungent dark behemoth. I now wish I had bought the full bottle instead of the smaller (but cheaper) version. If it had been no more than a raving taste monster dive bombing the palate, that would have been good enough, but when tried in conjunction with the Cadenhead from the same year (at <41%), it became clear why full proofs should be made more often.

 

D3S_3715Rhum Rhum Liberation 2012 Integrale

If there is ever a choice between the standard strength 2012 and the Integrale 2012, get the Integrale. This thing is an amazing agricole, so good that even regular rummies will have little too complain about. It may be among the best, if not the best, five year old rhum that I’ve been fortunate enough to sample, and proves once again that age is no indicator of quality.

 

 

Clairins

Like my father, I mix erudition and peasantry in my character in equal and cheerful doses. The clairins unabashedly appeal to the lizard brain of the latter. They’re big, brutish, nasty taste hammers, unrefined and uncouth, yet, once we get past all that acetone and paint thinner, we remember something quite remarkable coiling around underneath. Some call that a “unique flavour profile”I call it pretty damned good, and yes, I know I’m in a minority on this one.

 

Chnatal 1980 2Chantal Comte 1980

Without a doubt, the best sub-ten year old rhum I’ve ever tried. Ever. At nine hundred euros, it was priceyokay, it was more than pricey, it was near-divorce-level-pricey (the conversation started “I gave up a Prada purse for this s**t?” at overproof decibel levels, and went rapidly downhill from there). But man, that combination of sumptuousness and complexity was amazingly tasty, and showcased all the reasons why agricoles are great products we should never ignore just ’cause we never found one we liked.

 

Black Tot 1The Black Tot

I appreciate this rum not because of its intrinsic qualitythough that wasn’t half badbut because of its history and heritage. Sometimes you just get a rum because you want it, and I wanted this one for a long time.

 

 

 

Epris 1L’Espirit Epris Bourbon finished Brazilian Rum

For a small outfit that is practically unknown outside of France, they certainly make some good hooch, these guys. This one might not have been a true cachaca, yet it exhibited markers of taste and style that was a cut above the ordinary. Purely on my appreciation of this one rum (provided to me gratis by Cyril of duRhum), I contacted the company to get more, just to see if they were as good as I thought they were.

 

 

Compagnie des Indes: Indonesia and Guadeloupe

Undoubtedly my new maker of choice for this one hundred reviews is CDI. I looked at Prichard’s, Nine Leaves, a raft of agricoles, and rums from around the world, and somehow the Indonesia stood out in my memory; and the Guadeloupe, issued at 43% was an excellent and affordable 16 year old rhum. While I may never get all of CDI’s products, I’m sure glad I managed to try these two.

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4. Other bloggers’ articles

Like any serious interest, writing about rums requires keeping up with the news and issues of the day. More and more we are seeing bloggers put out informative and thought-provoking essays which enrich our understanding of the subculture. Here are some of the best articles I read while putting out my own hundred reviews. The quality of the thinking behind each heightens my appreciation for the writers who take the time to go beyond mere tasting notes and into informative corners of the rumworld which amuse, inform and educate:.

The Cocktail Wonk’s article on E&A Scheer

Matt Pietrek’s essays on the Jamaican distilleries were exercises in depth and detail, and I enjoyed them a lot, not least for the information they provided, but it was the one about E&A Scheer I found the most enlightening. All of us hear about independent bottlers buying casks from “brokers” without ever going further. Matt pulled back the curtain on what that actually meant, and how a very old company still provides stock for many of the small companies whose rums we appreciate. An enormously informative and entertaining read.

The Fat Rum Pirate: The World of Independent Bottlings

Wes Burgin from the UK has put out quite a few essays regarding sugar, quality in rums and other issues of the day. I don’t always agree with his arguments, yet that doesn’t invalidate the points he makes, and they always engender valuable discussions. This one was more factual than opiniated and pulled together many strands of the available information on who and what independent bottlers are.

Josh Miller at Inu A Kena: Plugging into the Rum World” and the “Cachaca Challenge

Josh and I are in contact off an on through social media, and I usually give him a good-natured ribbing about how he doesn’t write enough. That’s because I like what he writes, and what he does write is always worth a read. Two pieces he put out over the last year and a bit are worthy of mention (again): the summary of online websites dedicated to rums and cocktail culture, and the one where he pulled together fourteen cachacas at once to see how they stacked up in a caipirinha. I wrote to him after he published the latter and bemoaned my inability to get that many Brazilian rums at all, at which he laughed and told me his bar is always open to my tasting glass, if I ever get over to San Francisco.

5. Site focus in the next hundred

1. Continuing emphasis on agricoles

Moving into the French-style rumworld opened up huge vistas of enjoyment for me. Like many who started with the usual stuff, I disdained the clear, grassy profiles of agricoles, yet I plugged away and found that they grew on me. I found more quality rums here than I suspected. Of course, since I’m closer to Europe than to North America, it’s also easier to find them, and practically the entire French blogging communitymany of whom I’m happy to know on a personal basisis happy to chip in and point me to samples, overlooked gems and provide information.

2. Leaving the West Indies Behind

Naahjust kidding. The Caribbean will always remain the bastion of the spiritmore rums come from there than anywhere else. Yet it was and remains intriguing how many local rums there are from other parts of the world. I enjoyed CDI’s Indonesia, didn’t care for the Fijians, and I know there’s stuff from Africa, Australia and Polynesia that many of us have never even heard about. Everyone’s heard of Mount Gay or El Dorado….but it’s the weird ones from, oh, Mozambique, that I want to write about. So for the next few years I’ll be casting a much wider net than before, to see what I can come up with that some might have an interest in.

3. More cachacas

Just as with agricoles, I felt it was time to see what was going on in Brazil. I’ll likely not have the facility to pick up very many, but I’m trying to buy more than usual, and they will remain a focus of mine for the next few years. Also, as initially with agricoles, I currently don’t care for them much, so the only way to see whether I’m full of Kraken is to try as many as possible. Maybe I’ll find the gold nuggets in the mud which I’m absolutely convinced lurk in the backdam, awaiting only a persevering nose to ferret out.

4. More Essays

Maybe. This is a time issue more than anything else. Good essays have to express a cogently argued point of view and require a depth of research which takes a lot of time. But I’ll keep at it. The Makers section, if nothing else, needs to have more.

***

6. Trends in the rum world I continue to follow

Sugar/Additives

This is an issue that just won’t subside, and never should. It engenders enormous passions on all sides of the divide. I dislike the hysterical adamance of the purists who sneer at and denounce anyone who likes a sweetened rum, but I’m equally at war with those producers who refuse to disclose additives of any kind under the guise of it being legal. Legal or not, the consuming class is a far cry from the sheeple who accepted everything as little as five years ago, and it’s vocal proponents of disclosure who are making raising awareness a problem that new entrants to the field cannot afford to ignore. I can hope, I guess. Sugar will never go awayit’s too tightly interwoven with the culture of rumbut maybe we can look forward to a day when people get a full brief on what they’re pouring into their glass. People are welcome to like whatever they like, and if we have our way, at least they’ll know why.

Classification

The old standard of grading or classing rums by colour is more or less dead, yet the influential “styles” of Mr. Broome is proving a tougher nut to crack. As with many things, it’s the adaptation to exceptions that show how good the rules are. Here, not so much. More and more we are seeing agricoles issued in other places than the French islands; blends of rums from multiple regions make their appearances more often than before; additives are nowhere to be found; and the difference between pot still and column still rums continue to confound many. Luca Gargano’s system is a step in the right direction, though I still think it does not address outliers satisfactorily, and by ignoring the immediate source of the distillatemolasses, sugar cane juice or “other”an opportunity may have been lost to win wider acceptance. Still, no matter how it ends up, the issue is definitely getting the attention it deserves.

New Entrants

It’s an old joke that “rum is the next big thing … and always will be”. Yet nothing suggests the acceptance of the spirit as a class act in its own right as the explosion of smaller micro-producers, especially in the US and Canada, and the surge of independent bottlers in Europe. People are getting fed up with the high price of scotch, maybe, and constant blogging has made everyone aware that rum takes second place to no spirit at the top end. Rum Nation, Plantation, Samaroli, Velier, Moon Imports, Berry Bros., Fassbindthese are decades-old companies who are finding their place in the sun courtesy of a new crop of writers and bloggers who champion their work, but others are muscling into the market as well: L’Espirit, Ekte, Compagne des Indes. The sheer variety is astonishing and there’s something for every taste, from brute force mastodons at 60% to milder palate pleasers at 40%.

Cask Strength

Nothing pleases me more than the move at the top end to move past 40-43%. The indies mentioned above were always issuing such rums, of course, in a bottle here and there, and Renegade, who perhaps were ahead of the curve but then dropped out, created one of the first “lines” of rums that took this to 46% in their limited editions. But perhaps it is Velier we should thank for kicking off the trend, because not only are the majority of independent bottlers now issuing rums at strengths between 50-65% but the big guns like FourSquare, Mount Gay, and DDL are catching on and doing the same. I look forward to the day when all standard strength rums made by big companies are issued alongside their premium beefcake brothers so consumers can pick one or the other depending on taste.

Truth in Advertising and Disclosure

Too many makers are stuck in the pre-social-media world. It seems to escape many of them that there is a vocal and knowledgeable community out there that disseminate information faster that was ever possible before. Agreed, most people who like rum simply want an opinion they can rely on (hence the rise of bloggers and online reviewers, since only a fool trusts a company website touting its own quality), but what annoys the Twitterati and Facebook Faithful more than anything else is (a) the lack of disclosure on labels or online materials as to what is actually in the rum, i.e. additives and (b) what the rum is made of, and how, what still, from what raw stock, aged for how long. Like it or not, people want to know this stuff, which is why Arome (which I have not tried) got an online faceful for being not only evasive but outright condescending. This of course traces its genesis to the sugar imbroglio from above.

***

And so there you have it. One person’s ramblings about rum, the rum universe and our place within it. I realize with every passing year that not only will I never taste them all, but can only ever scratch the surface of the sometimes bewildering variety available to us fortunate souls (at a still reasonable cost compared to that obscure Scottish drink). If I were to give a single piece of advice to anyone regarding rumespecially those now getting interestedit’s to never stop with just one, but try many, just to understand how wide an area the rumiverse actually covers. I learn something new every week, make new discoveries and it remains a remarkable experience.

So, walk a little further down the rum road with me. There’s more coming. There’s always more coming.

Thanks to all of you who have read not only this far in this essay, but overall. Your comments and visits are valued, and welcome, and appreciated.

All the very best

 

The Lone Caner

Feb 052015
 

200

 

***

Who would have thought, that when Liquorature first started as a small club in 2009, that the rum reviews portion of its website would split off into its own, let alone ever surpass a hundred reviews? With the review of Rivière du Mât Rhum Vieux Traditionnel Millésime 2004, some three years after passing the 100th write-up and more than five years into it, I have reached the next milestone, the 200th, and I have to admit, it would have been faster if I had not stopped writing for a year when I moved to the Middle East. It’s not the best in the world by volume (and never will be), yet it still gives me a small sense of accomplishment to have even done this much.

The opening of this site in 2013 was a major shift in the shared review philosophy we had followed on Liquorature. It was inevitable: like anyone who produces a fair amount of mental product on his own time and with his own dime, I wanted a display case for that and that alone (I’m not much of a community person and don’t do things by committeethe “Lone” in my title is not an accident, and exists on several levels of meaning). The reactions and feedback from our small subculture and miscellaneous passers-by have been generally positive and gratifying, in some cases surprisingly so. Even when I was on an extended absence in 2013/2014, the hits kept ticking over fairly constantly (if minimally), suggesting that there was a small audience for my eclectic and eccentric writing. I have made no major changes to the site design-wise, except for allowing people to find a rum by name, by maker and by countryI deemed ages, colour categories and styles to be too limiting, if not actually vague, and so stuck with simplicity.

Two developments on the 1st One Hundred which I noted at the time and which continue were the adding of scores and the cessation of accepting, let alone soliciting, industry samples, a policy which I have followed with exactly two exceptions ever since. I don’t pretend this makes me better than anyone, it simply speaks to my fear of undue influence in the latter case, and (in the former) my desire for calibration and rankings in a collection that is now quite extensive. Much to my chagrin, I found that descriptions alone didn’t tell the tale of any given rum, and developed a scoring system that worked for me, and which I use to this day. In the coming year, I know I will discard the 0-100 rating with 50 as a median, and move towards a relatively more standardized system whereby 90+ is top end, and an average score will fall around 70-80I just have to recalculate and recalibrate two hundred reviews to do it, and that’s no small task. (Update March 2015 – I have now rescored and recalibrated all reviews to fall in line with the more accepted 50-100 system)

Also: I still write the same way, still put as much as I feel like into a review, and provide as much information as possible in a one-stop-shopping approach for the reader. I am in awe of others’ pithy one-liners, and think Serge’s haikus of tasting notes on WhiskyFun are brilliant, but I lack their abilities in this area and must play to my own predispositions and abilities.

