Killik Handcrafted Rum “Gold” (2023) – Review

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Aug 252023
 

Killik distillery, located in the east of Melbourne, is one of the “New Australian” outfits I have an eye out for: like others located up and down the east coast of Australia (and elsewhere), they are seeking to bootstrap a homegrown rum industry into something greater by applying modern techniques to old-style rum-making and adding an occasional dash of crazy to set themselves apart. So far it’s mostly local sales that keep these small and often family-owned operations afloat, yet slowly their reputation is spreading beyond the Bundies and Beenleighs everyone knows. The Boutique-y Rum Company’s recent bottlings of Black Gate and Mt. Uncle distilleries speaks well for the future of antipodean rums, and Killik is sure to be a part of that movement.

Readers with pachyderm-level memories will likely recall that we’ve looked at a Killik Gold (rum) before – that one was a year or so old and matured in Chardonnay casks, while this one is of somewhat more recent vintage, no finishing or fancy cask, and a different age. When I addressed this question to the Brothers Pratt (the owners), they remarked that although the overall production process remains the same — they continue to tinker with wild yeast fermentation and Jamaican high-ester-style rum making as a core ethos — the small size of their output means that until they expand it to larger sizes, batches are and will be strikingly varied, and those batches come out quite often. In that sense they are somewhat like the six-month ageing-and-output cycle Nine Leaves in Japan used to have.

One thing to look out for is the label. Now recall, Australia has that 2-year rule that states a cane based spirit cannot be called rum until it is aged for at least two years (producers are trying to address a potential revision to this outdated law through the courts)…so strictly speaking Killik should only be able to call it – as before – a “gold” or a “cane spirit” or some variant thereof. However, in what I personally consider a stroke of marketing genius, they trademarked their name and the image of the anchor device together, as “Killik Handcrafted Rum,” and cheerfully added that to their labels, right above the word “Gold”. They therefore stayed within the law while simultaneously skirting it and unambiguously stating what they’re making.

This particular version — it’s hard to identify it precisely since there is no notation on the label or the website — was confirmed to me to be at least twice as old as the version from 2022 that had come from the 2021 advent calendar. It is therefore a completely different rum, still made on a hybrid still, with dunder and wild yeast part of the recipe pushing the congener count up. It is also a blend – of 75% original stock rum now aged to 3 years, plus 25% of one year old fresh make. As before, the barrels are from a local cooperage and I have an outstanding query as to whether it was used or new barrels and if used, what they previously held.

Bottled at the same 42%, the Gold takes a few more chances than the original did – it noses as slightly richer, rounder, fuller. And while the funk and congeners remain as muted as before, there’s an overall sense of something slightly richer here: paint and furniture polish, a touch of wax, acetones and new plastic. This dissipates over time and is replaced by some middling-sharp fruity notes — apples, green grapes, diluted lemon juice, apricots, pineapples and unripe peaches. There are also, after some minutes, hints of vanilla, cherries, lemon key pie, hot sweet pastries, cookies, and unsweetened yoghurt – very nice for something so relatively young.

The palate maintains that sense of something more complex and richer than its predecessor, even if the strength undercuts that somewhat. And yet overall still it tastes pretty good — green apples, light pineapple slices, bananas, pine tart and grapes, combine nicely with the sense of pastries steaming fresh from the oven, vanilla, light sugar water, lemon zest, and bitter chocolate and crushed walnuts. The finish wraps up the show as best it can, and sums up the tart and creamy fruits and pastries vibe quite well – it is quite easy drinking with a bit of a sour edge, occasionally sharp, not too hot. More cannot really be said here.

Overall, I think the low strength hamstrings a decent rum that could actually be even better — that 42% is okay for casual drinking, but for more appreciation you do need more oomph. The relatively young age is something of a mixed blessing as well, since along with the slightly added complexity comes a bit of roughness — and so I can’t completely recommend it as a sipping rum. That said, the thing makes a really fine daiquiri, and on that front, with those sharp fruity notes leaning up against the warm pastries, the rum walks down strange and interesting yet hauntingly familiar paths inhabited by hot Jamaican patties and fierce white overproofs served in plastic tumblers at backcountry rumshops — and if nothing else, those are the qualities which define it as a rum too good to walk away from.

(#1019)(83/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other notes

Doorly’s “Macaw” Barbados White Rum (Late 2010s)

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Aug 222023
 

Rumaniacs Review #R-157 | #1019

Somehow, in all this time of reviewing rums from around the world, from around Barbados, and from within the Foursquare oeuvre, I never got around to looking at the Doorly’s “Macaw” white rum. Not the new 40% 3YO and its 47% ABV sibling which is in line with the redesigned and now-consistently labelled range as it currently exists (3YO, 5YO, 8YO, XO, 12YO and 14YO, and if this piques your curiosity just head over to Alex’s excellent vertical review of the lot) but the rather older and more venerable one at 40% and a sky blue label. Maybe it’s just in time, because it’s now been quietly discontinued.

Note the care with which I define the rum: in spite of several online references to it, it is not, as sometimes described, a three year old rum, but a blended NAS (no age statement) workhorse of the bar industry that goes back a fair bit. It is a mix of various pot-column distillates some of which (according to Richard Seale, who was as forthcoming as ever) are in the three-years-or-so age range, but often with a jot of something older for oomph.

In a reorganisation of the Doorly’s line a few years ago, the idea was to replace this with a true 3YO and beef up the proof a bit; what ended up happening was that the 40% proved so durable and popular that the 3YO was released in two strengths, the standard and the now main edition, the 47% (no other rum of the line has this double release as far as I know)…and each of those is slightly different from the other one in terms of its blend profile. That, however, left the older Macaw as the rum that got overtaken by the times, as the light, inoffensive white rum style pioneered by the Bat became less popular, and more muscular and distinctive whites began to climb in favour. It’s a rum that if you like it you need not necessarily fear of running out any time soon, as it still remains reasonably available (as of this writing in 2023)…but a stock-up might not be a bad idea.

Colour – White

Strength – 40%

Nose – Quite soft and easy, like a cream soda or rock-shandy soda and a whiff of vanilla. A little strawberry bubble gum. Quite clean, though somewhat alcoholically sharp at the inception. Some mild glue and acetones and white fruits.

Palate – Again, that cream soda like taste, light fruits, cucumbers, melons, papaya and maybe a ripe pear or two. Freshly grated and still damp coconut shavings, vanilla, bananas, an interesting melange of soft and sharp. Could be stronger.

Finish – Faint and short and easy. Mostly vanilla, sugar water and some mild fruitiness.

Thoughts – The Macaw remains what it always was: a mixing white rum from yesteryear that actually shows some character, and a profile more than just stuck in neutral. It shows what could have been done by all those bland and anonymous rum producers who slavishly aped Bacardi in the previous century, had they possessed some courage. I’m not a complete fan of the rum, but when compared against so many bland blends that characterised the period — soulless, tasteless, flavourless, characterless – it bloody well shines in comparison.

(#1019)(76/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • Alex Sandu of the Rum Barrel blog met up with me in Berlin after this year’s rumfest, and we had a private tasting session where he very kindly brought this along.

Bundaberg Overproof Extra Bold Australian Rum – Review

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Aug 102023
 

Bundaberg — or “Bundie” — may the most globally famous rum from Australia, the rum that (according to the local wags) coke, ginger beer and weekends were invented for. Even if you’ve never seen a bottle or tried it, you’ve likely heard the name. Aussies seem to love hating on it with a sort of gruff affection, but God help the gronk or the pom who disses the thing – then you get comments like Gunnar’s, which, I have to be honest, made me laugh harder than the closing sentences of the latest Plantation diss. Though they have something of a hammerlock on low end rum sales in Australia (especially Queensland), they don’t do that well outside Oz (many know the brand, though fewer have tried it), since they have not, to my knowledge, ever bothered to sell bulk abroad, cultivate a serious export market, or delve into specialised bottlings of their own until very recently – even with the deep pockets of Diageo, which bought the brand in 2000.

Yet Canada gets some, from time to time, and I’ve tried a couple. It’s been more than a decade since Keenan and I suffered the agonies of our tonsils being tied into pretzels by the original Bundaberg, but that merely exemplified what a deficient knowledge of Australian rums we possessed back then, because, well, what the hell did we know? I did try the Black labelled “Reserve” some time later; and thought it was better…still, I felt no particular urgency to take it further, acquire more, taste more widely, not even when my desire to highlight Australia became more pronounced a few years ago. It took Gunnar’s cheerfully bellowing and sneering comment on that first review the other week to reignite my curiosity: enough for me to run out, and buy the only other available Bundie in my local market,

The rum I bought was the Overproof. As far as I know it’s been in commercial production and distribution for most of this century, and though the website doesn’t say so and details are surprisingly thin on the ground, it’s a pot-column still blend of a rather indeterminate age, likely less than five years old. It’s also rather good, with a solid 57.7% strength that provides a wallop that really allows the flavours to pop.

Walk with me here. I can’t speak for you but I still recall the buttery tequila and rotten cashew fruit taste of the Original and to a great extent this is what people remember with such distaste now – it’s “rough as a badger’s arse” according to one redditor just a year ago. Little of that is in evidence on the nose of the Overproof. What you do get is overripe green grapes, hard and too-sweet bon-bons gone stale in a dusty room, salt and a slight agave note: nothing near as overpowering as before, just enough to recall the low end Bundies of yore. Also ginger snaps, a little rubber, light molasses, lemongrass and squishy bananas in hot weather. Not normal, no….not bad either, however.

The taste is where it all hangs in the balance, and here it falters. “Oh wow, this actually hurts going down,” said The Little Big Caner who was helping me do tasting notes, and had little experience with the care needed in testing stronger fare. This is not a rum he likes, apparently. Yet there’s pepsi, hot buttered scones and pastries, olive oil, overripe soft brown bananas, damp brown sugar and molasses. A slight sweetness, vanilla, caramel, some florals. The strength requires some care, and once one is acclimatised it comes across as reasonably smooth, distinctive and not completely unpleasant drink. The finish is long and aromatic – cola, ginger, some vanilla, anise and that faintly sickly sweet-salt-sour — thick — sense of a dosed tequila. That’s the DNA of this thing and allows it to be tied to all its forebears – if I didn’t know better (or knew more) I’d say this was the local terroire.

So…what to make of it? Well, I believe that the Bundaberg Overproof is a kind of exceptional low grade Rummus Maximus, the sort of in-your-face, colourful, fiery, vegemite-munching experience you really can only appreciate to the fullest after having been bludgeoned into catatonia by its low-rent everyschmuck predecessors. It’s difficult to convey the scope of the (minor) achievement the rum provides because most of us lack a good frame of reference: we have all tasted dozens of Barbadian, French-island, Fijian, Venezuelan, Cuban, Guyanese or Jamaican rums (to name just a few), but Bundies? … not so many.

