Clarke’s Court Superior Light Rum (2000s)

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Jan 172019
 
Clarke's Court Superior Light Rum (2000s)

Rumaniacs Review # R-089 | 590 This spite of a light white — to give it its full name, the “Clarke’s Court Superior Refined Grenada Light Rum” – should not be confused with either the current version of the Superior Light being released at 40%, or the best selling and much better Pure White at 69%.  The one here is an older version of the rum, column distilled (Ed Hamilton’s 1995 book Rums of the Eastern Caribbean mentions a two-column still in operation around that time), aged for under a year, filtered to clarity and meant as a low level [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Jamaica 1991 Supreme Lord VIII 25 Year Old Rum (Monymusk) – Review

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Jan 152019
 
Rum Nation Jamaica 1991 Supreme Lord VIII 25 Year Old Rum (Monymusk) - Review

Before considering the €300+ price tag, or grumbling about Rum Nation’s penchant for adding something extra to (some of) its rums, give the last Supreme Lord Jamaican rum from 1991 a whiff, a sniff and a snort. Sip a dram. Take your time with it. Enjoy. Because it’s simply outstanding, and even in concert with eight other Jamaicans that were on the table the day I tried it, it held up in fine style.   Part of that derives from the extended “sherry finish” — though since it spent eleven years in oloroso casks I’d suggest it’s more a double [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 2007 8 Year Old Rum (WP) – Review

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Jan 122019
 
Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 2007 8 Year Old Rum (WP) - Review

Hampden has been getting so much press of late that it’s only fair to have a look at the other products of the island, of which, these days, there are no shortages. For a long time these distilleries — with names geeks could recite in their sleep, like New Yarmouth, Innswood, Clarendon, Long Pond Monymusk, Worthy Park, Hampden — laboured in relative obscurity, living in J. Wray’s gargantuan shadow, selling mostly bulk rum abroad, or for the local market. Somehow, though, the distilleries remained alive, and so did their names, their rums. While I’m by no means disparaging or downplaying [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum J.M. Vieux Millésime 1989 15 Year Old

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Jan 092019
 
Rhum J.M. Vieux Millésime 1989 15 Year Old

Rumaniacs Review #088 | 0587 You’d think that a rhum issued less than fifteen years ago would still be reasonably available – you’d be wrong. This amazing leather-labelled, oak-aged 15 year old agricole from J.M. (Martinique) is almost impossible to find, and if you do, it’s not cheap.  It’s long since vanished from J.M.’s online shop, and I finally ended up tracking a bottle down in Switzerland, where it was a fetching a cool five hundred bucks or more, which just goes to show it’s not just other people’s money the Swiss are squirrelling way.  One can only wonder how [Click here for the full review…]


A1710 2017 “La Perle” Martinique White Rhum – Review

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Jan 072019
 
A1710 2017 "La Perle" Martinique White Rhum - Review

After the initial flurry of articles attendant on the forming of the first new distillery / rum brand in Martinique in, oh, I don’t know, forever, there’s been a surprising drop in attention for A1710. The big guns like Neisson, Bally, HSE, Trois-Rivieres, Depaz et al, with decades (or centuries) of brand awareness underlying their name and fame, continue to issue their excellent agricole rums, of course, but it’s almost like A1710 dropped by the wayside.  Yet this tiny outfit makes rums with a lot of zip, zap, zowee and swoosh, and should not be ignored just because it’s small. [Click here for the full review…]


Toucan Rhum Blanc Agricole – Review

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Jan 022019
 
Toucan Rhum Blanc Agricole - Review

There must be something about the French that just leads them into starting little rum companies in other countries. There was Hembert Achard and Anne-Francois Houzel who formed Whisper Rums from Antigua; David Giallorenzo of Issan; and Marine Lucchini and Thibault Spithakis of Chalong Bay. And of course there’s Toucan, which, if you recall from my posts of a year ago, is a relatively new entrant to the field of rums, yet distinguished itself (in my eyes at least) by making the really nifty-but-underpowered Toucan No. 4, as well as being from French Guiana, a place we have not seen [Click here for the full review…]


Seven Seas Japanese Rum – Review

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Dec 302018
 
Seven Seas Japanese Rum - Review

Take this as less a review, than a description of my experience with a rum I didn’t know what to do with. * I have been sitting on this review for over a year, alternately confused and disgusted and wondering and puzzled.  It was a rum like nothing I’d ever had before, tawdry and smelly and meaty, an open sewer of a rum, a discarded tart’s handkerchief, yet I could not believe it could actually be so.  No reputable company – no company period – would willingly release such a product into the wild without reason, so what was I [Click here for the full review…]


St. George Spirits California Agricole White Rum (2014) – Review

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Dec 282018
 
St. George Spirits California Agricole White Rum (2014) - Review

Just as we don’t see Americans making too many full proof rums, it’s also hard to see them making true agricoles, especially since the term is so tightly bound up with the spirits of the French islands. Agricole, let it be remembered, is the French term for agricultural rums made from pure sugar cane juice, and called such to distinguish them (not without a little Gallic disdain, to be sure) from traditionnels, or traditional rums, which are made from molasses, a by product of the sugar making process. For the most part, having much to do with the finances, molasses [Click here for the full review…]


Hampden Estate 8 Year Old Overpoof Rum – Review

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Dec 242018
 
Hampden Estate 8 Year Old Overpoof Rum - Review

My own personal memories of the Hampden Overproof will always be combined with the Tasting of the Century in London, where we tried those magnificent old rums the Harewood 1780, St James 1885, Bally 1924 and Skeldon 1978…and the two new Hampdens. Truth to tell, my focus was so fiercely on that geriatric quartet, that I had little time to pay attention to the twins….time kind of ran out on me, and I could barely do them justice. So knowing I had the bottles in Berlin, I waited until October and then dealt with them there again. Velier, as is [Click here for the full review…]


Balcones Texas Rum 2016 Special Release – Review

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Dec 222018
 
Balcones Texas Rum 2016 Special Release - Review

We don’t much associate the USA with cask strength rums, though of course they do exist, and the country has a long history with the spirit.  These days, even allowing for a swelling wave of rum appreciation here and there, the US rum market seems to be primarily made up of low-end mass-market hooch from massive conglomerates at one end, and micro-distilleries of wildly varying output quality at the other. It’s the micros which interest me, because the US doesn’t do “independent bottlers” as such – they do this, and that makes things interesting, since one never knows what new [Click here for the full review…]


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