As time went on, my palate changed and moved more towards stronger rums. At the very beginning I decried rums with too much burn and whisky-like profiles. This approach had to be modified as I tasted more and more and built up a collection I was able to use to cross-taste. I was already thinking that 40% was too limiting back in 2011, but in 2012 I went to Berlin and bought and tasted the rums of a spectacular company called Velier for the first time, and they convinced me that full-proof, cask strength rums in the 50-65% range, when made right, deserved their own place in the sun. In 2014 that opinion was solidified at the Berlin RumFest, where so many rums were full proofed that finding a forty percenter was actually not that easy. These days, given my proximity to Europe, that’s most of what I can get anyway, and I’m not unhappy with it.

I also gained a fondness for agricoles and their lighter, cleaner profiles, though they will be unlikely to ever surpass my love for Mudland products, good as they are. The really good agricoles from the pre-1990s are, alas, very rare and quite pricey. Still, I persevereaside from Dave Russell’s Rum Gallery, too few reviewers outside France and Italy (L’homme a la Poucette and DuRhum come to mind) really push out or have serious quantities of agricole reviews. So there’s definitely some opportunity to champion them, I think, and who can call themselves rum reviewers and ignore such a wide swathe of product? Availability might be the problem: Josh Miller from Inu a Kena bemoans his selection in the USA, for example and I know Chip in Edmonton has the same issue.

I started a new and very occasional series called “The Makers” inspired by a conversation the Hippie and I had many years ago, and which I felt had real potential to provide more information to the reader. With whatever information I can glean online and from my books and conversations, I try to put together a biography of the companies that make rums, and (if at all possible) a list of all their products. To that I added another section called “Opinions” because there are many issues confronting the rum industry and general and bloggers in particular, upon which I at least want to comment. Still a work in progress.

The one other aspect of the experience of reviewing rum and rhum that has taken off in the last couple of years is the friends I’ve made, the contacts. To say I have been startled by this development is an understatement because in the first years I worked almost in isolationbut pleased and touched as well. Henrik, Cyril, Marco, Francesco, Luca, Fabio, Curt, Maltmonster, Gregers, Steve, Josh, Chip and all the othersmuchas gracias to you all. I get helpful comments, offers to share samples, clarifications, info and all kinds of assist when stuck for a detail or a path forward. Rum Folksthey’re great guys, honestly.

So here’s looking forward to my next hundred, then. I know I’m playing a catch-up game with the guys like Serge, Dave and Chip, and it’s not always and only about the numbers. The important thing is that it remains interesting to me, I like the writing and the research and the back-and-forthand I still revel the pleasure at discovering a really great rum, previously unknown, about which I can craft an essay that hopefully makes people think about it, appreciate it and maybe laugh a little.

Cheers to all of you who’ve read this far and this long..

Jan 292015
 
Photo copyright morealtitude.wordpress.com

Photo copyright morealtitude.wordpress.com

In December 2014, Ian Burrell put a survey up on FB’s The Global Rum Club Page. It read: “If you had to pick 5 people who have been a major influence for the rum category, who would you pick ? It can be brand founder, distiller, blender, brand ambassador, bartender, promoter, blogger, marketer, etc. Vote for your pick or add your own major influence. I’ll throw 5 (pre 1950’s) into the mix (in no order) Don Facundo Bacardi Massó ; Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt AKA Don the Beachcomer; Admiral Edward Vernon aka Old Grog; Constantino Ribalaigua Vert and James Man (ED & F Man)

I both love and hate lists. Perhaps because I’m into the numbers game as part of my day job, I love the exactitude of things nailed down and screwed shut, copper-bottomed and airtight. And so I devour top ten lists, readers favourites, drinker’s grails and all the various classifiers we humans enjoy creating so as to rank the objects of our passion. As a reviewer of rum, I dislike them intensely. Because in any subjective endeavour – be it art, literature, film, food, drink, the perfect significant other – taste and experience and quirks of personality dictate everything, and what one person might enjoy and declaim from the rooftops, another vocally despises (both with flashing eyes and elevated blood pressure). So for me to create a list of any kind is problematic, and I try not to.

Still, this one piqued my interest. Until I saw it, I sort of thought I was reasonably knowledgeable about matters of the cane (even if it’s possible I’m the only one, in the country currently called “home”). But as I went down the list, I could tell that I was as green as a shavetail louie, and my own knowledge, while extensive, couldn’t come near to figuring out who all these people were, or how they could rank in terms of influence. And of course, loving a challenge, I decided to create a small glossary for that one person who might have a question. Indulge my sense of humour as I go along…I’m kinda stoked up on hooch-infused coffee right now.

***

Don Facundo Bacardi Masso – you’re kidding right? Who doesn’t know the Catalan-born founder of Bacardi, the bête noir of those who prefer premium rums, that guy who founded the company which whips up a gajillion barrels of dronish tipple a year, and has a market cap that eclipses the GDP of small nations.

Don the Beachcomber – actually named Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, hailing from Texas, he was the founding father of tiki restaurants, bars and nightclubs, often with a Polynesian flavour. A bootlegger and bar-owner (he opened Don’s Beachcomber Café in 1933 in Hollywood), he was increasingly referred to by the name of that bar. He actually changed his name several times to variations of this, until finally settling on Donn Beach. He was a lover and ardent mixer of potent rum cocktails, God love him. Supposedly created the Zombie cocktail, Navy Grog, Tahitian Rum Punch, Mai Tai and others. Trader Vic was a competitor of his (the rivalry was reputedly amicable). Died in 1989

Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron – much like Don the Beachcomber, Victor Jules Bergeron Jr., a California native, founded a chain of Polynesian themed restaurants, which he named after his nom de guerre, “Trader Vic,” the first one way back in 1932 as a pub, which moved into alcohol in a big way as a as soon as Prohibition ended (that one was called Hinky Dink’s, renamed Trader Vic’s in 1936 and it did not have the tropical décor and flavour it later acquired). The first franchised “Trader Vic’s” restaurant/bar opened in 1940 in Seattle. It supposedly created the franchise model which many other restaurants – not the least MacDonald’s – subsequently emulated. It hit its high point in the 50s and 60s when the Tiki culture fad was at its height. Both The Trader and the Beachcomber claim to have invented the Mai Tai. There are a line of rums of the same name that are readily available in the US.

Ian Burrell – London based drinks enthusiast with his own bar not too far from Camden Town. Instrumental in organizing the annual UK Rumfest, and holds the Guinness Record for largest single tasting event (in 2014). And he started this list going. I meant to go visit his rum bar in December that year and hoist a few rarities with him, but got drunk on Woods 100 and ended up in Greenwich.

Ernest Hemmingway – Also known as “Papa” Hemmingway; journalist, war correspondent, writer, deep-sea fisherman, Nobel Prize winning author of superbly spare, masculine tales. Popularized rum and rum cocktails during his later life when he resided in Cuba, with the amusing side-effect of having every Cuban rumand quite a few othersclaiming to be his favourite and the one he liked best. Alas, he killed himself in 1960, but one hopes he had a good rum or three before deciding there was no better rum to be had and he’d better go out on a high note.

Christopher Columbus – nope, not my Italian neighbour across the way, nor a film director of fluff puff pieces. A Genoese mapmaker from the 15th century who legend has it, was looking for India when he accidentally bumped into the Caribbean islands in 1492, and promptly named the natives “Indians.” Sure glad he wasn’t looking for Turkey.

Admiral Edward Vernon (“Old Grog”, died 1757) – popularized the sadly discontinued practice of issuing rum diluted with lemon juice on board Royal Navy ships partly to ward off vitamin C deficiency (scurvy), to make shipboard drinking water more palatable, and – we can hope – to boost morale. You could argue he therefore created the first cocktail. We still, call rum “grog” because of his being affectionately named after his frock coat, called a Grogram. As a nice bit of trivia, George Washington’s estate, Mount Vernon, was named after him.

Aeneas Coffey – inventor (or perfecter) of the single column still in 1830 — he enhanced a previous 1828 design of Robert Stein’s , and this led directly to the industrial mass-production of rum; previously, pot stills were the main source of rum production, but suffered from higher costs, wide batch variation and small batch sizes of lower alcoholic content. The Coffey still addressed all these issues and kicked off the explosion of rum production (and, one can argue, the 20th century resurgence in craft pot still products). I suspect he was more interested in whisky than in rum, but nobody’s perfect.

Constantino Ribalaigua Vert – Catalan immigrant who began working in the famous Floridita fish restaurant and cocktail bar in old Havana, back in 1914…four years later he became the owner. Constantine is on this list because he invented what is one of the most famous rum cocktails ever made, the Daiquiri, somewhere in the 1930s, and it became inextricably linked with Floridita’s, which even today is known as La Cuna del Daiquiri. The bar became known for producing highly skilled cantineros whose expertise lay in crafting cocktails made with fresh fruit juices and rum, which he may have been instrumental in promoting. Hemmingway supposedly frequented the joint.

Homère Clément – founder of one of Martinique’s better known distilleries and rum houses, Clemente, which makes superlative agricoles to this day. Clemente was mayor of La Francois and purchased a prestigious sugar plantation Domaine de l’Acajou in the 1880s, just when the introduction of sugar beets was decimating the Caribbean sugar industry. He instigated the practice of using sugar cane juice to create rhum agricole, and modeled his rhums after the brandy makers and distillers of Armagnac in southwest France. I haven’t done enough research to test the theory, but Old Homere might have saved the French sugar islands from utter ruin with his rhum.

Jeff “Beachbum” Berry – Jeff is a bartender, author, contributor and cocktail personality who specializes in cocktails and Tiki culture; thus far he’s written six books on vintage Tiki drinks and cuisine, and he is referred to by the Los Angeles Times as “A hybrid of street smart gumshow, anthropologist and mixologist.” He’s created original cocktail recipes and been published in many trade, liquor, bartending and cocktail magazines. He doesn’t exclusively focus on rum, but it’s certainly a part of his overall interest, and he has raised the profile of rums in the published world like few others have.

Richard Seale – 3rd generation rum-maker; owner and manager of 4-Square distillery in Barbados, and therefore the maker of rums like Doorly’s and 4-Square brands, as well as providing barrels for many craft makers in Europe. He provided the initial distillate for St Nicholas Abbey, as they waited for their own stocks to mature. Has become a global rum icon both as a result of championing pure rums and decrying adulteration, and his collaborations with Velier.

Hunter S. Thompson – No idea why he would be on this list, except insofar as he is the author of “The Rum Diary” which is less about rum than it is about a lustful, jealous men stumbling through life in an alcoholic daze, indulging in violence and treachery at every turn (much like my Aunt Clothilde after a pub crawl). Of course, Thompson was known for imbibing colossal amounts of coke and alcohol (he was, like many young authors of the time, trying to copy the uber-mensch lifestyle of Hemmingway), so maybe this is where the connection arises. As a man with influence on rum as a whole, I’d say he’s more road kill than idol.

Rumporter – publisher of a French language magazine “Rumporter” which is dedicated like few others to the culture of rum. Too bad there isn’t an English version around, but then, I grumbled the same thing about Luca’s book. Maybe I should learn a seventh language.

The average British Navy man – also known as a Jolly Jack Tar; he needs no further intro. Lovers of Navy rums, these boys, and retired or not, keep the names of Watson’s and Woods 100 alive and well in their memories. And mine.

Don Pancho Fernandez – well known Cuban maestro ronero who worked initially for Havana Club. Developed the Zafra line of rums that are a perpetual staple in many liquor cabinets. Additionally acclaimed for the work he has done in raising the quality and profile of Panamanian rums like Varela Hermanos’s Abuelo line, Panamonte, Rum Nation and his own line of Don Pancho. Also the man behind the irritatingly named, but better-than-you-think rum Ron De Jeremy. I met him briefly in 2014. Nice guy, very courtly.

Edward Hamilton and the Ministry of Rum webpage (combined entry) – founder of the Ministry of Rum website where many rum noobs (myself among them) got their start in networking with other rum lovers. Still a very good resource to start researching producers and distillers and rums in general. Ed is also the author of “Rums of the Eastern Caribbean,” and has recently issued the Hamilton line of rums. Holds tastings and seminars all over the place and began his own line of rums in 2014. As a guy who started to pull Rummies together into an online whole, his influence cannot be underestimated – almost all rum bloggers in some way derive from what he started. These days his website is moribund, as the FB page eclipsed it.