Comparisons with other Bundies aside, however, I consider the Bundie Overproof “Extra Bold” to be a strong, vulgar, distinctive and uncouth rum…and still a fine and interesting rum to try at least once. And if it retains the vestigial taste profile that so many Aussies claim to detest, I at least can assure you it’s not excessive and you won’t soon forget its unique brand of crazy. It may not have been “suckled straight from a breast of the finest proportions,” as Gunnar rhapsodized, but I see no reason to doubt his claim that many a night of vile debauchery and shenanigan fun has been fuelled by this beverage. In fact, I think my bottle will accompany me to the very next party I attend…just to check.

(#1015)(83/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Historical Background

Bundaberg Distillery was founded in 1888 by seven Queensland sugar mill owners of the time, at the dawn of the sugar industry there. Within a couple of years it was being sold around the country; and shortly after went belly-up in one of the many disasters to befall the place. Bought out of receivership by three of the original investors in 1894, it again went under for seven years in 1907 (a bad fire), and would you believe it, once again in 1936 (after yet another fire which ruptured the storage area so badly that the Burnett River nearby ran overproof for months).

Yet already by that time it had become a peculiarly Australian and hugely popular libation. In 1899 Bundie accompanied the Aussie soldiers to the Boer War. The distillery was rebuilt in 1914 in time for the Royal Australian Navy and the British Royal Navy to commandeer their entire output and yes, it was there wherever Australians were in WW2 as well.

With the economic downturn of the post-war years, Bundaberg struggled with drought, higher taxes and lessening sales. Yet they continued to produce rum, selling it for the most part as an overproof to local agents who bottled it themselves and it was only in 1974 that they began producing rum under their own branding, using the now-famous square bottle, three-piece label and the polar bear iconography (meant to imply that a Bundie could ward off the deepest cold) which had been introduced in 1961.

Diageo bought the brand in 2000 and moved the entire operation to Sidney in 2014, while spending millions in an expansion plan to meet an increasing global demand. The standard Original flagship was thereafter joined by several different Bundies – Red, Black, Extra Smooth, Black, Reserve, and even a limited edition 18 year old. Say what you will about the pernicious effects of cold hearted cost-cutting accountants rationalising distilleries by closing them, Diageo has both grown Bundaberg’s sales and expanded the lineup of rums the company produces. To this day, however, the majority of sales remain regional, with Queensland still being the biggest single consumer. It remains to be seen if they can ever grow a worldwide audience.

Worthy Park 2013 5 YO Double Matured Rum (Cask Selection No.6 “Virgin Oak”) – Review

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Jun 302023
 

Worthy Park rums at any age just seem to go for the boundary, every single time – no matter how it turns out. The results are rums of consistently decent (or high) quality, day in and day out, and I rarely find a failure, a flea-bitten dog or an also-ran glue-factory candidate in any of them – and this goes all the way back to Rum Nation’s unaged white from 2014 (now matured into one of their regular five year old rums), or the Compagnie’s 2007 7YO and 8 YO released in 2015. All of which, for their time, shook the rum world with tremors of an incipient disturbance in the Force.

Since those early years Worthy Park has continued providing a fair amount of distillate for the use of third parties, while simultaneously developing their in house brands. These run the gamut from the entry level Rum Bar Silver and Gold (and overproof), to the 109, the Select, the Special Cask series (with various finishes or secondary maturations in porto, marsala, madeira, sherry etc), and the single estate aged rum, currently running at 12 years but likely soon to be older. There are even special versions like the recent Canadian release of the 2015 5YO, or the “Cask Selection” single barrel series. It can get a bit confusing sorting out all those “specials”, “selections” and “reserves” and good luck to anyone trying to make a collection of the lot.

For those who want a funky Jamaican alternative to the mellower mass-market Appletons or more rarefied Hampdens with their ever increasing series of limited collections, Worthy Park continues to provide good value for money, even for their more youthful expressions which they are experimenting with a la Foursquare. These limited editions fall under the Special Cask line – higher ABV, limited outturns, somewhat youthful, double maturations – and some time ago I picked up No.6 of their Special Cask Releases, of which I had already tried and liked the Oloroso and Marsala editions. This one was the usual pot still distillate, tropically aged in once-used ex-Bourbon barrels for four years, then matured a second time in virgin oak casks (not the slutty kind, I gather), which then provided 397 bottles at 55%. The back label says “casks” yet one wonders exactly how many (or how few) were needed for such a small outturn. Two, maybe?

Never mind though. The age of five years and that double maturation is what’s interesting, as well as the pot still distillate – one would expect the casks to be quite active because of their little-used nature and the heat in the tropics. Nosing it suggests that it works really well to get flavours to manifest quickly, because while somewhat hot to smell, it is also deep, dark and dour at first sniff…quite delicious. Pancakes and maple syrup, creamy unsweetened yoghurt and a lovely amalgam of honey, caramel, toffee, nougat and white chocolate. It may have been the casks, it just seems to me that aroma-wise the pot still sour funky fruits seem to have been kept away, though faint traces of pineapple, strawberries and overripe bananas and oranges do linger for those with long snoots; and these are joined by notes of salt crackers, gherkins and balsamic vinegar (one of those fancy ones, from figs maybe).

The absence of the funkiness is, on the palate, more striking, and would make anyone trying this blind to wonder whether it conformed to a particularly Jamaican profile at all. The strength is solid and bearable at 55%, no worries there; it starts off with traditional notes of caramel, toffee, light molasses and vanilla, before segueing into some olives and brine, a touch of sweet soya, and a subdued panoply of dark fruits – prunes, plums, blackberries, that kind of thing. Tucked in way at the back are the oddballs, of which I wish there were more – some iodine, charcoal, cooking herbs and lemon. Nothing overbearing, just really interesting, and set off by a pleasant, long and dry finish redolent of aromatic pipe tobacco, red wine, brine and some sour red grapes.

It’s really quite impressive what Worthy Park has done with a mere five years of ageing, and shows why they have developed the reputation they do – to the extent where a friend of mine in Saskatchewan asked me to get a WP Canadian-only release for him (same age and lacking any ageing- or finishing-flourishes) even though it exceeded his normal budget for such things. The tastes are solid, the aromas are well integrated and if it’s a bit hot and rough around the edges and doesn’t sport anything seriously original, it’s still a surprisingly varied and interesting rum. At the time when I bought the bottle everyone was going apesh*t over the just-released WP 109: me, I shrugged and reached into the slightly more recent past to get this one, and still think that while both are good, this is the better buy.

(#1009)(85/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other notes

  • Of course, as soon as I saw “No. 6” I couldn’t let it rest – which ones were 1-5, right? I started a list of the Special Cask Releases but the numbering scheme and inconsistencies of label-naming have thus far defeated even a mind as organised and agile as mine: there are too many gaps and similar names to make the list exhaustive (I’ve sent a note to Zan Kong to assist). But here’s what I came up with:
    • Special Cask Release #8 | 52% | 2013-2018 | 2-4 YO | Quatre Vins | 1318b
    • Special Cask Release #7 | 55% | 2013-2018 | 5 YO | Oloroso
    • Special Cask Release #6 | 55% | 2013-2018 | 5 YO | Virgin Oak | 397b
    • Special Cask Release #4 | 58% | 2013-2018 | 5 YO | Madeira
    • Special Cask Release #3 | 57% | 2013-2018 | 5 YO | Sherry
    • Special Cask Release #x | 59% | 2012-2017 | 5 YO | Oloroso
    • Special Cask Release #x | 45% | 2010-2020 | 10 YO | Port
    • Special Cask Release #x | 45% | 2010-???? | 10 YO | Madeira
    • Special Cask Release #x | 60% | 2012-2017 | 5 YO | Marsala
    • Special Cask Release #x | 59% | 2008-2013 | 5 YO | Oloroso | 428b
    • Special Cask Release #x | 56% | 2008-2017 | 9 YO | Port | 585b

Chalong Bay LMDW Antipodes Collection Lightly Aged Rum (Thailand) – Review

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Jun 262023
 

“Asia may be the next region to discover for rummies,” I wrote back in 2018 when introducing audiences to Chalong Bay for the first time, and nothing between then and now has caused me to significantly alter that off-the-cuff prognostication. Already, back then, we were seeing interesting (if not always world-beating) rums from Tanduay from the Philippines, Mekhong from Thailand, Amrut from India, Sampan from Vietnam, and Laotian from Laos. Australia was ticking along under everyone’s radar, the Pacific islands were just getting more well known, and of course there was always Nine Leaves out of Japan.

Not long after that new companies and new brands began to sprout up and become better known through exhibitions at rum festivals all over Europe: rums from artisanal companies like Renaissance (Taiwan), Mia (Vietnam), Naga (Indonesia), Samai (Cambodia), Issan (Thailand), Mana’o (Tahiti) rubbed shoulders with older and more established — but still barely known — brands like Teeda and Cor Cor (Japan), Old Monk (India), Kukhri (Nepal), Laodi (Laos), and Sang Som (Thailand again). This is what I mean when I remark that poor distribution and a fixation with the Caribbean sometimes obscures the seriously cool work being done elsewhere, and if it weren’t for an occasional indie release, we’d never even hear about some of them.

But I digress: Chalong Bay is one of the relatively new companies out there, founded in 2014 by a pair of French entrepreneurs from named Marine Lucchini and Thibault Spithakis who saw Thailand as a good place to start a small artisanal distillery. They sourced a copper column still from France and went fully organic and all-natural: no chemicals or fertilisers for the cane crop, no burning prior to harvesting, hand harvesting, and a spirit made from freshly cut and crushed cane juice with no additives, sourced from local farmers from around the region they operate – Phuket, a tourist town on a spit of land jutting into the Andaman sea (the distillery is just south of the town of Phuket itself).

When last I looked at their rums, there wasn’t a whole lot of variety in the lineup. Little or no aged juice, a white and some infusions and that was it. Nowadays Chalong Bay sports three distinct lines – #001, which is the original pure unaged white rum at 40%, #002 the “Tropical Notes” series which is vapour-infused flavoured white rum (lemongrass, Thai sweet basil, cinnamon, kaffir lime are examples), and #003, a spiced variation mixed up with some nine different Asian botanicals. What their website doesn’t tell you is all the other stuff they make and which was on display at 2022’s WhiskyLive in Paris: a 2YO aged version, two different unaged whites (one wild yeast version with longer fermentation time, and another one at 57%), and this one, which was released by LMDW for their “Antipodes” collection last year – a 20 month old 62.1% growler (which is also called the Lunar Series, and represented in 2022 by the tiger on the label). It came from two ex-bourbon barrels aged in France (not Thailand), so somewhat limited, though the exact outturn is unknown…I’d suggest around a thousand bottles, maybe a shade less.

