San Pablo “Platinum White” Curaçao White Rum – Review

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Nov 152018
 
San Pablo "Platinum White" Curaçao White Rum - Review

Smaller Caribbean islands can be sleepy sorts of places where (partly in my imagination, partly in my boyhood experiences) old, lovingly-maintained Morris Oxfords and Humber Hawks sedately roll down leafy, sun-drenched boulevards reminiscent of the colonial era, and pass rumshops on every corner where men slap down dominos and drink paralyzingly powerful local white lightning with coconut water while discussing Sobers, Kanhai, Lloyd and Lara from the Windies’ long-past glory days with plenty “suck-teet” and “styupsin” and “cuss-up”. All right so that’s a bit of poetic license, but in my youth, it really was like that up and down the [Click here for the full review…]


San Pablo “Gold Label” Curaçao Rum – Review

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Nov 132018
 
San Pablo "Gold Label" Curaçao Rum - Review

Let’s move away from the full proofed rums released by indies and the major Caribbean companies, and switch over to something we don’t see very often, rums from the smaller islands —  these traditionally sell well to the tourist trade and within their local markets, but don’t make much of a splash elsewhere. Some are considered undiscovered steals, and the internet is rife with throwaway comments on personal blogs and travel sites about some rum nobody ever heard about being the best they ever had. One of these is the golden 40% San Pablo rum out of the Dutch West [Click here for the full review…]


Velier NRJ “Long Pond TECC” 2007 11 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

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Nov 112018
 
Velier NRJ "Long Pond TECC" 2007 11 YO Jamaican Rum - Review

So now we are the fourth and last ester-boosted rums issued in 2018 by Velier from the distillery of Long Pond in Jamaica, and in a strange way it sums up the preceding three rums in a way that emphasizes many of the best parts and tones down the excesses of all of them.  This is all the more curious a statement since it has the highest ester counts of the quartet, and one would expect the massive taste-bomb effluent of the TECA to be jacked up a few notches more…to “12”, maybe. And yet it doesn’t. It’s a really [Click here for the full review…]


Velier NRJ “Long Pond TECA” 2003 15 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

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Nov 072018
 
Velier NRJ "Long Pond TECA" 2003 15 YO Jamaican Rum - Review

“Pungent f*cker, isn’t it?” smirked Gregers, responding to my own incredulous text to him, when I recovered my glottis from the floor where the TECA had deposited and then stomped it flat. Another comment I got was from P-O Côté after the Vale Royal review came out: “Can’t wait to read your thoughts about the TECA…!! … Hard to describe without sounding gross.” And Rumboom remarked on a taste of “sweat” and “organic waste” in their own rundown of the TECA, with another post elsewhere actually using the word “manure.” I start with these varied comments to emphasize that I [Click here for the full review…]


Velier NRJ “Cambridge STC❤E” 2005 13 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

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Nov 052018
 
Velier NRJ "Cambridge STC❤E" 2005 13 YO Jamaican Rum - Review

For those who are deep into rumlore, trying the quartet of the National Rums of Jamaica series issued by Velier in 2018 is an exercise I would recommend doing with all four at once, because each informs the other and each has an ester count that must be taken into consideration when figuring out what one wants out of them, and what one gets – and those are not always the same things.  If on the other hand you’re new to the field, prefer rums as quiescent as a feather pillow, something that could give the silkiness of a baby’s [Click here for the full review…]


Velier NRJ “Vale Royale VRW” 2006 12 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

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Nov 042018
 
Velier NRJ "Vale Royale VRW" 2006 12 YO Jamaican Rum - Review

This whole week I’ll be looking at the quartet of stern, forbidding black and white bottles of the National Rums of Jamaica, which have excited a slowly rising conversation on social media as pictures get posted and more and more people try them.  Certainly, they’ve got all the Jamaican rum punditry in transports already (plus they are issued by Velier, which is clear from the minimalist label and box design). All four will be written about in a sequence, because there’s simply no way to speak to them individually at long intervals without missing the point, which is that they’re [Click here for the full review…]


Bristol Spirits 1986 Rockley Still 26 YO Barbados Rum – Review

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Oct 302018
 
Bristol Spirits 1986 Rockley Still 26 YO Barbados Rum - Review

My friend Henrik from Denmark told me once that he really dislikes the rums of WIRD. “There’s just something off about them,” he grumbled when we were discussing the output from Little England, the development of the Foursquare Exceptionals, and the Velier collaborations.  On the other hand, another rum-kumpel from Germany, Marco Freyr, has no problems with them at all, and remarked that he could absolutely pinpoint any Rockley Still rum just by sniffing the glass (I have since come the the conclusion that he’s absolutely right).  Coming to this Bristol Spirits rum after a long session of Bajan bruisers [Click here for the full review…]


Clarke’s Court “Kalypso” Grenada White Rum (1990s)

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Oct 282018
 
Clarke's Court "Kalypso" Grenada White Rum (1990s)

Rumaniacs Review #85 | 0561 There are three operations making rum in Grenada – Westerhall, Rivers Antoine and Clarke’s Court, the last of which was formed in 1937, operating under the umbrella of the Grenada Sugar Factory (the largest on the island) and named after an estate of the same name in the southern parish of St. George’s.  This title in turn derived from two separate sources: Gedney Clarke, who bought the Woodlands estate from the French in the late 1700s, and a bay called “Court Bay” included with the property (this in turn was originally titled “Watering Bay” because [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Ilha da Madeira Rum Agricole White – Review

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Oct 252018
 
Rum Nation Ilha da Madeira Rum Agricole White - Review

No, that’s not another typo in the title, it’s just the way the bottle spelled “rum” so I followed along even if it is an agricole-style product and by convention it might have been better termed “rhum” (though the words mean the same thing – it’s purely a matter of perception).  Since looking at the Engenho Novo aged rum last time, I thought it would be fitting to stick with the island of Madeira and see what one of their whites would be like, especially since I had been so impressed with the RN Jamaican Pot Still 57% some years [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Small Batch Collection – Engenho Novo 2009 8 YO Rum – Review

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Oct 222018
 
Rum Nation Small Batch Collection - Engenho Novo 2009 8 YO Rum - Review

The mark of the successful long-term independent bottler in the public perception rests upon two main pillars – one is of course the quality of the rums they put out the door (and perhaps, how consistently); and the other is the level of originality they bring to the game.  By that I mean how often do they stray from the mainstream of the standard pantheon and go in new directions, seek out different maturations, different ages, different barrels, different distilleries (or whole countries). It is because Velier nails both of these aspects that they are as successful as they are, [Click here for the full review…]


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