All The Poor Slaves – and damn right too. We should never forget the backbreaking labour under inhuman conditions that slaves had to undergo to work in the fields that allowed our ancestors to sweeten their tea and create rumbullion. It is the original sin of rum.

Bartender – a good bartender is the aristocrat of the working class, knows his stuff backwards and forwards, and can whip up any cocktail you want. A great one not only knows your first name, but that of all the rums on his shelf.

Dupré Barbancourt – Founder of the eponymous distillery and rum maker on Haiti. He was a Frenchman from the cognac producing region of Charente, immigrated to Haiti and founded the company in 1862. To this day, they make some phenomenal agricoles.

Don Jose Navarro – A former Professor of Thermodynamics (ask him, not me), Don Navarro is maestro ronero for Havana Club (the Cuban one, or the “real” one). We should all be lucky enough to be able to take a right turn from our day jobs like he did in 1971.

Peter Holland – Curator, writer and owner of the website “The Floating Rum Shack.” The gentleman attends tastings around the worlds, acts as a judge of rum festivals, and is a consultant to various companies in the field. His site deals with primarily rums and cocktails. Apparently he was in Berlin in 2014, just as Don Pancho, Rob Burr and some of my other correspondents were, but we passed like ships in the night and never met each other.

Martin Cate – A San Francisco-based rum and exotic cocktail expert who collects rum like a bandit, conducts seminars and judges rum and cocktail competitions around the world; aside from that, he’s the owner of Smuggler’s Cove San Francisco, which specializes in rum cocktails, and was named by the Sunday Times of London some time back, as one of the 50 greatest bars on earth; Drinks International Magazine thought so too…three years in a row, and several other magazines think the same. I’m beginning to think I should move and crash over at Josh Miller’s place. Or just across the road from the bar.

Robert Burr –A promoter and lover of rum (and Hawaiian shirts), he is the organizer of the premier North American rum expo, the Rum Renaissance in Miami. He and his wife and son publish “Rob’s Rum Guide”, as well as hosting the Rum Renaissance Caribbean Cruise. He created the collective of judges from around the world called the RumXPs and he travels around the world judging and consulting. I met him briefly in Berlin in 2014, but he didn’t recognize my hat, which is something I really have to work on.

Father Pierre Lebat – This should probably be spelled Pere Labat; I’ll assume we’re talking about the man, because there is a rhum by that name still made on Marie Galante (Guadeloupe), where a French missionary polymath called Jean-Baptiste Labat was stationed. He was a clergyman, mathematician, botanist, writer, explorer, soldier, engineer, landowner – and slaveholder (lest we get carried away with admiration). A Dominican friar, he became a missionary and arrived in Guadeloupe in 1696 at the age of 33. While he was the procurator-general of the Dominican convents in the Antilles, he was also an engineer working for the French government; in this capacity and as proprietor of his own estate on Martinique, Labat modernized and developed the sugar industry, building on the pot still of Jean-Baptiste Du Tetre (see below). His methods for manufacture of sugar remained in use for a long time. The white agricole produced on Marie-Galante is named after him.

Luca Gargano – an exploding comet in the skies of rum, Luca made his bones by sourcing what is arguably the best collection of Guyanese still-specific rums in existence, the largest surviving Trinidad Caroni hoard any one company possesses, and in between that, issuing rums at anything between 50-65% ABV. I speak only for myself when I say that he is upping everyone else’s game, and showing that there is a market for full proof rums, just as there is for that obscure Scottish drink. And he’s a great guy.

Pirates – These guys sang shanties, shivered their timbers, pillaged, raped and plundered (and were knighted in at least one case), and drank rum. Lots of it. They may be long gone, them and all their cutlasses and pistols and sailing ships (maybe they migrated to Somalia and the South China Sea), but their shades hang around and inform the culture of rum like nothing else.

Joy Spence – The Nefertiti of the Noble spirit, Joy is the creative force behind J. Wray & Nephew, who make Appleton Estate rums in Jamaica. Since we’ve all swigged Appleton rums for decades, I’m not sure there’s much I can add here, except to note she was the first female master blender ever, and that’s quite an accomplishment in a rather male-dominated industry. With degrees in Chemistry, she took a job as a developmental chemist with Estate Industries (they produced Tia Maria) but got bored and moved on to J. Wray and Newphew, which was right next door..and there she stayed ever since. Owen Tulloch, the master blender for JW&N at the time, took her under his wing and when he retired in 1997, she became the master blender herself. So her hand is behind many of the Appletons we know and admire today. You could argue that the Appleton 50 is her and Mr. Tulloch’s love child.

Captain Morgan – The rum or the pirate? The rum is a world famous spiced baby which in some cases is not too shabby at all, and to some extent sets the bar for decent (read “non-lethal spiced overkill”) flavoured rums. The pirate did himself well. Henry Morgan, who lived and freebooted across the Caribbean in the 17th century was a privateer, not a pirate (meaning he sailed and pillaged under letters of marque issued by the English crown). He acted as an agent to harass Spanish territories and shipping, taking a cut of all plunder and ransoms. Knighted in 1674 and made Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica in 1675. He was replaced in 1681 and then gained a rep for being extremely fat and extremely drunk and extremely rowdy, like many friends of mine (and they’re all fun to hang with). Died 1688. His connection with rum is tenuous at best – about all you can say is he was a licensed pirate and a drunk. Come to think of it, so is my lawyer.

Alexandre Gabriel – the force behind Cognac-Ferrand’s magnificent Plantation double-aged line of rums. Not all of them are top end, but many are, and they have been instrumental, along with other European craft bottlers, in raising the bar for rums in general. Mr. Gabriel defends his process of dosing Plantation rums with small amounts of sugar or additives to attain the desired taste profile, which has caused some flak in the current climate regarding sugar, ofdisclose or dispose.Bought WIRD in Barbados in 2017 and in doing so gained a stake in Longpond Distillery in Jamaica.

Christian Vergier – Cellar master of New Grove rums, which is based in Mauritius. And there was me thinking the gentleman dabbled only in wines. Not much I can say about man or rum, since I’ve never met either of them. I’m sure that will change.

Oliver Rums – Created by Juanillo Oliver a Catalan-Mallorcan immigrant to Cuba in the mid nineteenth century. After the revolution in 1959 the family departed, but later re-established a sugar plantation and rum making concern in the Dominican Republic in the 1990s. They make Opthimus, Cubaney and Quohrum rums with what is supposedly the original rum recipe of the founder.

Tito Cordero – who doesn’t love the Venezuelan rum range of Diplomatico? The Reserva Exclusiva in particular receives rave reviews across the board (although I can’t speak to the ultra premium Ambassador…yet). And it’s all due to this maestro ronero, who, like Joy Spence, has a background in Chemistry (chemical engineering to be exact). And, oh yeah, he received the 2011 Golden Rum Barrel award for Best Rum Master in the world. Not too shabby at all.

Andres Brugal – the founder of Brugal and Co from the Dominican Republic. Also a Catalan (what’s with all these roneros coming from Catalonia?), he migrated from Spain to Cuba and then to the Dominican Republic in the mid 1800s…but not before soaking up equal quantities of rum and expertise. He introduced the first dark rum from his company in 1888, and over a century later, his descendants repaid the favour by naming one of their top end rums the 1888 (I liked it a lot, as a totally irrelevant aside).

James Man – Ever since I bought my Black Tot bottle, I see references to Navy rums wherever I go. And so it is here: James Man was a sugar broker and barrel maker who in 1784 secured the exclusive contract to supply rum to the British Navy. And now, more than two centuries later, his descendants, running a company called ED&F Man still trade in sugar and molasses (they are a general merchant of agricultural commodities). By the way, Man held the rum contract for 186 years – although not exclusively so for that whole time – which ended on…yup, Black Tot Day.

Silvano Samaroli – Silvano, an Italian craft bottler who started with whisky in 1968, makes this list because he may have been the first bottler to source rum, age it and issue it under his on label as a craft product in its own right. To this day I have tasted few Samaroli rums (many of my correspondents wonder what my malfunction is), but what little I’ve tried says the man’s work is superb. He died in 2017, and Fabio Rossi and Luca Gargano are his intellectual heirs.

John Gibbons – a RumXP member, rum judge, bar-trawler, independent spirit ambassador, cocktail enthusiast and rum lover. Moved to UK in 2010. Started the website Cocktail Cloister (no updates since 2011) and the Glasgow Rum Club. Does not appear to have been very active since 2013, but maybe the XP page has simply not been updated. I’ve met him a few times in Berlin, a really cool dude.

Leonardo Isla De Rum – another XP member, Leonardo Pinto has been a rum enthusiast since 2008, and curates his rum-themed website Isladerum. Nothing unusual with all this; but Leonardo has gone a step further, developing the Italian Rum Festival (ShowRum) as well as acting as a consultant for brands that wish to enter the Italian market. Honestly, I feel like a rank amateur next to people with such commitment and drive.

Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī – this guys gets my vote for sure. A Persian polymath, doctor, chemist (or alchemist, if you prefer) and philosopher, who lived around 854-925 AD. Why is he influential, and why should he be in the list? Well, leave aside his contribution to experimental medicine (he wrote a pioneering books on smallpox and measles as well as treatises on surgery that became de rigeur for western universities in the middle ages); ignore his many philosophical books, his work in chemistry and his desire for factual information not tied to traditional dogma; but just consider that he created (or at least popularized) the forerunner of all modern distillation apparatus – (drum roll) the alembic. We may now know it as a pot still and he’s the guy who is credited with spreading its usage. I’ll drink to him.

Ron Matuselam – one of the best brands of rum coming out of the Dominican Republic, and, like others, an exile from Cuba after the revolution.

Pepin Bosch – The man who could be argued to have saved Bacardi…twice. Jose M. Bosch, who died in 1994, was born in Cuba, and married into the Bacardi family. He was instrumental in rescuing Bacardi from bankruptcy during the Depression, and again in the 1960s when Castro seized all the company’s assets. Mr. Bosch ran the company from 1944 to 1976, when he retired.

E&A Scheer – A Netherlands-based ship owning company formed in the 18th century, heavily involved in the triangular trade between Europe, the West Indies and Africa – they therefore were instrumental in shipping bulk rum to Europe, at a time when (pause for loud cheers) rum was the primary tipple, and whisky wasn’t. They were also involved in shipping Batavia Arrack from the Dutch East indies at that time. By the 19th century, the company specialized in just shipping rums and then started their own blending and bulk distillation processes. To this day, they still concentrate on this aspect of the business (dealing in distillates), though they have expanded into other shipping areas as well.

Retailer –where would we be without the retailers? Too bad most corner store Mom-and-Pops don’t know half of what they sell, or speak knowledgeably about it. But then there are more specialty shops like Berry Bros & Rudd, Willow Park, Kensington Wine Market, or Rum Depot, and these guys keep the flame of expertise burning. Online retailers are going great guns too (this is where I buy 90% of what I taste these days), and if Canada were ever to get its act together regarding postage, I know a lot of guys who would be buying a helluva a lot more.

Pat O’Brien – creator of the Hurricane cocktail in the 1940s (it’s a daiquiri relative), which he made in order to rid himself of low quality rum his distributors were forcing him to accept before they would sell him more popular whiskies. At the time O’Brien was running a tavern in New Orleans (it was known asMr. O’Brien’s Club Tipperary” and required a password to get in during Prohibition). It is still served in plastic cups (New Orleans allows drinking in public…but not from glass containers or glasses). The name of the cocktail derives from the shape of the glass it was originally served in which resembled a hurricane lamp. O’Brien’s still exists.

Bertrand-Francois Mahe de La Bourdonnais (1699–1753) French Naval officer and administrator, who worked in the service of the French East India company, primarily in Mauritius and Reunion. His inclusion on this list stems from his introduction of a free enterprise system on the islands, and the concomitant launch of commercial sugar (and therefore rum) production. This generated great wealth for Mauritius and Reunion, and sugar and rum have remained pillars of their economies ever since.

Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre (1610-1687) A French blackfriar and botanist, he spent eighteen years in the Antilles and wrote many books about indigenous people, flora and fauna. His written work created the concept of the “Noble Savage”. Why is he on this list? Because he designed a rudimentary pot still (an alembic variation) to process the byproducts of sugar mills on the French islands, and thereby indirectly spurred the development of agricole rhum production upon which Pere Labat built.