That strength is off-putting for many, and with good reason – north of 60% is getting a little feral, and this cane juice rum is no exception — it’s snarly, gnarly and ugly and it doesn’t much like you. Behind all that aggro, however, is a full service agricole taste smorgasbord, plus a swag bag of gleefully provided extras. It starts off with brine, olives and sugar water and that colourless sweet syrup they sometimes put into some concoction at Starbucks. There’s a a nice scent of hummus with unsweetened yoghurt and olive oil (and a pimento or two), but all that’s required here is a little patience: soon enough we get sweet deep fruits – strawberries, apricots, pears, raspberries, ginnips, kiwi fruit, and peaches and cream. Stick around long enough and citrus-like sodas like Sprite or Fanta make their appearance…and, even a faint tinge of mints…or mothballs.

Well…okay. It’s interesting for sure, and it is deep and strong, if a little arid. The taste is like that as well: sharp, dry, clean and fierce. It tastes initially of sugar water, soda pop, coconut shavings, combined with a flirt of vanilla and as it opens up we get crisp fruits, some light toffee and more of those pale, easy going fruits like pears, papaya, melon and white guavas. Some water is good to have here, and I’m sure it would make a banging daiquiri. The palate is the sort of thing that gives a bit more if you stick with it, and the finish is equally tasty (as well as being long and quite dry), without actually introducing much that hasn’t passed by already.

Overall, this is a rum that’s got a lot going on, is very tasty and a joy to smell. It reminds me of the O Reizinho we looked at last week, with some of that same dichotomy between the youth and the age: the two sides coexist, but uneasily. Recently I’ve tried a few rums that first made their bones as unaged unapologetic white beefcakes – clairins, the new Renegades, the Reizinho, etc – and were then aged a smidgen and released as sub-five year old rums (Rum Nation also did that with their first Jamaican white, you may recall). And while most are good – as this is – almost none of them have vaulted to the next level and blown my socks off…at least not yet.

The new and the original is always worth trying, and Chalong Bay has been on my radar for quite a while: what they have managed to do here for LMDW is just a few shots shy of spectacular. White rhums are admittedly something of an acquired taste, and maybe this rum will not find favour with a global, mellower audience which doesn’t eagerly or willingly (let alone deliberately) walk into a face-melting exercise in spirituous braggadocio. Still: I think this is one hell of a rum, showing the heights to which a minimally aged white can aspire if not filtered to death or overly messed with — and if on this occasion it doesn’t quite make the peak, well, it comes damned close.

(#1008)(85/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Ron Bacardi “Select” Rum (Puerto Rico)(1990s)

 3 Responses »
Jun 162023
 

Rumaniacs Review #154 | 1006

In this series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’ve been looking at a set of Bacardi rums from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and in this final review I’ll sum up what few observations that can be made.

Preamble – The Select is a successor to the venerable “Black” or “Black Label” or “Premium Black.” Some of these labels were retired in the 1990s, although it would appear that some continued to be made concurrently for a while, and labelled as such in separate markets (a new version of the Black was reintroduced in 2014 in the UK, for example, similar to the one I reviewed back in 2010). The Select was aged for around four years and also made in charred barrels like the Dark editions then were, and the Cuatro is now; and while a search around the online shops shows it remains sporadically available (Rum Ratings has recent commentaries on it), it has definitely been discontinued and folded into the Carta Negra rebrand. The exact date is a little tricky – the last reviews and commentary online about it seem to all date from purchases made pre-2010, and if neither the Rum Howler or I have it in our early reviews then it’s a fair bet that by the turn of the first decade, the Select was dead and gone.

Strength – 40%

Colour – Dark Gold

Label Notes – Produced by Bacardi Corp. San Juan, Puerto Rico

Nose – Honey, caramel, coffee, chocolate, toffee, nuts, a reasonable helping of dried fruits. Raisins, prunes, dates. Licorice and some woodsy notes, quite nice. Could hold its own in today’s world and one can see the iterations of the Black come together into something slightly newer, and incrementally better.

Palate – Also quite good compared to others. Coats the mouth nicely with brine, caramel, coffee, mocha, nougat and some almonds. Bitter chocolate, smoke, leather and honey. One thing I liked about it was that vague sense of the plastic and leather and vinyl of a cheap mid range new car owned by Leisure Suit Larry. It’s not entirely successful but does add a little character, which too many Bacardis don’t have at all.

Finish – Short, warm and breathy. Mostly brown sugar and caramel with the slightest nudge of lemon zest.

Thoughts – One wonders if giving it a score of 80 (which it deserves) is damning it with faint praise. but after so many of these Bacardis I really gotta ask, is too much to hope for something more? The rum is well done and it’s the best of the lot, but really, I was left wanting a larger helping of the potential this suggested it had, but never delivered.

For that, I think I have to go either further back, or into the modern era.

(80/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Opinion – Summing Up Six Bacardis

Bacardi has always hewed to the middle of the low end road and focused on their core competency of making their various blends, until recently when they started putting out rums with real age statements; the Ocho and Diez are quite capable near-sipping rum experiences, for example. Even the 16YO is beginning to expand the range of the Bat’s capabilities into the high end, though few reviewers have anything good to say about the brand as a whole, or much to say about the company’s rums at all (which I think is a mistake).

These six early rums (and some others I’ve looked at over the years) make it clear why Bacardi has the reputation it does — or lacks one. Unlike most major companies, whose rums from forty or fifty years ago were distinct, unique and often fascinating essays in the craft, and which gradually moved towards a more approachable middle, with Bacardi the opposite seems to be the case. Their earlier rums from the 1970s to early 2000s were mostly uninspiring, flat, mild, not-that-tasty mixing agents which barely moved the needle in a cocktail’s taste (often they were adjuncts to the fruit and mixes) and certainly never induced as much as a quiver in people’s minds as sipping rums. They were made that way and they stayed that way

And that was the (mildly) aged rums – the white rums were worse. Compared to today’s robust and muscular white unaged Blutos from anywhere on the planet, Bacardi’s whites, never mind their title of “Superior” were and are picking up footprints, and considered mostly filtered anonymous crap, closer to vodkas then real rums. Few have anything good to say about them, and almost no writer I know of has ever bothered to run them through the wringer.

The characteristics these six rums demonstrate, then, are not new phenomena but have been so for a long time. “You got to go back a lot further than the 1970s to find a decent Bacardi, “ remarked Richard Seale when he read one of these mini retrospectives. I have taken his implied advice and started sourcing the oldest Bacardis I can find from pre-1970s era sales, so one day – hopefully not too far from now – I can provide another retrospective of six more from even further back, to either prove or disprove the assertion.

But that’s going into the past. As I noted above, as the years moved on — and as the retrospectives’ incrementally improving scores suggested — the mainstream Bacardi rums actually started getting better. The Select was quite nice, I thought, and today’s Carta Negra, aged editions, and even the Facundo and Single Cane series, show a company that is slowly, incrementally, even reluctantly, branching out into profiles that are more interesting, and into areas others have colonised but which perhaps may now profitably be copied. We may be living through an era which future writers will see as the renaissance of the house’s reputation for real quality, not because they’re the only ones making any (as they were back in the day), but because they really have improved…however marginally.

Supplementary Reading

I consulted some books regarding Bacardi’s background to prepare for this addendum, as well as search for bottling and labelling history (mostly without success). There’s no shortage of the history, but not a whole lot about labelling or branding – and company websites are almost universally silent about this kind of thing. Matt Pietrek’s recently published book Modern Caribbean Rum — which will surely go down as one of the most useful and indispensable rum reference works of our time — helped a little, and I enjoyed the historical works of Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba (Tom Gjelten) and The Rise of Bacardi: From Cuban Rum to a Global Empire (Jorge Del Rosal)…that said, not much on the evolution of their blends and brands and labels.

Dr. Sneermouth’s dismissal aside, Google image searches did help, as did that great Czech site Peter’s Rum labels. Older reviewers from Ago, whose names and sites few now recall, also fleshed out some plot points of the short series: The Pirate King wrote an undated but surely pre-2008 review of the Select; and so did El Machete, in 2007, when he penned a very unfavourable opinion on it. The Fat Rum Pirate wrote a small piece on the Bacardi Black in 2014, as did I back in 2010. It’s from reading and dating such reviews that some information can be gleaned, but even here, there are limits…which of course is why the Rumaniacs exists to begin with.

 

Bacardi Superior “Premium Black” (Puerto Rico)(1970s/1980s)

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Jun 142023
 

Rumaniacs Review #153 | 1005

In this series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’re looking at a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw.

Although some online references to the rum suggest a 1990s dating, the “Premium Black” is older, introduced much earlier: it was already a fixture by the mid 1980s. The diagonal red label design was discontinued in 1980, but let’s be conservative and give it something of a window around that date.

The Black — or more precisely, the ‘dark rum’ style it represented — seems to have gone through a number of changes over the years as its makers appeared not to know what to do with it (except maybe find a dark rum mixer for people to play with): it was variously called Ron Superior Premium Black, simply “Black”, Carta Negra, Superior Dark, issued at anywhere between 37% to 40%, and in all cases the dark colour was advertised as being imparted by heavily charred barrels, and, more recently, by caramel colouring.

Nowhere is the age mentioned, which seems to be a thing with Bacardi until a few years ago – perhaps because they blended like crazy, NAS was fine and they never felt it to be necessary until they twigged onto to the potential value of a real age statement when the 8 YO became a big seller. In the absence of anything better I’ll suggest that it’s a youngish blend of rums under five years old, but more than that I wouldn’t venture.

Strength – 40%

Colour – Dark Gold

Label Notes – Produced by Bacardi Corp. San Juan, Puerto Rico

Nose – Very nice. Say what you will about The Bat (and a lot has been), their low end rums are consistently of better than average quality for their (heavily and illegally subsidised) prices. The nose is quite good, here: Danish cookies, caramel, toffee, honey, all the hits, plus vanilla and coconut shavings. Citrus, coffee, well polished leather…nice, if not new.

Palate – Sweet, smooth and war. Again, little that we have not already tried. Caramel, toffee, salt butter, vanilla ice cream, a squirt of lemon juice. Traces of flowers and honey trail behind all this.

Finish – Short, warm, aromatic. Pipe tobacco, florals, toffee and vanilla

Thoughts – Overall it’s nice and better than the four we’ve reviewed thus far. So what? It’s being damned with faint praise, is all. After it edges towards a more intriguing profile and the tantalising sense of something new, it retreats: one is therefore left with a sense of frustrated disappointment, at a rum which had potential and then returned to the safety of what was known. Too bad.

(78/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Ron Bacardi Añejo (Mexico)(1970s)

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Jun 122023
 

Rumaniacs Review #152 | 1004

In this series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’re looking at a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw.

The antecedents of the Bacardi Añejo — a word simply meaning “aged” in Spanish — are the same as the Carta Blanca we looked at in R-150. Made in the Mexican facility at Tultitlan, it likely predated the 1980s by which time all units of measure went fully metric for sale in the US market. However, the ubiquity and long history of production of any aged rums from the company (I looked at a 6 YO 1980s Anejo from Puerto Rico some years ago, for example) make that dating tricky at best. It is likely no longer in production, mind you: the Añejo moniker was applied to the four year old Cuatro in 2020, the strength was beefed up a mite, and you can’t find the old Añejo listed on Bacardi’s website – that said, the volumes of this rum that were on the market were so great it’s not unlikely one can still find them to this day, from any era.

As with most Bacardi entry level rons – which this undoubtedly was – it’s column still, molasses based and lightly aged. Back in 2019 when Wes reviewed one of these – also at 38% but noted as being “original formula” which mine conspicuously lacks – he remarked that his bottle surely predated a 2015 label switch based on what else he could see lon the shelves, and it was possibly around 3 years old, which I think is about right.

Strength – 38%

Colour – Gold

Label Notes – Tultitlan Edo. de Mexico. 38° G.L.

Nose – There’s a bit more going on here than the lower strength would suggest, a sort of low grade pungency quite unexpected for a 38% rum. Perhaps that’s because it’s actually 40% according to my hydrometer. Some light salted caramel, fruit, florals, raisins, vanilla, and some wet coconut shavings. Also black tea, salted butter and a touch oif citrus. Nothing really special here: the aroma simply suggest a well assembled product.

Palate – A rather restrained, yet still reasonably pungent mix of linseed oil on wood, furniture polish, well-oiled leather, caramel, honey and citrus. If you pressed me I’d suggest some black pepper and ginger notes, but they’re so faint it may just be reaching.

Finish – Short, peppery, caramel and unsweetened mauby, some honey and vanilla.

Thoughts – Compared to the rather poor showing of the three we’ve already seen dating back from around the same time period, this is a bit better. Still a mixer and still not a fancy upscale product, but I started warming up to Bacardi again after trying this and seeing they were not all milquetoast and moonbeams masquerading as something more muscular.

(78/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Bacardi Gold Reserve (Puerto Rico)(1970s/1980s)

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Jun 092023
 

Rumaniacs Review #151 | 1003

This series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) is a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw.

Bacardi’s Gold rum (in all its iterations) is one of the oldest continuously made rums in existence, dating back to the 1890s or before – in fact it may have been one of the original rums made by Facundo Bacadi in the 1860s. By 1892 it was so well regarded that Spain’s King Alfonse XIII allowed the use of the royal coat of arms by Bacardi as a tribute to it — and it’s adorned Bacardi labels ever since, even if the name of the rum has seen some evolution.

The age is indeterminate – I’ll suggest 1-2 years, which is consistent with today’s Golds. A mixing agent, not anything even remotely premium. It’s meant for cocktails and is a column still blend.

A coarse dating of production starts at 1959-2000 based on the logo design; the use of both metric and imperial units narrows this down to the late 1970s or early 1980s (the USA made metric mandatory for spirits labels in the mid 1970s, and there was an extended period when both units were used). An Anejo version of the Reserve was released in 1981, which of course means this one existed already by that time.

Strength – 40%

Colour – Gold

Label Notes – Puerto Rican Rum

Nose – Honey, caramel, toffee, light citrus, the vaguest sense of saline. All the usual suspects are in the lineup, feeling washed up and past their prime. Light and easy, the rum actually smells weaker than its advertised strength: thin, watery and alcoholic.

Palate – Dry, warm, slightly spicy, lacks the courage to bite you. Most of what little was in the nose repeats here in a more watery form. Honey, nougat, toffee, vanilla, coconut shavings. Some leather and smoke, maybe, it’s gone too fast to tell.

Finish – Here now, gone a second later. Dry, a bit woody, hardly any taste at all.

Thoughts – This rum is about as expected. Light, sweetish Caribbean Spanish-style rum of little distinction, and could be the entry level low-aged candidate starter kit from just about anywhere in latin or South America (except maybe Brazil, Guyana or Suriname). Sorry, but it’s quite anonymous and forgettable – even today’s edition has somewhat more character. Nothing to report here, then.

(72/100)

Bacardi Legendario “Carta Blanca” White Rum (Mexico)(1970s)

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Jun 072023
 

Rumaniacs Review #150 | 1002

This series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’ll be looking at over the next week or so, is a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw.

Dating this one was interesting. The Legendario Carta Blanca brand (sometimes just called Carta Blanca) has been made since at least the 1920s, and it takes a detailed look at the label, place of make and the changes in the bat logo to establish a rough estimate of when it was made. Here we know that the bottom line has to be 1961 since that was when the Tultitlan factory in Mexico was completed and in 2006 the name Carta Blanca was globally discontinued. Too, the bat logo on this bottle was changed in 2002, so…

One collector suggested it was perhaps made in the 1990s but I tracked down a label precisely matching this one that seemed, with the notes I have from the seller, to place it more conclusively from the 1970s, and so unless someone has better information, I’ll leave it there (note that the labels changed almost not at all during those decades).

The Legendario Carta Blanca is a blend of light and heavy bodied rums, aged between one and two years then charcoal filtered to remove the colour – it is therefore a direct descendant of the original rum Bacardi made in the 19th century, which established the brand. Nowadays, it’s been rebranded, and is called the Superior.

Strength – 40%

Colour – White

Label Notes – “Carta Blanca”, “Tultitlan Edo. De Mexico”

Nose – Almost nothing here, less than the 1970s Superior we looked at before (R-149), and that one, while decent, was no standout. Starts off with some brine and olives, to the point where we feel some mescal has sneaked its way in here (very much like the Limitada Oaxaca, just weaker). Noy sweet at all – oily, slightly meaty, opens up into some nice cherries and flowers.

Palate – By the time we get to taste, the brine is starting to disappear and the rum transforms into something sweeter, lighter with a bit of light fruits (pears, red cashews), sugar water and very light melons and citrus, though you have to strain to get that much/

Finish – A little sharp, briny, the slightest bite of some woodiness, coconuts shavings.

Thoughts – This one might benefit from some time and patience, because it develops better once left to open for a while. That said, nailing it down is not easy because it’s faint enough that the flavours kind of run together into a miscellaneous mishmash. Disappointing.

(73/100)

Other Notes

  • The city of Tultitlan’s name shows it’s a very old part of Mexico (the name is Toltec). It is now a northern suburb of Mexico City and was built by a famous firm of architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Felix Candela between 1958 and 1961 (van der Rohe designed the corporate Office Building, and Felix Candela designed bottling plant and distillery cellars). The fact that it was constructed so long ago suggests that the family was already expanding (and hedging its bets) way before they were exiled from Cuba after the Revolution.

Bacardi Superior “Silver Label” White Rum (Puerto Rico)(Early 1970s)

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Jun 052023
 

Rumaniacs Review #149 | 1001

This series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’ll be looking at over the next week or two, is a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades, and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw.

This Bacardi Superior noted as being “Silver Label” is the doddering uncle of the set. The label refers to an 80 proof 1/10 pint white rum, which suggests the pre-1980 dating after which ABV and a metric system common (in the USA) – the rum of that title continued to be made until the 1980s after which it just became Ron Bacardi Superior. Puerto Rico is where the facilities of the company are headquartered, of course, so there’s little to be gathered here. It’s entirely possible that it goes back even to the 1960s – something about the label just suggests that dating and I’ve seen a similar one from 1963 – but for now let’s stick with a more conservative estimate.

It’s not a stretch to infer some fairly basic facts about the Silver Label Superior: it’s probably (but very likely) lightly aged, say a year or two; column still; and filtered. Beyond that we’re guessing. Still, even from those minimal data points, a pretty decent rum was constructed so let’s go and find out what it samples like.

Strength – 40%

Colour – White

Label Notes – “Silver Label”, Made in Puerto Rico

Nose – Weak and thin, mostly just alcohol fumes, sweet light and reeking faintly of bananas, Some slight saltiness, acetones, bitter black tea and a few ripe cherries. There’s a clean sort of lightness to it, like laundry powder.

Palate – Interesting: briny and with olives right at the start; also some very delicate and yet distinct aromas of flowers. Some fanta, 7-up and tart yoghurt, the vague sourness of gooseberries and unripe soursop, papaya and green mangoes.

Finish – Again, interesting, i that it lasts a fair bit. Nothing new really – some light fruits, pears and watermelons, a dusting of acetones and brine. Overall, it’s thin gruel and slim pickings.

Thoughts – Although most of these early Bacardi’s (especially the blancas) don’t usually do much for me, I have to admit being surprised with the overall worth of this older one. There are some characterful notes which if left untamed could be unpleasant: here the easy sweetness carries it past any serious problems and it comes out as quite a decent rum in its own right. Original and groundbreaking it’s not, and certainly not a standout – but it is nice.

(76/100)

Ron Añejo Pampero Deluxe Venezuelan Rum (1980s)

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May 152023
 

Rumaniacs Review R-148 | 0996

Pampero is a lesser known Venezuelan rum brand founded in 1938 by two friends, Alejandro Hernández and Luis Toro, who established their distillery in Caracas, and soon became one of the more popular brands in the country with their light, golden rums. In keeping with the times they eschewed really serious long term ageing, and stuck with the mid range, producing various youngish rons like the Añejo “Extra”, “Dorado”, “White”, “Especial”, “Premium Gold” and so on. These various brands have gone through several name changes over the years and nowadays the line is made up of the Añejo Especial (also known as “Oro” for the yellow label), the Aniversario (well known for its bottle in a leather pouch – I actually have one in my mythical basement somewhere and have yet to open the thing), the Blanco and the Selección 1938 Ron Añejo.

The cowboy on the rearing horse logo is to some extent chanelling a misconception: Venezuelan prairies are referred to as llanos, not pampas, the latter and its gauchos being Argentinian terms, yet this is the image that gives the brand its name. In Venezuela I am led to understand the rum and its brand – still popular after all these years – is called Caballito Frenao (“Rearing Horse”), and sells briskly…even though the brand is no longer in local hands.

In 1991 when the company was sold lock stock and barrels (95% of it all, to be precise) to United Distillers, then a subsidiary of Guinness and which eventually became Diageo, Pampero claimed to be the bestselling golden rum in the world, a claim hardly likely to be either proveable or refutable, even then (you’ll forgive me if I doubt it). United Distillers evidently had some differing opinions on how to market their acquisition, for in the next year some of their stock was shipped to Europe for the indies to play with, which is why we have two Secret Treasures 1992 editions of the Pampero, as well as others from Duval et Cie and Moon Import, also from that year. However, these days it’s all branded sales, most of which takes place in Europe (Spain and Italy) and inside Venezuela, with a smattering of sales to other countries like the US.