LehmanLemonHart – Like Alfred Lamb and James Man, a purveyor of Navy Rums in the 1800s and liked to boast that he was the first to get such a contract but I think his license, issued in 1804, is eclipsed by Man’s (above).

George Robinson – Another master blender/distiller makes the cut, deservedly so. George Robinson was the Big Kahuna at DDL in Guyana and was in the company for over forty years (he passed away in 2011 but DDL hasn’t gotten the message yet, because their El Dorado website still has him alive and kicking. Maybe they think he’s faking it). The man was a cricketer in his youth, always a path to glory in the West Indies; however, it was his ability to harness the lunacy of the various stills DDL possesses that made his reputation and places him here. RIP, squaddie.

Capt William McCoy – I’m hoping I have the real McCoy here because no glossary of rum could be complete without at least one or five pirates, in this case a bootlegger who paradoxically never touched alcohol. The guy was unique, that’s for sure: he called himself an honest outlaw, never paid money to organized crime, politicians or the law for protection. He thought the Prohibition was daft (as do I) and made it his mission to smuggle likker from the Caribbean. He finally got collared in international waters in 1923, spent less than a year in clink, and ended his smuggling activities. He died in 1948.

Helena Tiare Olsen – Ah, Tiare. Runs one of the most comprehensive, long running and detailed cocktail blogs out there. She does rum reviews (always with the angle of what it would do for a cocktail), and until Marco of Barrel Aged Thoughts took the crown, had one of the best online articles on the stills of Guyana. Her site is an invitation to browse, there’s so much stuff there. She attends various rumfests around the world as and when she finds the time.

Daniel Nunez Bascunan – Danish blogger, rum enthusiast, owner of RumClub bar in Copenhagen and micro-brewer. Don’t know the gentlemen personally, but that bar looks awesome.

Joe Desmond – Rum XP member and mixologist. Lives in New York, acts as a judge to various festivals, collects rums and is reputed to have one of the most extensive collections in New York.

José León Boutellier – You’d think Bacardi ran out of entrants, but no, here’s another one from the House of the Bat. Sometime after Facundo Bacardí Massó came to Cuba in 1830, he inherited (through his wife) an estate of Clara Astie; this included a house, and a tenant, the French Cuban Mr. Boutellier, who ran a small distillery there which produced cognac and sweets. After hammering out the rental agreement, the two joined forces and Facundo was granted use of the pot still, creating the Bacardi, Boutellier y Co. in 1862. By 1874 Don Facundo and his sons bought out Boutellier’s stake as he declined in health. But it is clear that without Boutellier’s pot still and the happenstance of him being in that house, Bacardi would not be the same company. Small beginnings, big endings.

Jennings Stockton Cox – American mining engineer who is said to have invented the Daiquiri, perhaps because at the time when he made it, he had been working in Cuba, close to the village of Daiquiri. Supposedly running out of gin and not trusting local rum served neat, he added lime juice and sugar. Some say that Cox just popularized an already existent drink, but whatever the case, he’s now associated with it.

Rafael Aroyo – Author of an ur-text of rum-making in the 1940s – “The Production of Heavy Rum.” It is used by many home brewers as a veritable bible on how to make home-hooch. I wish I’d had it when I was a young man working in the bush. The white lightning we made could have used some expertise, and I could have saved some IQ points.

José Abel y Otero – founder of Sloppy Joe’s in Cuba just after the First World War. Immigrated from Spain to Cuba in 1904, then moved to New Orleans in 1907, then again to Miami, and returned to Cuba in 1918, where he worked in a bar called The Greasy Spoon before founding his own bodega called Sloppy Joe’s. In 1933 another bar with the same name opened in Florida (and Hemmingway was a patron…the guy sure did get around) which specifically referenced the original from Old Havana.

Alvarez & Camp – the two families who united to form Matusalem.

José Arechabala y Aldama – Founder of the Havana Club rum and the company that made it, before being expropriated following the 1959 Cuban Revolution

Robert Stein – inventor of a columnar still subsequently refined by Aeneas Coffey (see above). Stein’s 1828 still was itself inspired by the continuous whiskey still patented by Sir Anthony Perrier in 1822

George Washington – Possibly one reason the first president of the USA is on this list is because he liked rum – so much so that he demanded a barrel or two to be on hand for his inauguration. On the other hand he did operate a distillery himself on Mount Vernon, and it was the largest in the country at that time. Alas, it mostly produced whiskey.

Owen Tulloch – Joy Spence’s mentor in Appleton, he was the master Blender until 1997. I hope he and Mr. Robinson are having a good gaff somewhere up there, smoking a good Cuban, playing dominos on a plywood table, and arguing about the relative merits of El Dorado versus Appleton.

Alfred Lamb – creator of Lamb’s Navy Rum and London Dock rum in the 1800s. Another pretender to the crown, if either Lemon Hart of James Man are to be believed.

John BarrettManaging Director of Bristol Spirits. They may not be THE name in craft spirits, but that doesn’t stop ’em from trying to grab the brass ring. Their excellent series of classic and limited edition rums are characterized by bright, eye-catching labels, great enclosures, and a quality not to be sneezed at. Their PM 1980 remains one of my favourites.

Charles Tobias Founder of Pusser’s in the BVI in 1979 after he bought the rights and blending information for Navy Rum from the Admiralty, with the first sales beginning in 1980. They have trademarked thePainkillercocktail to be made with only their rum. Mr. Tobias has always ensured that a portion of the sale of every bottle goes to charity.

Cadenhead’sPossibly Scotland’s oldest independent bottler, founded in 1842 and a family owned and managed concern until 1972, when they were taken over by J.A.Mitchell, proprietors of Springbank distillery. While they are more staid whisky boys than rabid rummies, their unadulterated, unfiltered rums are excellent and date back to the successor of founder W.Cadenhead (Mr. Robert Duthie) who took over in 1904, and added Demerara rums to the stable. Because of bad business decisions made in the years following the death of Mr. Duthie in 1931, Christie’s auctioned off the entire stock of whisky and rum in 1972 (the same year the fixed assets and goodwill went to Springbank)…so any Cadenhead rums from this era may well be priceless.

Tony HartBrit rum enthusiast, rum expert, trainer of barmen, lecturer, taster, who has worked for Tia Maria and Lemon Hart, and all over the globe. Conducts tastings, workshops and seminars and spreads the gospel

4finespirits online German rumshop which also has a pretty interesting blog. Not sure what it’s doing in this list since it’s a recently established site (2015). Somebody must sure like them. Recently started a video blog on YouTube.

Andres Brugalfull name Andrés Brugal Montaner, a Spaniard who migrated from Catalonia in Spain to Cuba (where he learned the fundamentals of how to make rum), and thence to the Dominican Republic, where he established Brugal and produced his first dark rum in 1888. The first warehouses for ageing there were built in 1920, and the company exists, making good rums, to this day. However, it is no longer owned by the Brugals, but the Edrington Group out of Scotland, who bought a majority shareholding in 2008.

Bryan DavisThis man may change the rum world, or be conning it. Opinions are fiercely divided on what the man behind Lost Spirits Distillery has accomplished. Short form is that by using chemistry and molecular analysis to build a molecular reactor, he can supposedly churn out rum which shows the profile of a 20 year old spiritin six days. I’ve heard his rums are pretty good, but never tried any. A good article on Wired is here.

Got Rum?online rum magazine run by Luis and Margaret Ayala

Samuel Morewood British etymologist who wrote an essay in 1824 on the origins of the wordrumin An essay on the Inventions and Customs of both Ancients and Moderns in the use of Inebriating Liquors. It’s actually quite a fascinating read, even now.

Cédric BrémentFrench maker of flavoured rums, and owner of the company Les Rhums de Ced.

Frank Ward Chairman of the West Indies Rum and Spirits Producers Association and Managing Director of Mount Gay in Barbados. This gentleman has his work cut out for him. First to try to save the smaller Caribbean producers from the massive subsidies the big guns get, and secondly to impose some order on the crazy patchwork of rum via trying to get agreement on standards. Part of the solution is to create the Authentic Caribbean Rum Marque. An interview with Got Rum? magazine is here.

Enrique ShuegBrother in law of Emilio, Facundo and Jose Bacardi, the three sons of the founder. Born the same year as the company was founded (1862), he steered the company almost single-handedly into the modern area, and was the key link between the small family firm and the global behemoth it eventually became. He played a leading role in the company for fifty years, expanding the reach of Bacardi to jet set visitors, tourists and even gangsters, and making Cuba the home of rum before moving operations to Puerto Rico.

Dean Martindrinker of rum, singer and film star and member of the 1950s era Rat Pack.

Reviewersthere are so very few reviewers out there for rum (versus the hundreds who blog about whiskies). Those that enter the field have their work cut out for them, not least because of the paucity of selections which they can review on the budget they have. They serve a useful purpose in that they raise rum awareness as much as any brand ambassador or festival/competition organizer and provide useful (if free) advertising for many small outfits who might otherwise never be heard about outside their state, province, canton or country.

And there you have it. All the reference points people have made on the list. This took me the better part of a day to hammer together under the influence of both coffee and some homemade hooch, so please forgive any errors I’ve made in the spelling. It was fun to do, and I hope you who have had the stomach to read this much and have reached this point (drunk or sober), walk away with an enriched body of knowledge on rum’s past and present Big Guns.

Oh, and one other influence on rums

All we drinkers: it is we as drinkers, writers and exponents, who make the industry. Cheers to us all!

Apr 012013
 

(First posted on Liquorature, Feb 2012)

With the write up on the Barbancourt 15 Year Old I have reached a sort of personal milestone. I’ve written a hundred rum reviews and that’s not as easy as it may sound, since I put a lot of effort and energy into crafting each one, chosing the verbiage and doing the research, all the while juggling my photographic hobby, reading, as well as domestic and professional duties which permit me my alcoholic habit. At this rate, if there really are around fifteen hundred rums in production in the world, I’ll be a candidate for a gerontological institute somewhere before I get to finish.

Looking back, it seems quite amazing that two years have already passed since I began writing, three if you count the origins of Liquorature in 2009. In that time, Liquorature has grown from seven members to nine, the much more successful allthingswhisky site has gone up (and it passed a hundred reviews itself no more than a week or two back, so kudos are in order there as well), and a hundred-plus rums have crossed my pathmore if you count those on my shelf I haven’t written about or those friends have trotted out. Through the writing of these reviews I have been in contact with makers and distributors, readers and reviewers, forged friendships and had a really good laugh from time to time (the Bacardi 151 review is a case in point)…and, I’m sure, pissed off a person or three.

There’s really no direction in my reviews: I’m not thinking of adding cocktails to my lineup; news from the rum world will never become part of the site; much as I’d like to, I lack the financial and temporal resources to do distillery tours and write ups; and no, I’m not trying to build any kind of collection or collate the ultimate rum list. The two major changes to my thinking in the last two years involved [1] adding a score to the reviews so I could do rankings and see if I preserved a bell curve (I do, and its median seems to be around fifty-ish, which satisfies me); and [2] a conscious decision to eschew deliberately solicited freebiesI found it influenced my reviews too muchothers may be able to dissociate their personal feelings at getting a free sample from their reviews, but I can’t.

At end, two things stand out. I like to write, and write well, amuse, entertain and maybe make a point or two about my experience with a given liquor, what I felt and thought and tasted. Some say I overwrite, but come on, guys, there are all sorts of McNugget-sized capsule reviews out therewhat on earth do you need another one for? I don’t need to do sound bites. I want to write something that’s more than just the bare bones, something that is part review, part joke, part serious, part history, part philosophical rumination. Surely that’s worth more than a sentence? (For the ADD among you, you’ll note the micro-opinion in italics at the top of each review for the last few months as a nod in your direction).

And secondly, I enjoy knowing that what is written becomes part of a corpus of knowledge people can use to find out more about a rum when they see one on the shelf. A hundred reviews is nowhere near enough to get a sense of what rums are out thereAfrica and Asia remain as skimpily represented as a bikini at Cannes, and every time I turn around some European maker comes out with another artsy little offeringbut those who bother to read each review as it gets posted will not only get a sense of my evolution in taste, but understand why I felt the way I did about each product I wrote about.

And, of course, perhaps laugh a little. That’s alone might be worth all 100 reviews put together

Here’s raising a glass to the next 100.

Apr 012013
 

May 5th 1992. A release date that will live for…well, a heckuva long time.

Because, before Assassin’s Creed, before Metal Gear Solid, Socomm or Call of Duty, before Quake and Duke Nukem (long may he reign as King of Vaporware), there was the ur-game of them all, the ancient DNA of all first person shooters, and it was released that day. Nope, not Doom, but its startlingly original, blood spattered, laughingly and irreverently pixellated daddy, Wolfenstein 3d.