Modern production is molasses based, triple distillation on column stills to near absolute alcohol (96%) and subsequent ageing in white oak cask: they clearly adhere to the light Spanish style rons for that portion of their blend. However, it should be noted that according to their website, their triple distillation process “combines continuous column (light rum), kettle batch (semi-heavy rum) and pot still (heavy rum) to produce a high-quality alcohol,” so it would seem they have more than just a bunch of heavy duty industrial sized columnar stills churning out bland nothingness. However there are few if any references available to speak more to the subject, and even less that tells what the process was like pre-Diageo, to when this version was made.

The little bottle I found was made for the US market in the 1980s by a spirits importer called Laica, which disappeared from view by 1990; and since the US was still using ounces as a unit of measure on bottle labels until the late 1970s, I’m okay dating this to the decade of big hair, shoulder pads and breakdancing.

Strength – 40%

Colour – Gold

Nose – Nothing excessive or overly sharp. Subtle dusty and cereal-y aromas start the ball rolling. Pleasant — though rather restrained — notes of honey, chocolate, nuts, almonds and molasses, More piquant fruits enter the aromas after some minutes, mostly cherries, bananas and overripe soft apples.

Palate – It’s too thin to make any kind of statement, really, and a lot of what was nosed just up and vanishes. Molasses, some brown sugar, red wine, vanilla, and just enough of a rum profile to stop it from being a throwaway

Finish – Weak, short, faint, is there and gone too quickly to make itself felt. Disappointing.

Thoughts – By now I’ve had enough rums from South America, and from that era, to be unsurprised at how bland the experience is – their skillset is in light age and consummate blending, not fierce hogo or still-bestowed character. One can reasonably ask if back in the day they had added any of that heavier pot still juice to the blend, the way they do now – one suspects not, and unfortunately that leaves a rather anonymous rum behind, which starts decently enough but which ends with a whole lot of nothing to report.

(72/100) ⭐⭐½

Plantation “Original Dark” Rum – Review

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May 122023
 

For all the bad press Plantation gets1, it is, as I remarked in the Rumcast interview back in 2021, in no danger of going out of business any time soon. Its stable of rums, whatever their provenance, is simply too wide ranging and useful — and often affordable — to ignore, and many of them have become reliable workhorses of backbars the world around. Not the high end stuff, of course, like the single cask bottlings of the Extreme Series which are regarded with desire or despite in any representative rumdork population…but the modest and less ambitious rums of the line that we the proles drink.

If I had to pick the best known rums of the starter set — they call them the “Bar Classics” — it would have to be the OFTD, and Stiggins Fancy, with a bit more upscale name recognition from the “Signature Blends” going to Xaymaca and the Barbados XO. The Three Stars white mixer is an interesting essay in the craft, and rounding out the bar is the Original Dark, the subject of today’s look-see.

In brief, the Original Dark was one of the first bar mixers the company made — references to it predate 2010 — and at the inception was a rum using only Trinidad (Angostura) rums which were blended from stocks aged 3-5 years, added to with some eight year old, all of which was then aged for a further year and a half or so in ex-Cognac barrels in France, then bottled at 40%. By 2017, which is around the time Maison Ferrand (the parent company) acquired WIRD in Barbados and with it a ⅓ share in National Rums in Jamaica, its formulation was changed to include some Jamaica rum, and nowadays it’s all 1-3 year old Barbadian rum with some high-ester aged 10-15 YO Jamaican rum for kick, aged for about half a year in the usual Ferand style, in SW France. Oh, and of course, there is that 15g/L of sugar which is officially declared, but which I think is more 2.

So there we are. A sweetened, finished rum, a bartender’s mixing agent, retailing for a pretty affordable price point. What does it sample like?

Well, the smell is actually not too shabby, and packs a punch that is appreciably better than the 3-Star, the Barbados XO, the Grande Reserve and the Gran Anejo (though not the Xaymaca). Aged prunes, plums and dates, bitten into by the shaper fruitier notes of fresh pineapple and limes. There’s some interesting (if rather vague) Demerara-like action here and there if you stick with it – licorice, caramel, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves – and overall the nose is an essay in light faintness that may simply be trying to do too much and mostly not quite making it. Still it’s a nice nose, quite intriguing once you get accustomed to the rather anemic strength.

Alas, that sense of piquant and potential complexity flops over and pretends it’s dead by the time you get to the palate. I’m sorry, but it turns into a rather anonymous every-rum of the sort in vogue in the mixing era of the 1970s and 1980s (of which I’ve reviewed far too many for the Rumaniacs). It’s not bad per se…just not that interesting – it channels vanilla, brown sugar, cloves and cinnamon, a touch of licorice and sugar water, maybe some raisins and behind it all is the memory of pineapple but not the reality, fading into a finish that’s as soft and indifferent and wafts an even fainter set of those same notes at you…plus a marshmallow.

There’s a real promise when one smells it but it just doesn’t carry over into a drinking experience, and beyond dunking it into a mix, is there a purpose here that isn’t better served by, say, the OFTD, the Xaymaca or the 3-Star? It may be time to retire this old warhorse: it helped establish the company’s backbar staples a decade or more ago, but is now too long in the tooth to come up well against the new batch of more distinctive rums the company makes, let alone that of the competition.

Until overtaken by the OFTD – which is a completely separate and different rum – the Dark was one of Plantation’s most successful products, almost, but not quite, straddling the divide between sipper and mixer., and all the early reviews at the dawn of the internet gave it glowing encomiums. The same elevage and dosage and secondary ageing that is now sneeringly dismissed as gimmicky French nonsense was then lauded as innovative and distinctive and worthy of note.

These days not many writers or bloggers bother with Plantation’s Original Dark – most save their digital ink for the OFTD, the Xaymaca or the Striggins; at best you’ll find a few sentences in a throwaway Facebook or Instagram post, or a brief reddit review, and there the reviews are pretty uniformly less than stellar. “Not a fan.” “Tastes like a spiced rum.” “Artificial”. “…couldn’t do anything with [it]. It even ruined Coke.” “Too sweet.” “Doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.” These are more recent comments, contrasted against those at the beginning of its career when people were more effusive with their praise – yet they speak to a dissatisfaction with the rum which I share today.

Because in the end, it’s too bland, too quiet and too easy; it’s an un-aggravating, impersonal goodbye from a pretty date with whom I could not connect: who didn’t really like me but felt I should be treated politely for my trouble. And so I get a chaste kiss, a quick goodbye and no memories or experiences worth a damn I could reflect on later. How sad that is, for something that starts so well.

(#995)(79/100) ⭐⭐⭐

J. Gow “Fading Light” Pure Single Rum (Scotland) – Review

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May 072023
 

If I enjoyed the naming J. Gow’s growling salvo across the rum world’s bows, the “Revenge,” then as a lover of language and an avid amateur photographer, I must confess to liking and appreciating the quiet romanticism the “Fading Light” title even more.1 And since that wasn’t enough for VS Distillers (the company behind the brand), it was also a more distinctive, even better rum than the “Revenge”…which as you may recall from last week’s review, was no slouch itself.

I won’t rehash the background of this new Scottish distillery ensconced on a tiny island in the Orkneys, so far up north that if they stepped a bit out of the shallows they’d be speaking Norwegian (see the “Revenge” review for a brief company backgrounder if you’re interested). Let’s just note that the rum has a fourteen day fermentation cycle from molasses, was double-distilled in a pot still, and released at just about a year old … after having been aged in a chestnut casks, not ex-Bourbon. And for all it its youth and northern continental ageing and “mere” 43% ABV strength, it channels a surprising amount of Jamaican in a way the would make a casual rum buying tourist from Cockpit County or London or Toronto blink and check both google maps and their ticket.

Consider. Right from the cracking of the bottle, the rum oozes funk, a nicely textured, crisp melange of liquid Jamaican: Fanta and 7-up, both sweet and citrus-y, with enough strawberries, gooseberries, pineapple and bubble gum to cure all that ails you, while not ignoring just a small whiff of a midden heap in hot weather: I gues this was added for a bit of kick or something. What’s great is that it doesn’t end there: there’s also olives, brine, mixing it up in the backyard with caramel, toffee, brown sugar, some nuts and molasses, and behind it all is some fresh baked sweet pastry egging the lot on.

Much of this repeats on a quietly rambunctious palate. It starts out light and effervescent, with unripe cherries, oranges and pineapples, and even some agricole-like bright vegetal notes, acetones and nail polish. Olives, brine, breakfast spices and a dab of strong black tea. But there is also a dark side here, loamy, musky, with more pastries, molasses, guiness and malt thrown in – something like a sweetly dark beer – balancing off the funk and lighter florals and fruits. The finish is a quieter conclusion than one might have been led to expect given the foregoing, which is a function of the low strength: mostly some light fruits, a bit of citrus, some oranges and apples just starting to go off, and a whiff of a vulcanising shop working overtime on a hot drowsy Sunday afternoon.

See what I mean? The amount of tastes coming out of this thing is all out of proportion to either antecedents or expectations. It’s like a low-proofed Appleton Overproof, a mini stuffed with an idling turbocharger, and while not on the screaming level of crazy as the TECA, say, or the Hampden and WP high ester marques everyone dares themselves to try, for it to have the chops it does given where it’s from, where and how little it’s aged and what it’s aged in, is eye-opening. After trying it a few times at TWE Rumshow booth, keeping it in my fourth glass and then going back to try it a third time, I concluded that the “Fading Light” is an intriguing, original rum that while perhaps a little peculiar, is by no means off-putting, and not at all a refutation of “ruminess.” The entire time I was sampling, I was acutely aware that it was a serious spirit, a real rum, and I have tell you: I was impressed.

(#994)(86/100) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • The company also makes a “Wild Yeast” and “Hidden Depth” expressions which I have not tried (yet).
  • Both The Fat Rum Pirate and Rum Barrel have reviewed this one, both positively.

J. Gow “Revenge” 3 YO Pure Single Rum (Scotland) – Review

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May 022023
 

More and more we are ceasing to regard rum as being the province of just the great geographical areas which have long stratified the spirit into styles which promoted – and are limited by – the regional perceptions of old colonial empires. British (Jamaican, Barbadian, Guyanese), Spanish/Latin and French are the best known of course, and Matt Petrek has long argued (correctly, in my view) that they are best seen as production classifiers than true regional markers — but ultimately the one thing that that particular series of classification did was that it centred our minds in the western hemisphere, with perhaps the occasional nod to Reunion or Madeira.

In the last decade, this limited focus has blown wide open. We can, with not too much effort, original source rums from Africa, Australia, India, Japan, Philippines, Viet Nam, Madagascar, Laos, Cambodia…even the USA and Canada are popping up on the scene. Not all of superb quality, but often of real interest and real uniqueness. And, in a perhaps amusing sort of irony, at last we are seeing the distilleries coming home to roost, as small European companies are eschewing the route of the independent, and actively opening small craft distilleries in their home countries.

In the UK, new companies such as J. Gow, along with Ninefold, Dark Matter, Sugar House, Islay Rum Company and a few others, are at the forefront of this expansion into the homeland. They don’t mess around, often go pot still from the get go, have no issues experimenting with fermentations, distillations and barrels in a way that would perhaps make a more seasoned veteran of, say, Cuba’s maestros roneros, flinch – and produce both aged and unaged rums of varying quality for us to try. Not everything succeeds, but Good Lord, a lot of it does, and J. Gow’s “Revenge” is one of them.

I’ll get into J. Gow’s backstory a bit more in the background notes, rather than make the intro here go on for even longer. For now, the stats: this is a pot still rum made entirely in Orkney in the north of Scotland from imported molasses that are fermented for 5–14 days, in a temperature-controlled 2000-litre fermenter. The wash goes to about 8% ABV, and is then distilled in a stripping run in the pot still, to around 30% ABV. A second spirit run then produces the final high proof distillate which is set to age, although with this one, an extra stripping run has taken place to make it a bit stronger. The rum is a blend of J. Gow’s HD (Heavy Dunder) and DS marques, then aged for 3 years in situ, in a combination of ex-bourbon and virgin oak casks.

Named “Revenge” after a prize taken in 1724 (and no, not from the Dread Pirate Roberts), the 43% rum has some real fangs, let me tell you. The nose is deep and dark, quite at odds with its light straw colour. Molasses, brown sugar and vanilla notes predominate, and underneath that is a sort of light perfumed sweetness – acetones, strawberries, yoghurt, white chocolate…even some flowers – which balances it off nicely. With time some fleshy fruit emerge as well, so it’s a pretty good trifecta there, belying that three years of ageing. It noses older, more mature, more rounded, in a good way.

The palate is where things get both interesting and head off into uncharted seas. It’s initially light and fruity, so some pears, apricots, guavas, vanilla and florals; then a series of darker notes subtly invade the taste – black tea, molasses, caramel, the faintest touch of licorice. But what makes it stand out (to me at any rate) is the malty, briny, grainy, cereal notes which circle around the others, not obnoxiously and not hogging the limelight, but somehow lending a twist to more traditional “rummy” profile we might have expected. It makes the rum distinctive in a way far too many are not, and even the tang of bitterness at the tail end – the oak starts to take over – isn’t entirely a bad thing. The finish kind of sums up the experience with a short, light denouement, leaving behind some perfumed florals, toffee and a peppery note.

I confess to being somewhat startled at how good this three year old rum was — I’ve tried five year olds with less chops than this one showed off so casually. The notes come together quite well – Wes Burgin commented several times on his appreciation for its balance – and even at 43% there was no shortage of bits and pieces to tease out and indulge oneself identifying. I particularly respected how it went off at a tangent on the palate, and didn’t simply try to be a copy of some island hooch. It’s a really good rum, a remarkably tasty introduction (to me) of what the Scots can do if they were to take some time off from the local tipple and try to make a real spirit. And the best part is, there are more in the line that are every bit as good. I can’t wait to get started.

 

(#993)(84/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Brief Historical Background

The small Scottish distillery of VS Distillers is named after its founder, Collin Van Schayk, and it sits a few feet away from the shoreline of what may be the world’s smallest island that hosts a distillery: Lamb Holm, a mere 0.15 sq miles in area (less than half a square km).

That location is not the only odd thing about them, and the distillery’s title is practically unknown, with the company being much more widely recognized by its brand name, J. Gow. The late and unlamented Mr. John Gow was (perhaps inevitably) a pirate, albeit a rather unsuccessful one – he hailed from the Orkneys, itself an island group which would be the northernmost point of Scotland if it wasn’t for the Shetland Islands even further out. His claim to fame, aside from a career deemed short even by the rough standards of the 1700s (said piratical endeavours lasted less than a year between inception and his execution) was that he was caught, tried and hung, the rope broke…and he was ceremoniously and solicitously hung again (in spite of the perhaps apocryphal tradition that a botched hanging allows the condemned to go free since God evidently pardoned him).

Mr. Van Shayk founded the company in 2016 with a 2000 liter pot still (why he chose such a remote, even obscure, location has never been answered – I suspected there’s some family heritage there someplace). Almost immediately he began making spiced rums which, in spite of the groans of the purists, sold quite well — and the success garnered by these initial efforts convinced him to branch out not only into pure single rums, but to tinker with various barrel types as well as fermentation techniques. It’s too early to see where this is all going, but for sure originality and experimentation are part of the recipe, now and in the future.

Ironworks Distillery Amber Rum – Review

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Apr 282023
 

Returning to Canada and observing the rumscape that has developed over the last decade has not filled me with elation and confidence. Most of what I’ve found and tasted thus far is low level mixing hooch – which wouldn’t be so bad if the majority wasn’t just the kind of barely-aged, insipid, uninspiring, boring blah that Merchant Shipping Co. white rum so splendidly exemplified. They didn’t have to be — after all, I’ve tasted unaged and lightly aged rums from all over the map which exceeded their humble origins and became unexpectedly and quietly impressive products. But up until last week, I was beginning to wonder whether there were any really good ones North of 49.

With white rums of any stripe, the answer so far is a clear “no.” With aged rums, on the other hand, it would seem that there are glimmers of hope. Last weekend the Big (formerly the Little) Caner volunteered to help me run past a series of rums from around the world – I imagine that was a sort of amused curiosity at the doings of his geriatric sire involved – and since his nose is actually quite astute after years of following me around, I gladly accepted his assistance and perspective. We tried six rums blind together: 1 to my complete surprise, my top pick from the rather low-rent bunch (and his second choice) was the Ironworks Amber rum from Nova Scotia.

This was the same rum-making outfit from Nova Scotia behind the “Bluenose” rum we looked at a couple of weeks ago. I thought that one was an interesting if ultimately not-quite-there foray into aged rums, with a more or less okay taste profile and too little disclosure (this has not changed), yet it wasn’t good enough to crack the eighty-point barrier, beyond which we should start paying a bit more attention. The Amber rum my boy and I tasted and which we’re reviewing today is still a rum in its developmental infancy – it has yet to find its sea legs if it wants to compare with any of the rums from the Big Houses’ stables – but by no means was it a slouch.

Quick stats: 42% ABV, molasses-based (Crosby’s Fancy Grade from Guatemala), with the wash passed twice through a hybrid Muller still and then aged; the ageing is tricky – the website says it is “a combination of a first fill bourbon barrel, and a re-charred Blomidon wine barrel” but whether that means the distillate was aged first in one then another, or two separately aged batches were blended, is not mentioned. Neither is the duration though I suspect it’s probably less than three years all told.

Yet from these unprepossessing beginnings the rum that comes out the other end is actually quite a nifty drink. “Sprightly!” I said to The Big Caner as we nosed it, and enjoyed the light effervescent quality is displayed when smelled. It evinced bright and lively fruits, young and crisp – green apples and grapes, offset by more sober ones like papaya and melons. Mixed in with the clear sweetness was a little smoke, a little rubber, not enough to take over…more like an accent. There were some hints of hand sanitizer, a medicinal or rubbing alcohol, and the whole thing eased up and settled down after a while, becoming almost creamy.

Tastewise the 42% also acquitted itself reasonably well. Here the subtle impression of a low rent agricole was hard to shake: fresh herbs, green grapes, unripe apples, and some citrus notes were the main players on the stage. A few riper fruits emerged from hiding, along with toffee and vanilla (thankfully not much of either), bright honey and sugar water. There was a nice background of brininess to it and it was subtly dry, leading to a short and easy finish of white chocolate, crushed almonds and some citrus, not much more. At 42% I was really surprised to get as much as all that, to be honest.

Overall then, the Ironworks Amber was light, easy drinking; reasonably well balanced, well assembled and not a disappointment. The sweetness was never allowed to dominate, though it could always be sensed lurking in the background; and if the smoky, feinty notes were not as well tamed as they might have been, well, some more ageing would probably have settled that and there are other rums in the company’s lineup which hopefully alleviate this. What’s impressive is that even in the company of the starter-kit rums in which the Amber found itself, it was able to stand out and make a statement for itself, and – to me at any rate – rise to the top of the heap of six. Granted the competition wasn’t world class, but it was from around the world. And that’s no mean feat, to be in that company, then equal and trump them all. It gives me hope for the Canadian rum distilling scene, though I hope it doesn’t take until the Big Caner reaches my age to get there.

(#992)(83/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other notes

  • For some contrasting perspective, see Rum Revelations’ notes on Canadian rums from late 2022: he was rather indifferent to other Ironworks products generally (though they were not the ones I’ve tried, and not this one).
  • The Bluenose rum review has a more detailed company background at the bottom.

Plantation Barbados Grande Reserve Aged Rum – Review

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Apr 102023
 

At first I thought the Barbados Grande Reserve Aged Rum was a replacement for the five year old Barbados rum from Plantation which I had tried many years ago, but further investigation showed them to be quite separate. Both, however, are part of the Signature blends which include the Barbados 5, the XO, Grand Anejo and Xaymaca — these are what one might infer are entry level rums for the curious (to call them ‘premium’ would be a stretch). They are neither bartenders’ mixing staples like the Three Star, OFTD or Original Dark, nor expensive limited editions like the upscale Extreme, Single Cask or Vintage series, and exist in a kind of everyman’s universe where “reasonableness” is the watchword.

That said, the production ethos of the company pervades even this introductory rum. It originates from the West Indies Rum Refinery in Barbados (we all know Ferrand, Plantation’s parent company, owns it) where it is blended from pot/column still molasses-derived rums aged from one to three years, before being shipped off to France and aged in Ferrand’s facilities there for another year. It’s released at 40%, the sweetening is glossed over, and overall, like most rums of this kind from this house, it attracts equal parts dislike and appreciation depending on who’s doing the talking.

It’s not my intent to rehash the polarising nature and background of either the company or its production practises here, except insofar as to note there aren’t many reviews of this rum to be found1, and wonder if the vitriol surrounding the company may have an impact on any writers’ desire to get sucked in. Be that as it may, the rum has to be tried sooner or later, and for new rum drinkers who wet their beaks for the first time with it, there’s little to actively dislike: it’s as good a rum to start one’s journey with as any, and better than quite a few I’ve looked at of late.

So, let’s get started. Nose: an introduction of crisp yet ripe fruit, like raspberries, red currants, pineapples, around which coils a waft of stinky sweet bubble gum in hot weather. Brown sugar and molasses and coconut shavings are discernible, plus some mushy bananas and tangerines that have seen better days. Nice enough nose, with enough going on not to be categorised as simply an entry-level molasses based product: it’s a bit better than that.