While I fully acknowledge the origin of the game in Muse software’s 1984 incarnation, it was id Software’s 1992 revisit of the game that broke all barriers and ushered in the era of the true first person shooter, where the environment was realistic looking 3d and scrolling and perspective were from that of the player. But what really made it a breakout success and runaway hit was the stroke of genius Id/Apogee had, of giving away the first episode for free, and then charging for the remaining five. Shareware was well on the way to changing business models for the entire software industry.

Wolfenstein 3d sold like a gazillion copies. Office managers routinely cursed its name. Parents were constantly kicked off their own computers (when they had them) by their kids, who played all night sessions, and then got hooked themselves after watching it for a while. Until its even better successor Doom came along (with its equally original and innovative network deathmatch play), it was quoted as one of the greatest contributors to loss of office productivity between 1992 and 1994.

One of the reasons for its perennial attraction for just about anyone of any age, was its ease of use. Left and right arrow keys, space to shoot, and maybe two other keys to throw a grenade or push a wall for secrets. Compare that to today’s games, which use what seems like every key on my board, plus a few I never heard of. My son kicks my ass at the Wii and playstation games, but I moider da bum on keys…so long as I can use just a few and I don’t have to think in 3d. Wolfenstein’s game engine made all that possible.

Wolfenstein 3d ushered in the first glimpse of a true FPS, much as Jordan Mechener’s original Prince of Persia almost redefined how graphics should look in an adventure game (both have now merged into fully rendered 3d worlds, but at the time their innovations were stunning and revolutionary to people who had only ever seen side-scolling images that did not move like real objects)

Seen today, we smile at the archaic graphics and clumsy bitmaps and poorly rendered images. Relative to today’s sleek gaming worlds, of course they are. At the time though, we had never seen anything quite like it. And me and my friends, we stayed late at our offices, played all the levels (plus more freebies), did speed runs and became masters and boasted of our achievements when we met for beers.

I’m sure today’s twelve-fingered, thick-thumbed and iron-wristed Xbox and PlayStation ur-swamis are as bad, as addicted and as dedicated as we once were. But I can almost guarantee that they never had quite as much fun as we did in those days when the technology was so new it had literally never been seen before. That technologically-inspired sense of wonder and fun, plus ten beers and a pack of smokes would keep us going in our offices until long past midnight, surrounded by tinny speakers, glowing big-ass monitor and other crazies doing exactly the same thing.

Beat that, newbs

Apr 012013
 

Every now and then I get an idea and just run with it. This is an adaptation of an essay I put together which briefly explored several themes I thought intriguing. And what the hellI like the arts as well as rum, so why not?

***

As Mulder and Scully, “The Third Man”, “Babylon 5,” “Lucas,” and so many others have showed us so many times, unrequited love is probably the most heart-rending of them all. Done badly, features or shows which do not honour the underlying depth of such feelings are sentimental tripe. Done well, and one watches something luminous unfold.

If I had to chose a movie that stayed with me for long past the day I saw it first, then it would have to be the South Korean piece “3-Iron. I’m not entirely sure why they called it that, since the club in question is not the central motif, except perhaps in an obscure sense. Critic James Berardinelli suggests that the main male character’s undervalued and overlooked persona make the analogy to golf’s possibly least-used club somewhat inevitable, but I think that may be overanalyzing.

In essence, this gentle film shows what pacing, mood and atmosphere can do to elevate the humdrum into something more special, perhaps even artistic. The journey and travails of the young man and the battered wife have a sense of timelessness about themit is no stretch to imagine this as a silent movie. To western eyes it is also a very strange story, since the way the youth goes into houses and stays there (in spite of the things he does while in residence) strike a sense of discord in a society more used to people vandalizing and tearing up a home they enter without permission.

Be that as it may, at the very end, the woman, seemingly reconciled with her husband, saysI love you,’ and the way it is said, how it said, make the emotion of that perfect moment nothing short of magical.

And to me, I immediately saw that scene mirrored in another film abut outsiders: Dirty Pretty Things, which is not so much about a young Turkish immigrant and a West African one in the streets of London, trying not to get deeper into the quagmire of an organ theft operation, as about survival at the bottom rung, in a hostile, skewed world, where viciousness and cruelty are the order of the day. There again, in a scene of uncommon sadness and power, the two main characters say goodbye at the airport, moments away from parting forever, and then, almost unheard, she admits her feelings before turning away.

Which brings me to the third, and to my mind, one of the strongest animated films ever made (number four in line behindPrincess Mononoke”, “The IncrediblesandGrave of the Fireflies”), The Iron Giant,where Hogarth Hughes delights in the strange mechanical object he befriends in the woods of Maine, at the height of the Communist scare in 1957. While the film makes a strong case for not jumping to conclusions about others and holding back an instinctive urge to destroy what we do not understand, the core of it all is the relationship between the kid and his robot (whose origins are never really spelled out, though the DVD gives some hints of the civilization from which he came). And as in the other two films noted here, at the end, when the giant leaves (for reasons I will leave you to discover), there is a swell of emotion, of sadness, of poignancy, and when Hogarth saysI love you,” there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

I agree thatE.T”. was wonderful, that moment inThe Empire Strikes Backwas great, and that there have been dramas out there which have pulled the heartstrings and misted the eye. It’s something about the backdrop, the fullness of the characters and the story, which make these three films stand out. Forget seeing the latest blockbuster. For three unsung, quiet and overlooked films about the nature of unrequited love, look no further than these

Mar 312013
 

(First posted December 2010)

*

Christmas is right around the corner, and soon, if not already, we’ll be having hair of the dog, doing the hearty party and drinking to excess on every possible occasion on our best friendsdime. We’ll be buying gifts, attending bashes and often will be tasked with chosing a decent rum for our West Indian friends or rum lovers in general. What can we buy that is the perfect match of decent quality but won’t bust our slender wallet? Here’s a list to get you started (in no particular order, and with Calgary prices).

1. Captain Morgan’s Private Stock (~$40). Simple, not complex, rich and dark, with a slight spice hint and more than enough sweet. What classifies this as a sipper’s intro is the remarkable body and mouthfeel. Good way to get into higher priced premium rums. It’s easy to bash the Captain, but this rum is worth it, I think. As one grows in rum knowledge, it’s likely this one will be cast aside at some point.

2. Young’s Old Sam Demerara Rum (~$26). I didn’t really care for this at first, but it grew on me. A mixer not a sipper, it’s got powerful growly taste of burnt sugar, molasses and caramel that will perk up our cocktail for sure, and the cheap price means you can buy several, in order to double up on our enjoyment.

3. Cruzan Single Barrel Dark (~$45). Bloody brilliant rum: dark, silky, smooth and with tastes in great harmony, you can use this as either a sipper or a mixer and still have a great time. Great for Grampy.

4. English Harbour 5 year old (~$28). Regular readers here will know that Liquorature went pretty nuts over this premium mixer. Soft, pungent, lightly spiced, its flavour simply explodes in a cola.

5. Tanduay Superior 12 year old. I don’t know the price of this Phillipine product in Western markets, but the local price there is dirt cheap, and man, is this one stellar rum for its price. Slightly dry, slightly sweet, with a great smooth finish and a lovely dark body. One of the best in its class.

6. Old Port Deluxe Rum (~$35). A new arrival from India, tawny, medium bodied and delicious. I liked it neat, but take it any way you want. Decent, well priced and bang for your buck. According to the hippie, the Amrut Fusion produced by the same distillery in Bangalore ain’t half bad either.

7. Havana Club Cuban Barrel Proof (~$45). Golden, twice aged in differing oaken barrels, and smooth as all get out, with a taste and feel at once complex and long lasting. Damn this is good. Fill my glass, and pronto. Twice.

8. Bacardi 8 year old (~$40). It’s considered an easy target for ridicule, but then, everyone hates the big kid on the block. Underservedly so, in this case, because this dry, well aged golden rum is a cut above the ordinary, a great body and flavour profile, and just enough of a whisky driness and lack of sweetness to broaden its appeal among the Maltsters as well as the Caners.

9. El Dorado 12 year old (~$45). Oh man, Guyana knows how to make ’em. Heavy, dark, solid rum with a smooth fade that redefines the midlevel rums. I’m a fan of the 15 and 21 year old, but this one is a worthy younger sibling, believe me, in spite of the backstretch burn. Perhaps because it’s so affordable.

10. Bacardi 151 (~$35). Fine, it’s an overproof with a muzzle velocity off the scale, but you know what? It isn’t half bad after you pick yourself off the floor, roll up your tongue, locate your rapidly dissolving nose and find your face.

I cheerfully concede that these are selections from my limited reviews thus far (I’ve only been at it for a couple of years), and others will have their own opinions. Well, let me know that they arethere are fifteen hundred rums in the world, there are gonna be others worthy of the name at a price we can all afford.

Have a great holiday season.

Mar 132013
 

Later this year (2010), a milestone in photographic history will be reached: the last produced roll of kodachrome print film and ektachrome slide filmKodak’s famous workhorse of pro-photographers for three-quarters of a centurywill be developed in the last lab still to process its demanding Ex chemistry (for those who are interested, it’s Dwayne’s Photo Service, in Parsons, Kansas). Appropriately enough, that last roll will be shot by veteran National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry, who made that famousAfghan Girlphoto.

Some herald it as a final nail in digital’s ascendancy over film. As an enthusiastic amateur, it started me thinking: when indulging one’s predilection for photography, which is better, film or digital? (I love these ridiculous what-ifs..they are so uselessly entertaining).

Let’s run through the pros and cons, and I’ll give my opinions at the end.

Pro Digital:

Can anything beat the instant feedback of reviewing what you thought you shot after taking it? No more messing arounbd with notes on shutter spped, aperture, filters or special film after the fact. No missing the moment. You shoot, you look (“chimping your shot” – isn’t that a great phrase?) you correct, shoot again. There’s a reason amateurs are getting betterthey can make corrections on the fly.

Practically zero running costs once you buy your camera. No more film or development costs. These days, you can even dispense with the computer and edit your work in camera before you output directly to the printer.

No loss due to accidentally opening the back or not rewinding your film properly. I’m not saying I ever had that happen to em, but once film did stick in my camera and I had an interesting time trying to get it out without losing it. No such issues afflict digital shooters

No more investment in darkroom equipment or being at the mercy of the dropout Walmart technician who is using a big-ass automatic developer without a clue as to what it does or how it affects the final print. If you know what you are doing with Gimp, Photoshop, Elements or Picasa, you can duplicate real pro effects with very little effort.

Archive, storage and metadata. We use computers for all digital media, and we can get all our EXIF metadata stored alongside with our pictures in a way that makes retrieval a breeze. Workflow management is quite simply, easier. Add that to the fact you can still print your work for archiving, or simply upload it, burn it or store it, and you should have access as long as our techological age lasts. And instead of being limited to 36 exposures, my current card takes 1300+ 12mp JPEG pictures (about a quarter of that if I add RAW).

My all time favourite walkabout film camerathe light, flawless FM3a

DSLRs are so good nowadays that the quality of lenses in the limiting factor in determining picture quality, not the sensor or the camera itself. Point and shoots are also getting good real fast, and while I don’t use them, I fully appreciate their utility.

No problems running through airport x-ray scanners and having your film fogged

Pro-film

Dynamic range of film is better. Just take a look at this kodachrome shot of Picadilly circus done in the late forties (taken from Wikipedia).

File:London , Kodachrome by Chalmers Butterfield edit.jpg

Older (film) cameras are entirely independent of power sources, and if you doubt me, feel free to review Nikon’s earlier F-series, all of which are brutally hewn blocks of metal with which you could brain an elephant, and entirely manual.

Nikon F2AS with MB1 motor drive. A big, ugly, heavy brick of a cameramine still performs like a champ

 

Your experience and judgement count when using mastodons such as these, so what you gain in independence you lose in gratification of instant feedback. DSLRs have battery packs that make you feel you just added half a kilo to your camera bag, and you cannot function without them, but they are not required on film bodies, where for a generation they were screw-on optional attachments.

Noise in film is prettier and more artisitc than digital noise. It’s better called grittiness, and is worlds removed from the rainbow speckled hues of digital crap that messes up long exposures or high-ISO pictures. I’ve heard that there are actually programs around that will alter a digital image to add the grain back in.