The palate now…not too shabby. No, seriously. A touch sharp going in at first sip, then it steadies: sweet and sour pork, hot black tea sweetened with condensed milk and cardamom (bush tea, we called it and I still make a mug a few times a month), light fruits plus a touch of unsweetened salt caramel, vanilla, cinnamon, honey, orange juice and even marzipan. The problem is it tastes a bit…flattened, even dull, like Emile’s sense of taste compared to Remy’s in Ratatouille. The music is there but the bass is too high and the top- and mid-range notes don’t come through clearly enough and this is also the case when considering the finish; which turns out to be nothing we haven’t seen before, and is even a bit boring — slightly briny, sweet, coconut shavings, vanilla, light citrus and some chocolate.

It goes down easy without reaching and that may be the key observation. Overall, it’s a relatively simple rum compared to others I’ve had (including some from Plantation themselves), yet a rum one can, with care and lowered expectations, have neat without too many issues. To be honest, I thought the rum was better than it had a right to be considering the sweetening Plantation is known for (I tested it after the session, not before…so the level was unknown to me while trying it).

The Grand Reserve stops short of being a cloying muddle, and is fortunately a ways from being a complete sugary mess — yet the additives/sugar do spoil it and make for a lesser experience, especially if one knows what one is looking for. For someone now getting into rum, it’s serviceable and they could use it as a stepping stone to get more into the field, though for getting into the Barbados style it’s useless, so forget that aspect. Those with more experience can use it as a bellwether for what to look for in Plantation’s successively more upscale (and expensive) offerings; and for those who’re really into rums, well, there’s not much to say to them, since they already know all there is to know.

(#987)(78/100)

Other notes

  • The Plantation website has no details on any of the Signature rum series at all (the “learn more” link does not work)
  • Most articles mention 15-16 g/L sweetening, or “dosage”. My hydrometer shows 36% ABV when measuring the rum, which works out to 15 g/L
  • Leaving the empty glass in the sink to evaporate overnight leaves a slightly sticky residue to be found the next morning.
  • The rum has been in production for a very long time, hence the various label changes. The first reference I can find for it dates from 2008, and is on one of the first rum review websites, Refined Vices, run by an old friend from Finland, Tatu Kaarlas (who now lives in Australia). That Grand Reserve Barbados rum had a label which stated it was from cane juice (felt by most at the time to be unlikely) not molasses…and came from Foursquare. Yeah, that’s not happening now, for sure.

Ironworks Distillery “Bluenose” Dark Rum – Review

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Apr 032023
 

The first thing one notices about the rum, even before it’s poured, is the colour – dark, almost black, with reddish tints, and completely not natural. This creates both expectations and dread in the reviewer because firstly, there’s the whole question of additives, and secondly, it suggests the channelling of the Navy Rum vibe of yore, complete with cutlasses, yo ho hos and some sort of faux-Demerara vibe to deceive the unwary. This does not usually end well.

It’s a relief then, that neither of these is obviously or obnoxiously the case, and in fact, the rum presents rather well at first blush, even with a rather lacklustre 42% strength. The nose has a lot of interesting (if restrained) things going on there: tannins, well polished leather and cinnamon to start off with, quite easy to smell, nothing harsh or bloviating, no straining to make a point. There some dark elderberry and cranberry notes, vaguely sour, caramel, a touch of molasses and behind it all, the tang of mauby (a bark made into Caribbean soft drinks by locals) – not at all the “traditional” rum flavours one might be expecting and a far cry from the confected, dosed-to-the-gills Bumbu-esque profile one might think is coming.

On the palate it comes off as a bit sweet and briny at the same time, the mauby taking on some more heft, accompanied by cinnamon, molasses and a peculiar sort of scent that reminds me of a sunlit damp forest glade, rank with decomposing leaves and mossy logs and the memory of a rain just ceased. There is a hint of some fruits – prunes, elderberries again, a vague cough syrup and grenadine dropped here and there. It’s not bad, all in all, and the finish, while short, at least doesn’t drop the ball, and glides to an easy conclusion with caramel, some sweet prunes, and that slight mauby thing coming onstage for a last bow.

Compared to some of their other efforts, this is a pretty solid rum from the Ironworks Distillery in Nova Scotia (in eastern Canada), though frankly, it would have made more of an impact with several more proof points – 42% really remains too weak. Still, while there are others in the lineup I have not yet tried (including some I don’t want to), as a first introduction to the distillery, I could have picked worse based on label spec. But what are the specs, exactly? There is maddeningly little on the company website.

Here’s what we know: it derives from Guatemalan molasses imported into eastern Canada (which makes it likely to be Crosby’s – they import exclusively from there and are located in the maritimes), fermented on site over a period of weeks (exact time unspecified), and run through an unidentified still which is either a hybrid or a column still made by Muller from Germany. A further unspecified period of ageing takes place in ex-bourbon barrels, and again, while some of their barrels are placed on board the Black Beauty floating boat warehouse in the harbour, we are not told whether any of the components of this rum were from there. Lastly, at no point is the age of the rum mentioned, yet this is a company which proudly touts the age of the “Ten,” their oldest rum.

If you detect the bite of irritated impatience here, you’re right. This is getting to be a thing with Canadian rums and the companies that make then, and it’s annoying as hell. In this day and age, I should not have to make comments about disclosure (i.e., the lack thereof), or email the company or ask for further details. It should be right there on the label or at least in their website — which takes such pains to say who they are and with what pride they what they do. Ironworks has been around for more than a decade, and has steadily amassed a nice stable of regionally appreciated spirits. It’s time to stop with this coy, wink-wink amateur-hour stuff and step up to the big boys table – and part of that is disclosure, not prideful marketing about being the Small Distillery That Could with a scrappy origin story.

I like the rum itself, and am relieved that the inclusion of caramel colouring into the mix to make it darker was not compensation for weaknesses in other areas: and the truth must be told, it’s a more complex and interesting rum than I was expecting — a rum I don’t mind drinking, or mixing. But just as I give it the respect it has earned, I demand that we as consumers are treated with a little more respect in our turn, and provided with the details that would tell us what it is that we just paid forty bucks for.

(#986)(79/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • The “Bluenose” is a famous Canadian schooner built in 1921 which won many competitions in the 1920s and was exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933. Its metal parts were made on the premises of the iron works which the company took over in 2009.
  • I have seen an occasional unconfirmed comment that the rum is spiced, but in the absence of more formal evidence, I chose to doubt it. The offbeat taste of the rum is, to more a function of its source material, long fermentation, and maybe even the barrels they use.
  • Because of the gradual reduction of North American rum reviewers and the fact that Ironworks does not export much (if at all) other reviews are scant. However, I point you to Rum Revelations’ notes on Canadian rums from late 2022, including their indifference to other Ironworks products. A reddit reviewer gave the Bluenose 83 points in 2013, and stated its age as about one year. RumRatings was more scattershot, and few conclusions can be drawn from their commentariat – about a third of the votes rated it 7/10. Rum-X, as of this writing, does not have an entry for it.

Historical background

Ironworks is a distillery in the Maritime (Canadian) province of Nova Scotia, founded by Pierre Guevremont and Lynne MacKay in 2009, and inspired a year earlier by a random reading of a magazine article on the growth of the spirits industry (I find this odd because it is much more usual for people to start a distillery based on a connection to some spirit or other, or out of real love for a single product line). Quite aside from distillation of quality spirits, they wanted to get deep into the technical aspects of fermentation, distillations, ageing and infusing, all via experimentation and personal experience; as well, they hope to use local ingredients as far as possible, and provide employment for the local economy.

They acquired premises in the small town of Lunenburg, in what was once a marine blacksmith’s workshop that serviced the shipbuilders who operated along the South Shore; and happily also provided the title of the fledgling distillery when the time came to name it. The couple bought a 30,000-litre fermentation tank and a Muller still from Germany (type is not mentioned but I think it’s a hybrid from the few photos I’ve seen), and nowadays source apples, pears, molasses and ferment them all year for a wide ranging spirits portfolio of rum, vodka, brandy, gin and whisky. Barrels are sourced from all over – with an emphasis on ex-bourbon for rum – and the warehousing has expanded beyond the small storage area to a boat, offices and more.

The company met with enough success that after little more than five years, it already had won some twenty awards for its products, and it became one of the few of Nova Scotia’s growing craft distillers with a reputation that expanded outside its home province. Their spirits became popular enough that in early 2016 they partnered up with Halifax’s airport to open a liquor store on the premises to allow passengers to buy alcohol when travelling – and limited it to locally made products only. In 2018 they sent a few barrels around the world in a sailing ship, which some herald as a stunt, but which Ms. McKay defended as an experiment to see if the old tale of spirits ageing better at sea was true or not – the barrels were subsequently blended into the “Around The World Rum”, and rapidly sold out. One could argue as to whether it was marketing or not, but the key takeaway was the willingness of the owners to think a bit outside to box and come up with some ingenious marketing ideas, as well as – one would hope – a more interesting and better rum.

Currently the company makes several different rums, the best known of which are the Amber, the Rum Boat Rum, the “Ten”, the Bluenose and the “Around the World Rum”, the last of which was the special edition referred to above. They also make a rum cream and an experimental rum blended with maple syrup and then aged some more which they call maple rum and which I term an arrangé or infused spirit.

To some extent the rise of the European – and, of late, American – independent bottlers, as well as the obdurate and overly complex regulatory Canadian landscape, has limited the company’s ability to expand as rapidly as they might wish. The lack of concentration on one spirit type is also an issue I’ve commented on before, and does not allow for world class expertise to develop as rapidly as it would for a more laser-focused company. But one must consider the commercial realities of small companies which have to make payroll and generate cash flow, and so, for now, we must accept that Ironworks is a distillery that makes some intriguing rums, and is gradually increasing its footprint and awareness around the country.

 

Rhum Belami “Legacy Edition” 3YO 55º Spiced Rhum – Review

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Feb 202023
 

This is a sample review I’ve been sitting on for quite a while, and after trying it was never entirely certain I wanted to write about at all: but perhaps it’s best to get it out there so people can get a feel for the thing. It’s a rhum made in Vietnam since 2017 by a three-person outfit founded by an expatriate Martinique native named Roddy Battajon and occasionally turns up in social media feeds and in French and regional magazines — but, like other Vietnam rum brands we’ve looked at before (Mia, L’Arrangé Dosai and Sampan so far), lacks exposure and a more international presence. It’s the usual issue: too small for sufficient revenues to allow for rum festival attendance and a distribution deal, and the pandemic certainly did not help. Since 2022 they’ve entered into some partnership deals, however, so there is hope for a greater footprint in the years to come – for now the primary market for its rhums seems to remain regional, with some being for sale in France.

Mr. Battajon has been in Vietnam since around 2016, arriving with ten years of F&B experience in Europe under his belt, and after knocking around the bar circuit there for a while, felt that the high quality of local sugar cane and the mediocre local rhums (the most popular is called Chauvet, and there are bathtub moonshines called “scorpion” and “snake wine” which one drinks just to say one has) left a space for something more premium. He linked up with a Vietnamese partner who doubles up as General Manager in charge of procurement and product sourcing (bottles, labels, corks, cane juice, spares…), and an Amsterdam-based designer and communications guy. Navigating the stringent regulations, sinking his capital into a small alembic (a stainless steel pot still), bootstrapping his Caribbean heritage and tinkering the way all such micro-distillers do, he released his first cane juice rhum in early 2017 and has been quietly puttering along ever since.

The rum is made as organically as possible, sourcing pesticide-free cane from local farmers, and eschewing additives all the way – for now a “Bio” certification remains elusive since the certifying mechanism has not yet been instituted in Vietnam. However they recycle the bagasse into compost, and botanical leftovers into a sort of bitters, and have plans to use solar panels for energy going forward, as well as continuing to source organic cane wherever they can find it.

This then, finally brings us to the rhum itself. So: cane juice, pot-still distilled from that little alembic (have not been able to establish the size or makeup), and bottled at a muscular 55% ABV. Mr. Battajon makes it clear in a 2017 interview, without stating it explicitly, that his vision of rhum is one of infusion and flavouring, not the “pure” one currently in vogue, though he is careful to make a distinction between what he does and a “rhum arrangé”. The company now makes several different lightly aged products but I have not seen anything to suggest that either an unaged white is available (yet) or that if it is, it is unadded-to.

In various articles, listings and comments online, mention is made of coffee beans, pineapple, mangoes, other fruits, and various herbs, barks and spices being added to the ageing barrels. I had no idea this was the case when I tried it – it was a sample from Reuben Virasami, a fellow Guyanese and bartender who spent some time in Vietnam and who now resides in Toronto – and he didn’t provide any info to go along with it, so I gave it the same run-through that all rhums receive. In other words, I treated it as a straightforward product.

What the Legacy did, when I tried it, was transport me back to a corner of my mind inhabited by the Cuban Guayabita del Pinar. It had that same sense of sweetly intense fruitiness about it – the nose was rich with ripe, dripping pineapples, soft and squishy mangoes, some sugar cane sap, and a few spices too subtle to make out – cinnamon and maybe nutmeg, I’d hazard. 55% makes the arrival quite powerful, even overpowering, so care should be taking to avoid a nasal blowout – fortunately it’s not sharp or stabbing at all, just thick.

The palate is much more interesting because some of the sweet fruit intensity is tamped down. That said, it’s not a whole lot different from the nose: pineapples, mangoes, yoghurt, a touch of breakfast spices, anise and red bell peppers, and something akin to maple syrup drizzled over hot pancakes. There’s a delicate citrus line underlying the whole thing, something crisp yet unidentifiable, with an alcoholic kick lending emphasis, but behind that, not a whole lot to go on. The finish was disappointing, to be honest, because it was short and presented nothing particularly new.

So yes, when all is said and done, the Legacy is very much along the line of the ‘Pinar except here it’s been dialled up quite a bit. Overall, it’s too sweet for me, too cloying, and you must understand that preference of mine in case you make a purchasing decision on the basis of this review – I don’t care for infused and spiced rums or arrangés, really, unless the addition is kept at a manageable, more subtle, level, not ladled into my face with a snow shovel. Here, in spite of the extra proof points, that just wasn’t the case: I felt drenched in mango-pineapple flavours, and that strength amplified the experience to a level I was not enthusiastic about. If I want a cocktail, I’ll make one.

It would be unfair of me to score a rum of a kind I usually do not buy and don’t care for — since I don’t knowingly purchase or sample such rums, experience is thin on the ground, and then I’d be making an assessment of quality I’m not equipped to deliver. Therefore I’ll dispense with a score, just write my thoughts and comments, and leave it for others to rate when their time comes. But I’ll make this remark – if a company labels its product as a rhum without qualification (by excluding the words “spiced” or “infused” or “arrangé”) then it’s asking for it to be judged alongside others that are deemed more real, more genuine. That leaves the door open to a lot of criticism, no matter how organic and well made the rhum is, and here, that’s not entirely to its advantage.

(#974)(Unscored)

Other notes

  • Not sure what the origin of the company title Belami is. On the other hand the word “Legacy” is likely a call back to Mr. Battajon’s grandmother, from whom he drew inspiration.
  • This Legacy edition was 55% ABV. In the various expressions, the strength varies from ~48% to ~60%
  • I’ve written an email to the company asking for clarification on a few points, so this post will be amended if I get a response.
  • Because several years’ worth of the Legacy were issued (some at 55%, some stronger, some weaker), I’m unsure as to the age. None state the year of make on the label as far as I can tell, but online stores sometimes make mention of the one they’re selling.

Renaissance Distillery 2018 2½ YO Taiwan Rum (Fino Cask) – Review

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Jan 242023
 

Taiwan is not known for rums, but then, it was not known for whisky either, and look what Kavalan has managed to accomplish. So, sooner or later, I had to come here, where an expatriate Frenchman named Oliver Caen and his Taiwanese wife Linya Chiou, have created one of the most interesting new distilling companies out there: interesting for their location, interesting for their labelling, interesting for their rums, and interesting because so few people have tried any — yet everyone knows of them, and everyone is curious to check them out. Word of mouth like that is priceless.

I’ll provide some company background below this review; for the moment, it’s enough that we know the 2017-established company has a 500L steel pot still and a more recently added 1200L copper Charentais still. Sources for the wash are both molasses and juice derived from their own small estate cane; fermentation varies and can take 15-21 days if from juice, and at least 10 days if from molasses; double distillation is practised and ageing is done in a variety of barrels sourced from France, Spain, Russia, Japan and the US. The sheer variety of the production methods they indulge in probably explains why the company has made it a hallmark of its labelling ethos to provide a level of information on the rum in each bottle that would make Luca Gargano weep with envy and frustration and for which us geeks can only be grateful.

Not many of Renaissance’s rums are as yet easily or commonly available and their production remains relatively small. The rum we are discussing today is a 2018 double-distilled 3 year old rum, and in relating the tech specs you realise that this is where that bible of a label, that ‘wall of text” comes into its own. The rum is molasses based, 15 days fermentation with some dunder, aged in a new 225L American oak cask and then finished in Fino sherry cask (Fino is a dry sherry), 306 bottle outturn and 62% ABV…and just from those details you can tell how much the label provides (I have left out quite a bit, to be honest because sometimes there is such a thing as overkill, though I’m glad to get all this too).

Anyway, the rum’s production background suggests a rich experience, and indeed, the profile is really quite interesting. The nose for example, opens right into licorice, blackcurrants, some medicinals, flortals, light delicate perfumes, vanilla and some crisp citrus notes. Underneath those aromas is something a bit softer and muskier: flambeed bananas, salt butter, the vegetable aromas of a hot and spicy miso soup leavened with ripe mangoes and lemon peel. It’s solid at 62%, though thankfully it stops short of serious aggro.

The palate was just similar enough to rums with which we are more familiar to make the occasional diversions interesting and singular, rather than off-putting. There’s som blancmange, salt caramel, bananas, licorice and almonds, all at once. This is followed, as the rum opens up some, with sharper and quite clear citrus and floral notes, some burnt bell peppers, chocolate oranges, unsweetened chocolate coffee grounds and – peculiarly – even quinine comes to mind (and I should know). There is some faint sweet spiciness at the tail end which bleeds over into the long finish – this is mostly cloves, ginger, licorice – but at the end it’s fruity with raspberries and some syrup, honey and brine.

Well, labelling is one thing and presentation goes hand in had with it, so it talks well, but based on what I’ve described, does it walk? Opinions are mixed. All in all, there’s a fair bit of hop-skip-and-jump going on here and perhaps its inevitable that with a rum being this young and with all those processes in its DNA, it would be a little uneven. The Fat Rum Pirate, in one of the best reviews so far, suggested this very aspect, wondered what it was like without the Fino finish, and rated it three stars (out of five). Will and John of the Rumcast named this one of their rums of 2022 (in the “most surprising” category at 1:11:28) and Will remarked that “if a high ester Jamaican rum and a Fijian rum walked into a bar and had too much sherry, it would be this rum” but stayed clear of making either a full throated endorsement or a dismissal. The originality was clearly key for Will, as it was so unusual. Serge over at WhiskyFun commented on it being “big,” that he didn’t get the finish, couldn’t say it was brilliant…but surely worth checking out.

That’s really what I come down to as well. It’s unusual, in a good way. While some more ageing would likely make it better, it may be too early to ask for that: as with many small up and coming distilleries who need to make cash flow, young rums is what we’re getting (the Australians were also like this, as are some of the new American craft distilleries). The rum does channel a bit of Jamaican, and combines it with something softer and easier – a Barbadian or Panama rum, say (Serge said Lost Spirits, which I thought was a stretch) – and what it reminds me of is, oddly enough, Montanya’s Exclusiva, which scored the same. The Renaissance gains points for somewhat different reasons, but it remains in the mind just as Montanya does — and all I can say is that I just wish it was cheaper.

(#968)(86/100) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Other Notes

  • Casks are important in the identification of Renaissance’s rums. This one is Fino #18260
  • For now it simply costs too much for serious appreciation, but I do recommend it.
  • This is an exclusive bottling for The Whisky Exchange
  • A brief backgrounder. The husband and wife team have been spirits importers to Taiwan since 2006; by 2013 they felt that the combination of rum’s rise on the international scene, the lack of a “serious” Taiwanese branded rum and their feeling that there could and should be one, made them investigate starting a distillery of their own (at the time Taiwan produced brands called Koxinga Gold and Wonderland, but these were not well regarded and almost unknown outside the island). Experimenting with molasses, juice or cane sugar on a 500L stainless steel pot still for the next three years (without a licence and while holding down day jobs), they decided that the rums they could make were viable, and went on to formally establish Renaissance in 2017 as a single estate distillery in southern Taiwan, using organic methods and mono-varietal cane.
  • Taiwan had a solid sugar cane industry (cane has been recorded there at least since the 14th century, and the the Dutch introduced industrial sugar production in the 1600s when the island was known as Dutch Formosa)
  • Although agriculture uses almost a quarter of the land in Taiwan (and a full half of the entire sector is plant-crop based), moves to an industrialised hi-tech manufacturing economy have gradually reduced its share to less than 2% of GDP (from 35% in 1952), and it is considered a support of the economy, not a primary driver; land use has been shrinking as well, even though the Government wants this to change in order to promote better food security. Sugar cane used to be an export crop but has been reduced of late, and is not a major focus in Taiwan any longer; therefore it is not surprising that a vibrant sugar or spirits industry based on cane has never really developed (Government monopolies, and restrictions on spirits production, were other reasons); wine on the other hand has become more popular, and the example of Kavalan whiskey is a model that no doubt influenced Mr. Caen as well.
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