Here’s the thing. Film cameras are film cameras until the end of time. I have a Nikon F2, F3, F4 and F5 (you can pick them up for a song nowadays and may even be good investments long term quite aside from the enjoyment of using them) and they work like swiss watches. Their all metal construction and titanium shutters defy today’s use ’em and toss ’em mentality. I’m an unabashed Nikon fan sure, but I started with a Canon A-1 and I tell you, that thing cranked film through for two decades without a single problem. Today’s crop of digital camera will not only be obsolete inside of a decade, but are actually decreasing in valueI bought a Nikon D40x the other day for under a hundred bucks, while my F2 from 1972 may actually be going *up* in value.

You can scan film negatives or transparencies, and always have the maximum resolution of the scannerin other words, your digital picture shot at 12mp will remain that way forever, but your 35mm negative can always be scanned at the maximum resolutuion of the technology today. Strictly speaking, 35mm film grain is about the same resolution as a 24mp JPEG, so all along film has been at resolutions which digital cameras areonly now approaching….and for a fraction of the cost.

Film cameras were finger driven, not menu driven (the F5 excepted). Instead of poking around with ten different menus and submenus and options, you just had to fiddle with two, maybe three knobs, all while peeking through the viewfinder. And let me tell you, full frame film camera viewfinders are huge and bright in comparison to the smaller ones on today’s digitals rather tepid offerings. I won’t even discuss point-and-shoots.

***

If I had a choice, I’d like to use film but have the instant feedback of digital. I like the feeling of a precision mechanical instrument that does what it is supposed to do with no fuss, no bother and no frigginaround. The D2x I use most often fits well in my hands, but for tactile delight and a sense that the camer is doing what it is engineered (superbly) to do, the F5 and F3 remain my favourites (and my god, the AF on the F5 is staggeringly fast). For any kind of indoor work, I’d say digital is probably better for assessing flash work, but then, I’m not very good at it, so maybe that’s just me.

In the end, it all boils down to your feeling as an artist if you are even remotely serious about photography. Do you do better work with digital inpostor are you simply a perfectionist of the film world (there may be a generational divide here which I am not addressingit’s my opinion that younger people are happier with digital because they are more comfortable around the core digital technology). I love film, but concede that digital does offer more flexibility, consistently better-exposed work, and, often, faster on-the-fly shooting. I do in fact do some post-processing work to punch up colours and contrastmostly in Picasa or GIMP, since my demands are slight and the programs are freebut I stand in awe of what people achieve with true pro-level digital image manipulation.

Be that as it may, there’s norightanswer. What is a fact is that your equipment does not matter, and neither does your megapixel count. At the end of the day, the best camera in the world is the one that you have on you, and nothing beats your imagination and skill when it comes to making a truly stunning picture. All your camera and technology do is enable what your mind has already decided.

Very much like how a cheap piece of crap rum can enable the best conversation of your life. Or the bestwell, you know what I mean.

Mar 132013
 

The El Dorado Problem is that pitiful state of affairs reached when a truly superior rum appears on the shelf, demurely winking at you to buy it….and you don’t have the cash because it’s just outside (or way outside) your price range. It comes from yours truly, who realized he had such a problem when attempting to buy the El Dorado 25 year old a few years ago.

Many of us netizens and lurkers in the rumiverse are at that stage where young families are the phase of lifechildren still in the single digits, a wife whose ring still has some sparkle and shine, and who might even still love you a little (instead of treating you with the sort of gentle condescension reserved for congenital defectives). First houses or starter homes (or rentals). Pennies are watched, and we are slowly climbing over the bodies of our contemporaries in the quest to attain that dubious distinction of clerkdomthe corner cubicle.

It is generally at this time in our lives that we cast around for time-wasters and hobbies to take our minds off the daily drag: for me, the club is something like that. Some guys I know are into photography; others moonlight in bands; one friend has a thing for hats (I think he wants to be the Imelda Marcos of headwear, but with less expense and taste), another is into mountaineering, whisky and a book club. And some older folks have grandkids, a country home to maintain and a position in society to uphold in keeping with their dignified geriatricity. Ka-ching.

The thing is, this rum hobby of ours, or the side interests, involvesespecially at the inceptiona fair amount of expenditure. A good camera body or a guitar is probably close to a thousand bucks or more. Having seen friendswhisky cabinets, I estimate many have got maybe two or three grand in there. I myself have occasionally been overtaken by bouts of insanity and blown a few hundred on some choice (and not so choice) rums that caught my eye.

Our spouses mostly consider us as half-tamed hobos who, by dint of firm discipline, a smack or two and occasional love, can be tamed and house-broken from the vagabondage of our bachelor years (fifteen years with my significant other has not cured her of this delusion, which I am at pains to foster). And nowhere is this more clearly shown than in the beady-eyed, cold glare with which they double check everything we buy. And given how carefully they monitor our expenditure, it’s a real chore to pass off our toys not as wannabes or spur of the moment expenses we can casually shrug off, but as necessities.

However, my experience and anecdotal evidence suggests a few avenues we can explore to pretend we are doing mankind a service by buying the things we do. And this is the core of my essay that suggests how we poor slobs could possible address the El Dorado Problem

1. First and foremost, we can have a separate bank account. This is frowned upon in more polite circles (my geriatric sire is aghast that my wife and I have our own accounts), but I find it invaluable. Stops long-nosed wives from checking up in things. If you have internet banking with online statements, you can actually have an entirely private transaction record. Spouses being who they are, they will inevitably be curious, but so long as you don’t have to borrow from her (definitely a no-no), all will be fine

2. If discovered, say the purchased object was on sale. And not just any sale, but a sale to end all sales. Make gargantuan (and hopefully unverifiable) claims likethe rum was 50% off, how could I resist, a deal like that will never come up again!”

3. Hint at gift-giving time that you would like a new velvet smoking jacket (or whatever). And be creative about thisdon’t limit yourself to standard birthdays and Christmas, but father’s day, valentine’s day, anniversary time, Halloween (“I need the thousand-buck rum to lend gravitas to our picture of Junior at Halloween, hon,” you can just hear someone saying plaintively) and whatever else you can think of.

4. Just shrug and refuse to answer niggling questions on why you had to buy that $500 one-of-a-kind rum (or gold-plated classic Canon F1 film camera you know you’ll never use, but you had to have it because that thing went to space, man), but if you don’t want your bed to turn as cold as my new freezer, I’d recommend against this practice, which is usually only good for new arrivals whose wives haven’t cottoned on to local divorce laws yet.

5. Hide receipts, hide the evidence, and trot your hideously overpriced rum out casually months later with anOh this old thing? Always had it, dearsince last December I think.I actually did this with the English Harbour 25, once. Can’t be tried too often, howeverwives get suspicious and no matter what you think, they aren’t stupid.

6. For the wussies out there, run home crying and throw yourself at her mercy and beg forgiveness, sayingI don’t know what made me do it, honey.Promise never to do it again (until next time). Incompatible with point number 3 or 4 .

7. Give your purchase to her as a presentthe trick here is to actually give her something she might want but which you want more. I have given my wife bottles of wine I particularly like (rum would be a dead giveaway and way too obvious), a GPS I get to use, a small digital camera I take along when I don’t feel like schlepping a massive pro model and lens around, and TVs I assured her we absolutely needed for our bedroom. (I like to think I’m fooling her, but truth is, I think she sees through me like I was Saran wrap). This point is a case in plausible deniability – “It was all for you, hon.And you smile winningly.

8. Make her give it to you. This takes some skill, to be honest, because it is not only a matter of hinting around the edges ofoh I could really use a new Velier rum”, but making her sayOh, you know, I think you really need a new bottle,” as if it was entirely her idea. For a real touch of subtletyartistry, reallyyou can protest a little at the expense and modestly claim you don’t deserve it. (Well, strictly speaking you don’t, but you must take one for the team once in a while and sacrifice your finer feelings for the good of the wife’s happiness). And to add a touch of extravagance, make sure all your relatives with money are in on this so they can all chip in for you and upgrade.

9. Keep her informed. And I really mean thattell her as far as possible in advance that if Bottle X of Brand Y ever comes on the market, it’s one of those seminal moments in your drinker’s life, and you have to have it. Not only does this dovetail neatly with point 8, but when you do, at some stage, walk into your home cradling this beauty like your newborn child, she may shed a happy tear for you.

These are the best ones, but the ones below are also pretty decent, if pedestrian: I mean, if you actually have to work at getting money together, it sort of defeats the purpose of having it handed to you, right? But in a pinch, these are tried and true, so I have to be fair and list them

My favourite method is to siphon off a little cash now and then from leftovers. Since I pay all bills online, I can also set up a small savings account without paperwork and transfer a fifty or so every two weeks or so into it. After a few months, I have enough to afford a new lens, a two hundred dollar rum, or any other kind of frippery. “Fripperyis a rather elastic term and fluctuates in quality. Currently, it stands forMercedes”. Note that since my bank does not pay me to advertise for them, I won’t tell you which one it is.

Cut out the crap! It really is amazing how seemingly insignificant steps can net you bucks that turn big in a hurry. Don’t buy coffee at Starbucks but bring a Thermos with your own vintage, don’t buy lunch but make one at home. That can save you maybe ten to fifteen dollars a day. Twice a week, and conservatively, you could ring up over a hundred a monththat’s one of the hippie’s bottles right there. Turn off lights you don’t use, don’t leave the sprinkler running, sell stuff you don’t need or use (Kijiji is great for this), pay off all credit cards on time, don’t have large lines of credit balances….I estimate that on average, I make maybe $350 per quarter or more on insignificant steps which result in no negative cash flow, and then I just siphon it off.

If you can, bank your overtime instead of getting paid for it immediately. It’s a nice nest egg.

If you’re single, move back in with your parents. I’m sure they’d be glad to have you. Offer rent below that which you currently pay and throw in some chores for free. The difference is free money. Not really recommended, but it does work.

Now keep one thing in mind: do not spend money you don’t have, no matter how good the deal or the steal. If a cask strength top-of-the-line 25-year-old rum comes up for sale at a price not commonly seen, but you don’t have the money and you know your credit card can just barely be paid off with next week’s paychequeresist! Don’t do it! You survived for 30+ years without this ambrosia….I know you won’t believe me, but you will and can live without it on your shelf. It’s the fish that got away. On the other hand, if you are connected like a Boss, get samples and maintain relations with people, and maybe they’ll lay it away for yougood luck with that.

There’s very little I can’t get if I save enough, and if I can’t save or don’t have it on hand, then I won’t buy itit really is that simple. My wife thinks I’m an absolute ass with money (when I absently mumbleI bought what last week? For how much? Oh. Okay.it drives her bugsh*t), but the truth is, I actually have a really good idea of how much I need from one month to the next, and more importantly, where it’s going. I have zero compunction about spending a few hundred dollars on three bottles of rum (or even more on just one)…but only as long as the needs of my family are met and nothing else is competing for my attention.

Granted, I may not be buying really expensive rums just nowbut that’s just because I’m in full saving mode at this point. After all, I can always buy the low-class crap, and review it as part of my commitment to the Single Digit Rums. But I’ll tell you thisthe day you see me pulling up to a RumFest somewhere in my spanking-new mid-life-crisis on Potenza tyres, well me boyos, that’s the day you’ll know I’ve solved the El Dorado Problem.

Mar 132013
 

This introduction was first posted on the Liquorature site in January 2010, the ported to the Lone Caner in 2013 and lightly edited for updates in 2022. But it remains a product of the time I wrote it, so if it feels and reads dated, that’s because it is.

Ahh, rum. The wonderful distilled product of cane. I feel the same way about it as the poor deluded souls from the Peat Clan feel about their Islays. Partly, of course, that comes from my backgroundalmost half my life was spent in the Caribbeanand while my first recorded drunk was done with local vodka (don’t ask), it is to the rums that my primary allegiance was given, and where it remains.

Most well-known and well-regarded rums come from the Caribbean, but there are others from as far afield as Canada, East Asia, India, Japan, UK, USA, Australia, Fiji, Brazil, Indonesia and Mauritius, among many many others. The precursors to rum date back to antiquity. Development of fermented drinks produced from sugarcane juice is believed to have first occurred either in ancient India or China, and spread from there. An example of such an early drink is brum. Produced by the Malay people, brum dates back thousands of years. Marco Polo also recorded a 14th-century account of avery good wine of sugarthat was offered to him in what is modern-day Iran.

Whatever the case for the ancients, the first distillation of rum took place on the sugar plantations of the Brazil and the West Indies in the 16th and 17th centuries. Lore has it that plantation slaves first discovered that molasses, a by-product of the sugar refining process, can be fermented into alcohol. Later, distillation of these alcoholic by-products concentrated the alcohol and removed impurities, producing the first true rums. Tradition suggests that West Indian rum first originated on the island of Barbados; and although my experience is that the Bajans like to take credit for doing everything first (these are, after all, the modest folk who sent a telgram to King George sayingYour Majesty, you may join the war: Barbados is on your side,” at the onset of WW2), it’s likely that in this case their claim is probably true. A 1651 document from Barbados stated, “The chief fuddling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar canes distilled, a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor”. Sounds like many a rum I’ve had when not having a pot to piss in in my youth.

Rum has gone through many evolutions since then. The refinement of pot stills from simple alembics, fermentation processes, invention of the coffey still, the rise of sugar plantations, development of agricoles, the rise of Bacardi and the light rum styles that dominated the 20th century, the move away from commodity bulk rum to premiumization that gathered apace in the 21stall these are aspects that have moved rums to a greater role in the spirits world. This site has, over many years, chartered some of that in the various articles, opinions and reviews that populate it.


Back in 2009 when I started writing, the only non-West Indian rum I have sampled is the Bundaberg from Australia: being in Calgary, even with a stellar shops like Willow Park around the corner and KWM downtown, did little to improve the level of selection, since the demographics of Western Canada clearly favour the single malts (much to the Last Hippie’s satisfaction). It always frustrates me to see the shelves groaning under the weight of the multitudinous peats, and closed, securely fastened glass cabinets with the >$500 whiskeys reposing snugly within, while, in some raggedy-ass, dusty, out-of-the-way corner, the rums languish, sadly unrepresented by any truly wide-ranging (or premium) choiceand this, as late as 2022, has not changed much.

It was for this reason that I pounced on the English Harbour 25 back then, because, as I explained to Keenan, it’s so rare to see any rum of real aged quality in Calgary that one must risk the wife’s wrath when one does see an above-average sample come on sale. (In passing I’ll note that my wife accepted that expensive purchase with no more than a raised eyebrow and a sigh, though I believe she laughed herself silly to listen to the Bear and I sip it with such delicate lip-smacking, fastiduous sniffing, and ecstatic cluckings and gurglings and murmurs of delight, all the while dabbing tears from the corners of our eyes.)

The selections I see in the various stores I now frequent (in 2010), have been limited to the staples of single-digit Bacardi, Appleton, Captain Morgan, Mount Gay, Flor de Cana, Havana Club and Lambs with a few others thrown in from time to time. Occasionally I see the English Harbour, Pyrat’s or Screech, but it’s the big guns, the older vintages, that are so sadly lacking here (as well as the experts who can discourse for hours on the nose, mouthfeel and finish, and identify every fruit within by its first name). I won’t go so far as to say we never see the good stuff here in the sticks: we just never see the good stuff all the time. One can always find a Glenfiddich 21 year old or a Johnny Walker Blue Label in a glass case somewhere, but good luck finding Appleton 30 year old, the DDL 21, the English Harbour 25 or that mythical XM 50 (which, for the life of me I cannot recall where I heard about, but for some reason I’m absolutely certain exists in spite of two decades fruitless search for either a bottle or a mention on Google).

Be that as it may, Liquoratureand its successor, the Lone Caner sitehas made the whole business of acquiring and tasting rum a lot more systematic than was previously the case. Being the only banana-man in the joint helps in that I really do like rums more than that obscure Scottish drinkmaybe it’s the sweetness, or maybe it’s just the obstinate desire to be different. Whatever the case, it’s a diverting and harmless pastime, allows me to score points of the Last Hippie (or him off me), brings enjoyment and fun to the party, and permits me to indulge my writing. The fact that I also taste some of the best rums in the world while attacking some poor sod’s choice of book (and then get to pen an essay on the subject) is merely a bonus.

Hope you like the reviews. I enjoyed writing them as much as I did researching them.


Mar 132013
 

(First posted on Liquorature, February 2010)

Are we all a bunch of elitist wannabe snobs?

I occasionally think we are. We can be as snooty as a veteran somelier at the Ritz watching a Hawaiian-shirted redneck walk in, and I say that because it ocurred to me the other day that while weI!! — pay lip service to thelesser rumswhose age is measured in single digits (or none at all, as if the maker were too ashamed to say how young the product is), the truth is that we all have a predilection for the older stuff. I confess that sometimes merely the price will get me to take a second look. Just look at the reviews that are up: 12 year, 18 year, 21 year, 25 year. Of the eleven rum reviews that are up right now, only three are of rums less than ten years old, and the Bruichladdich is a marginal call, since it is a limited edition of a very good rum indeed (and its price reflected that).

And yet, that’s unfair. The masses of the unwashed riff-raff and the hordes of the illiterate peasantry such as I, for many years drank nothing but the low-end stuff (and if you doubt me, just look at my nostalgic review of the XM5). We probably know the older stuff is so good precisely because we drank so much backwoods moonshine and low-class hooch in our disreputable and best-forgotten pasts, and therefore appreciate the good rums more by way of simple comparison.

But I don’t mind admitting this: in my pantry reposes, unashamed, a bottleactually, a massive frigginjugof the regular Appleton 5 year old (at least, I assume it’s a fiveI’m not precisely sure) and when I drink on my own or with The Bear, I don’t bring out the velvet smoking jacket, light the candles and call for my hound while the faithful wife lights the fire and brings the slippers; neither do I trot out the expensive vintage, the cigars, mineral water and fancy glasses to taste the good stuff. I just sit my tail down in a pair of mouldy shorts that have seen better days, have a bowl of ice nearby (a bowl’ice in the vernacular) to take a handful from now and then, scratch my behind, and have a damned drink. If the Bear is boozing along, then we simply have a drink together, and not having the pressure to review something top of the line frees us up to actually talk.

My point being that these rums of unstellar vintage and uncertain provenance, are often the ones we turn to when we’re not being overly snooty and revert back to our more proletarian roots, or when we have forty people descending on our houses to imbibe (and we lock up the silverware next to the rarer vintages to prevent pilferage). And more, on occasion these unprepossessing rums surprise, delight and wow us with their qualitythe English Harbour 5-year immediately springs to mind.

I think I’ll therefore make it a point to go lowball and make a concerted effort to write reviews of the rums that crowd the shelves of Sobey’s and the backgrounds of us cheaposand indeed, may even be better known than the high-falutinexclusive multi-decade and multi-dollar ambrosias which fill so many of the rum pages on the web. This has nothing to do with economicsthis post is being written, after all, by a moron who blew two hundred bucks on a single bottle of rum oncebut because I truly believe that not only is it interesting to see how the various blends and ages get more rarefied up the scale, but we develop a better palate for the good stuff when we drink more crap.

Being who I am, I must also confess that it’s a hell of a lot more fun to write about something bad than it is to be effusive about something good. To write about a superlative piece of craft requires no particular talenteveryone knows it’s good and you can’t add much to that. But to vent one’s spleen on a liquid turd that you swear you’ll never touch again, and explain it in flowery prosewell now, that takes skill.

Mar 132013
 

So what exactly are pot stills or columnar stills, batch vs continuous stills, steam distillation, freezing distillation or fractional distillation in the production of rum (or that other scottish drink)? And which one leads to better rum? I mean, I’ve made mention ofused the original pot stillsin my Pusser’s review, and inClassifying rumsI noted that useage of pot- versus columnar-stills is to some extent geographic in nature and affects the output. And there’s something traditional and evocative about the terms. But what are they?

All stills (the word derives from old middle english ‘distilling’) are descendants of the ancient alembics, which were simple devices to capture vapours and condense them. The word alembic comes from the Arabic, and the supreme richness of the irony that a people opposed to alcohol inventing the first stills is one of those things that makes history worth reading, to me. Those who remember their high school chemistry (or like me, simply like blowing up chem labs with weird concoctions), will recall that alcohols vapourize at a lower temperature than waterall stills are based on this fundamental property . (They also freeze at a lower temperature, which is why freeze distillation can be used in colder climes to produce alcohol by skimming off the unfrozen alcohol settling on the frozen water beneath it).

A pot still is a simple closed container containing the ‘washor ‘wineor ‘mash’, to which heat is applied. Most are metalcopper supposedly gives the best results because of chemical interactions that enhance taste and also removes sulphur compoundsbut I’ve heard of glass, clay and even wooden ones being used. Vapours arising at the top of the ‘potas the boiling point is approached are drawn off via a tube or coil, which is run through a colder liquid, thereby condensing the alcohol rich mixture. This mixture is about 25-30% alcohol by volume, and all alembics or moonshine stills usually stop here. However, more sophisticated pot stills take this primary resultthe so-called ‘low wines’ – and run it into a secondary pot still for a second run, which produces a colourless ~70% ABV resultant. Moonshiners add ‘thumper kegsor ‘doublersto their stills to get precisely this effect. This is then drained off into casks or barrels for the final maturation period, and the ageing here produces the brown colours associated with rums or the scottish tipple.

A pot still is a good example of batch distillation: the pot is charged with one batch at a time, and when it is done, another one is introduced. It was and remains, therefore, comparatively energy inefficient and time consuming: but its prime disadvantages were its expense and the fact that each batch would taste different, and so quality see-sawed widely.

Several doublers can be added in series, each draining off the high proof alcohol mixture into the next thumper keg, boiling that, creaming off the higher proof vapours and sending that into the next keg in line, and so on. This is, however, very energy inefficient, and it was discovered that putting pots one above the other is more practical, faster and resulted in higher volumes, and a constantly circulating wash that could be recharged without pause. This is the basic principle of a columnar still, in a continuous distillation cycle.

File:Column still.svgA columnar still is a more complex series of vertically arranged pot stills, where, instead of real pots, there are varying levels filled with packing or ‘bubble platesin one of two columns. The wash (sometimes known as ‘distiller’s beer’) is injected into this column, called an analyzer (A) and falls, while hot steam is introduced at the bottom (2), and rises. The rising hot vapour, low in alcohol, starts to condense as it rises to the cooler upper layers; since the temperature of each of the higher layers is successively lower then the one beneath it, the vapour in equilibrium with the falling liquid is successively richer in alcohol (this has to do with partial vapour pressures and is more mathematically complex than I need to discuss: but the physics is sound).The highly enriched vapour is then taken off and drained (4) into the rectifier (B). The more volatile alcohol vapours rise to the top and are drawn off and condensed. The remaining impurities and ‘loweralcohols condense by using the cooler wash itself (1) to liquify it. The impurities are removed by filters and other reagents, and the resultant joins the wash at stage 5, and is recycled into the analyzer.Because the vapours may have several different kinds of alcohols at (7), each with its own condensation point, the condensing vapours can be drawn off at any level in the rectifier, each giving a different fraction of alcohol (I have simplified the process for ease of expression), or strength: this is why the process is also called fractional distillation, andexactly the same process is used in petroleum refining to produce differing kinds of products from a single feedstock source (there is of course catalytic cracking as well, but doesn’t apply to likker and so I decline to go further in that direction).

This is the great advantage over pot-stills, because while a typical pot still can get a mixture that is 40-50% alcohol on a first or second pass, the columnar still can have a vapour alcohol content of close to 96% with less energy input. As well, feedstock (the wash) can be introduced continuously since enriched vapour is drawn off automatically on a constant basis. Columnar stills benefited because they offered speed, immense capacity, greater economies of scale, significantly lower unit rate costs and more consistent qualitybut they did cost more, and so required a greater capital outlay of the kind only businesses could muster.

All of this is fine and dandy, I can hear the rummies and scotch-lovers grumble, but which one produces the better end product? After all, pot-stills have a long and noble tradition and are still used (Pusser’s, for example). Quality control and chemistry have improved to the point where pot stills can make consistently high-tension hooch that isn’t noticeably different from one batch to the next.

Most light rums are produced from continuous stills, and are highly purified and blended, perhaps even aged for a few months, or charcoal filtered, in order to produce a smoother palate. Heavier, darker rums are traditionally made in industrial-sized pot stills, which are less efficient and have carry-overs from congeners (additives both intended and not, such as caramel, esters, phenols or apeat taste”). But there’s no hard and fast rule, as far as I can tell.

Most Caribbean islands and the South American mainland use columnar stills, with Guyana, Martinque and Barbados utilizing both kinds. Bundie is distilled in Australia using column stills, as are all Asian rums made in Thailand and the Phillipines.

Speaking for myself, I can honestly say I have no preference. The distillation method, to me, is less important than that of the ageing the end product undergoes, and the additives put in. The older rums have been the best I’ve had so far, with honourable mention going to that famous working class tipple, the EH5. The purpose of this article has not been to rank one method against the other, but simply to explain what they mean, and while some detail has been omitted in the interest of clarity, I hope that’s what I’ve managed to achieve here.

 

Mar 132013
 

It seems simple to say that an 80-proof rum is actually just 40% alcohol by volume based on a straightforward mathematical operation, but strictly speaking, it is not true. Actually, using the historical British method in force until 1980, a 40% ABV drink is 70 proof

It has long been a problem to decide exactly how strong a given drink was (or is). From the ancient times, Archimedes’s principle was used to determine specific gravities (i.e., density) by use of hydrometers, but I can trace no records that show the consistent, state-mandated application of the principle to establishing the alcohol content of spirits. In any event, for most of history, brewing and distilling were primarily cottage industries in an overwhelmingly agricultural world, and while rudimentary regulations existed regarding quality control, it was not until the era of industrial mass production around the 18th century and the usual attendant evil of taxation, that consistency and proof of strength became something to be sought after.

The word proof as applied to alcoholic beverages takes its name from the (possibly anecdotal) exercise supposedly undergone by any rum during the Royal Navy days of yore, as well assubsequentlythe tests a spirit had to go through to rate its strength for taxation purposes. In short, a proof spirit was the most diluted (weak) form of that spirit which would still support the combustion of gunpowder. Not surprisingly, the Royal Navy was intimately involved in this: in order to show that the rum stocks on board were unadulterated, gunpowder was doused with the spirit and set alight. If it ignited, then it was supposedly proof, or over proof; if it did not, the liquor was deemed to have too much water and was underpoof. It was discovered that a ratio of 7:4 of alcohol to water was just enough to support combustion. This was deemed “100 degrees proof”. Naturally, this was more of a rule of thumb than anything else, since quality or type of gunpowder was never taken into account, and surely that would have had an effect on the combustion rate.

(Also, we may have the story in reverse: a master gunner would need to know the best kind and amount of gunpowder, depending on burn rates, to use on which sized cannonto prevent explosion prior to expelling the cannonballand having gunpowder doused in alcohols of varying strengths gave him quick measures of burn rates; also, fuses soaked in alcohol and gunpowder were common the prevent them being doused by seawater during battles, and gunpowder and/or rum was often added to drinking water as a preservativebut I digress).

In order to address mankind’s innate love of complexity, clearer and more complicated definitions of strength emerged. First, a legal standard was promulgated in the early 18th century, stating that aproof spiritwas half rainwater and half spirit proven by the gunpowder method (this would roughly approximate to today’s ABV measurement); a gallon of proof spirit like this, with a density of 0.923 was deemed to weigh 7lbs 12ozs at 10.5°C (51°F).

By the third decade of the 17th century, tax was being levied on drinks depending on the alcohol content, and a Clarke’s Hydrometer was developed, adopted and stayed in use until 1817. Clarke’s hydrometer was quoted in the 1762 law (and again in 1802) defining a standard gallon of spirits: six parts spirits and one part water by weight, and weighing 7 pounds, 13 ounces at 50°F. It depended on its proper functioning by being bobbed in the liquid, and being calibrated against liquids of known densities, like water or pure ethyl alcohol.

The problem with all such hydrometers to that time was that they worked properly if there was a constant, reliable temperature, and there was only alcohol and water in the mixture…which of course was not always the case. Tax evaders constantly added other ingredientsmolasses, spices, sweeteners and so onwhich increased the density of the liquid without affecting its alcoholic properties (alcohol is less dense than water, the principle on which all such hydrometers function).

Finally, in 1817, the more accurate Sikes’s thermometer became the legal method for determining proof: it was established that using this instrument (pretty much just a refined version of Clarke’s) thatproven spiritswere at least 57.1% alcohol by volume and 49.28% alcohol by weightthe next century and a half of British proof measures (and therefore much of the rest of the world) were based on this number. It was still, however, primarily established by weights, not volumesthese were calculated indirectly. Too, the British Navy did its own ongoing measurements of the gunpowder test (which retained a peculiar longevity) and discovered that the ideal strength for gunpowder to ignite was actually 95.5 degrees of English proofthis equated to 54.5% ABV and therefore if one sees any navy rum at either 57.1% or 54.5% (like the Navy Neaters for example, issued at 95.5 degrees) then it’s okay and there’s no mistake.

Europe settled on the Gay-Lussac system developed by the famous chemist. He invented ancentesimal alcoholometerwhich is a hydrometer calibrated to 100 percentage by volume divisions, and also provided the theoretical background for its use in an 1824 paper. The system became law in France in 1884 and was adopted by the EU in 1973, and is volumetric in nature.

However, time marches on, as do measures, and the term of proof as defined by Great Britain is no longer in use. All spirits are now measured for strength in terms of % alcohol by volume, and while this is not quite half the old proofing formula, it’s close enough for Government work, apparently. The United States regulations on alcohol state that the proof of an alcoholic beverage is twice its alcohol content expressed as percentage by volume at 60°F. So an 80-proof whisky is 40% alcohol. The Europeans used the Gay-Lussac method, and this is now expressed in degrees, not percentages (the numbers come out the same).

These days, even hydrometers are archaic relics of a less exacting past. Modern measurements of proof rely on pycnometry, hydrostatic balances and (now) electronic densimetry, though all still rely on aspects of Gay-Lussac’s principle. Other more labour intensive and exacting methods fell by the wayside while new ones are constantly being bandied about (like infrared analysis). At end, they all measure the amount of ethyl alcohol in a given sample. And all of that is still expressed in simple terms: proof.

In summary then: in the 1950s, say, a given whisky or rum could be quoted as being 80 proof if measured in the US, 40° proof if in Europe or 70 proof in the UK (and still others based on mass, in some US states). But global standards are now based on simple alcohol-by-volume measures of proof and companies regularly place ABV % on the bottles (sometimes also the proof using older terminology). The methods of assessment have gotten more complex even as the terms remain the same as those from three hundred years ago. It’s like the width of all modern railroad tracks conforming to the width of Roman roads which themselves were based on the width of wagon tracks dictated by the span of two oxen hitched up side-by-side…

It really is enough to drive a man to drink.

Jan 102013
 

(An abridged form of the Liquorature wrap up, posted January 2013)

2012 is drawing to a close, and many sites are beginning their top-however-many lists. The Hippie has drawn up a list of his favourite drams of the year on ATW, the Rum Howler has got his lists of top rums and whiskies he’s tried, film critics will put out their top ten lists as usual, and here I’ll join in and review how the year went from Liquorature’s perspective, includingof course! – my own discoveries of the year and my own take as a reviewer of rums.

The primus inter pares of all my varied interests. During 2012 I gamely struggled to hold my own in the face of the irredeemably stubborn obstinacy of my fellow Liquorites who insist on giving pride of place to the obscure Scottish drink. Added to that was my day job, my family, photography and other priorities, which led to 2012 seeing less than fifty new rum reviews. Aside from the division of my available time, part of the problem is undoubtedly my writing style, which tends to the lengthy and relates to my desire to tell as complete a story about each rum as I can, adding to that whatever ruminations (no pun intended) cross my mind as I write, and making each more an essay than a reviewhopefully a unique one. This is a style that takes real effort and thought and time, and works for me both as a writer and a reviewer; but is, alas, too long for some (most, I would gather), with all the attendant disinterest it creates in people who prefer a McNugget-level synopsis as they stand, i-phone in hand, at a liquor store somewhere wondering what to buy. The important thing is that I enjoy it and it holds my interesta more abbreviated style would be easier, I could churn out more reviewsbut not nearly as much fun.

My tastes have gradually changed (I hesitate to say “improved”) to appreciate higher proof rumsI’m coming to the stated opinion that 40% is a really pronounced limiting factor for top quality rums of any kind. The Panamonte XXV, the Plantation XO 20th Anniversary and many others, would have benefited greatly from having the extra oomph of a few additional proof points. Of course, the two rums that took this to ridiculous extremes were the beefcake SMWS Longpond 81.2% and the Stroh 80 both of which I sneakily kinda enjoyed in spite of their rage.

Another point of development for me is that I have quietly dispensed with three almost unconsciously held assumptions I realized I was harbouring: (a) that older rums are always better than younger ones (they often are, but not every time); (b) younger rums or cheap blends are only for mixing (often true, but certainly not every time) and (c) expensive is equivalent to quality (it often is, but, nope, not always). As I taste more and more rums and go back and forth between the earlier rums and the later ones and cross taste them in my spare time, I appreciate the subtleties that in many cases I missed the first time around, and learn to admire the artistry some makers bring to even their youngest creation. In order to chart my development, I leave my scores the way they were when I wrote them, but I’m thinking of doing arevisit reviewsof the older ones from 2009/10 which were shorter and not as intense as later work. As a point of interest, I review every rum neatwhether it makes a good cocktail or not is not part of my review process, though I usually mix myself one to test stuff I don’t like, on the assumption that it might fail as a sipping spirit, but not necessarily as a cocktail.

I’m also learning to appreciate the lighter bodies and complex profiles of agricoles and French-island rums more than when I started, and my discovery this year was undoubtedly the Courcelles 1972 58% which the co-manager of the Rum Depot in Berlin trotted out from his private stash and allowed me to share. I still hate the scoring mechanism, which for me results in rums scoring mostly between fifty and seventy, and I dread coming up with something new and having to go back over a hundred rums and recalibrating. However, at least it’s consistent. But readers should always be warned that it’s the words that tell the tale, not the score. Oh yeah, I dropped the chart of the rum profilesit was useful for a while, but didn’t see it adding any real value so I just shrugged and did away with it.

Kensington Wine Market in Calgary continues to hold two Rum tastings a year, which I faithfully attend and write about in a probably futile effort to raise the profile of the spirit in my obstinately whisky-loving area. A high point for me this year was undoubtedly the cracking of the 58 Year Old Longpond, which snarkily showed the Appleton 50 the door (the latter will be on show for the February 8th 2013 Tasting at KWM). Andrew, the co-owner, maintains his generous habit of alerting me to new and interesting rums coming through the door, even if I can’t afford them all. And though I am aware that in his eyes rum simply doesn’t class with whisky (hence his online moniker which I continually gripe about), he treats me with the courtesy due any autistic, rum-loving mutt who may growl at any moment.

The rums tasted that stood out this year (equivalent to ATW’s “Drams of the Year” post)

  • Appleton Estate 50 year old: I see that Co-op in Calgary has a bottle for $4500. Too rich. But what a great rum it was, correcting as it did many deficiencies of the 30 year old.
  • Courcelles 1972 58%: Renewed my interest in agricoleslovely and rich and tasty. I have the 47% variation to review.
  • Rum Nation Demerara 1989-2012 23 year old 45% Anyone wants to know why I’m a Rum Nation fanboy, this is it.
  • Plantation Barbados XO 20th Anniversary: Lovely, coconut-kissed breath of Bajan sunshine from Cognac Ferrand
  • Rum Nation Panama 21 year old. Best of the Panamanians. This may be considered heresy, but I believe it outclasses the Panamonte XXV by a whisker.
  • G&M Longpond 1941 58 year old: Grandpappy of all rums I’ve ever tasted, and excellent too. Held on to this for two years before reverently opening it
  • Secret Treasures Enmore 1989 14 year old: Secret is rightnever even heard about Fassbind until I went to Berlin. But what a lovely rum this was. Finished it neat in two nights with my mother at her dacha in north Germany by a fireside under the stars.

What is evident from this brief listing is that I’m deliberately moving away from the “one size fits all” commercial rums that we can find almost anywhere, towards costlier, rarer, more unique rums that are edging me to an average price of close to a hundred bucks per bottle (yes, with very rare exceptions and to the horror of my wife, I buy everything I reviewthe exceptions are my friends’ samples which *they* buy). My choices are becoming more finicky, and I seek out older and obscure offerings for the same reason I write the way I dobecause it’s more interesting that way, and because there are enough reviews of the commonly available rums out there (does anyone really need me to put up a tenth review of the Mount Gay XO except as a site-hits driver?). This is not to say I don’t look at, say, a Myer’s Planter’s PunchI just don’t do it as often (though I always will), or as assiduouslyit would undoubtedly be cheaper, though, wouldn’t it? To my mind, a person who likes Old Sam’s won’t care in the slightest what I write about it (if he even looks for a review), but anyone seeking to check out the Rum Nation Jamaica 25 Year old probably will, before he drops close to two hundred bucks on it.

***

Summing up, it’s been a slower than expected year for reviews, but both the Hippie with his 2013 Islay tour and myself with the trip to Germany, made discoveries beyond price. The Liquorature meetings are fixtures and high points of our gentlemanly social lives, and look to continue far into the future. And as we bring 2012 to a close, I must say that 2013 promises to be a year full of new books, new spirits, new friends and more rambunctious get-togethers than ever before.

All the very best to all of you who have had the patience to read this far, and have a great New Year.