Naga “Java Reserve” Indonesian Double-Aged 7 YO Rum – Review

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May 132019
 
Naga "Java Reserve" Indonesian Double-Aged 7 YO Rum - Review

Everything you research on Naga is likely to make you rend your robes with frustration at what little you do manage to dig up. Yet paradoxically, everything you do find out about the rum itself seems guaranteed to keep you reading, and make you buy it, if no other reason than because it seems so damned interesting. The label seems designed specifically to tantalize your curiosity.  Perusing it, you can with equal justification call it “Naga Batavia Arrack” (“made with Indonesian aged rum” says the script, implying there it’s arrack plus rum), or “Naga Double Cask rum” or “Naga Java [Click here for the full review…]


Sang Som Special Rum (Thailand) – Review

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May 092019
 
Sang Som Special Rum (Thailand) - Review

Like most rums of this kind, the opinions and comments are all over the map.  Some are savagely disparaging, other more tolerant and some are almost nostalgic, conflating the rum with all the positive experiences they had in Thailand, where the rum is made. Few have had it in the west, and those that did weren’t writing much outside travel blogs and review aggregating sites. And that’s not a surprise. If you exclude the juice emerging from new, small, fast-moving micro-distilleries in Asia, and focus on the more common brands, you’ll find that many adhere to the light latin-style column-still [Click here for the full review…]


Sangster’s Old Jamaica De Luxe Gold Rum (1980s/1990s)

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May 052019
 
Sangster's Old Jamaica De Luxe Gold Rum (1980s/1990s)

Rumaniacs Review #097 | 0621 As far as I can tell, Dr. Sangster arrived in Jamaica to lecture at UWI in 1967, got sidetracked into the rum business, and died in 2001. During his time on the island, Dr. Sangster did more to popularize rum cream and spiced / infused rums (pineapple, coconut, orange, etc – there were some 20+ varieties) than promote pure rums themselves, but he was also known for his blends, like Conquering Lion Overproof and this one, the Old Jamaica DeLuxe Gold which is definitely off the grid and, in a curious way, also quite modern. [Click here for the full review…]


1423 S.B.S. Mauritius 2008-2018 10 YO Rum – Review

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May 022019
 
1423 S.B.S. Mauritius 2008-2018 10 YO Rum - Review

Like those tiny Caribbean islands you might occasionally fly over, the Maria Loca cocktail bar in Paris is so miniscule that if you were to sneeze and blink you’d go straight past it. When Mrs Caner and I go inside, it’s dark, it’s hectic, it’s noisy and the place is going great guns. At the bar, along with two other guys, Guillaume Leblanc is making daiquiris with flair and fine style, greeting old customers and barflies and rumfest attendees, the shaker never still. Even though he doesn’t work there, he seems to know everyone by their first name, which to [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado Rare Collection PM+Diamond 2001-2017 16 YO Rum (Velier 70th Anniversary) – Review

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Apr 292019
 
El Dorado Rare Collection PM+Diamond 2001-2017 16 YO Rum (Velier 70th Anniversary) - Review

El Dorado and their high-end collection, the Rares, continue to inspire head scratching bafflement – they get issued with such a deafening note of silence that we might be forgiven for thinking DDL don’t care that much about them.  Ever since 2016 when they were first released, there’s been a puzzling lack of market push to advertise and expose them to the rum glitterati. Few even knew the second release had taken place, and I suggest that if it had not been for the Skeldon, the third release would have been similarly low key, practically unheralded, and all but unknown. [Click here for the full review…]


Barbosa Grogue Pure Single White Rum – Review

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Apr 242019
 
Barbosa Grogue Pure Single White Rum - Review

Although the grogues of Cabo Verde have been seeping through our rumconsciousness for years now, it’s a curious thing that there are almost no reviews to be found online at all. All we have is rumours and quiet whispers in the dark corners of smoke-filled tiki-bars, random small comments on FB, and stories that Luca Gargano of Velier has been sniffing about the islands for years, perhaps putting together another series of organic, pure single rums designed to wow our socks off. 2019 might at last, then, be the year to change that, as grogues were quite visible in the [Click here for the full review…]


Inner Circle “Green Dot” Overproof Rum (Australia/Fiji) (2000s)

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Apr 212019
 
Inner Circle "Green Dot" Overproof Rum (Australia/Fiji) (2000s)

Rumaniacs Review # 096 | 0617 Inner Circle out of Australia is one of those rums originally made by a now-defunct company called the Colonial Sugar Refinery, which had a long history pretty much unknown outside its country of origin. Formed in 1855, CSR established refineries in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji by the 1890s, and iin 1901 they opened a distillery in Sidney, using pot stills to make rums from Fijian and Australian cane. The Inner Circle brand name, which appeared in 1950, came from the limited high-quality rums they made for distribution to the favoured elite of the [Click here for the full review…]


Nine Leaves “Encrypted” II 2 Year Old Rum (2017 release) – Review

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Apr 172019
 
Nine Leaves "Encrypted" II 2 Year Old Rum (2017 release) - Review

You just gotta love Yoshiharu Takeuchi, who hired a brand ambassador, travel agent, accountant, general manager, master distiller, janitor, chief cook and bottle washer, the cook, the baker and candlestick maker, and still only has a single employee in his Japanese rum-making outfit Nine Leaves – himself. And lest you think he’s a dour, serious, penny-pinching cost-cutting ninja who’d prefer to be making a Yamazaki single-handedly or something, you can take it from me that he’s a funny, personable, dynamic and all-round cool dude, a riot to hang out with in any bar in any country. Oh yeah, and he [Click here for the full review…]


Berry Bros. & Rudd 1982 33 Year Old Jamaica Rum – Review

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Apr 092019
 
Berry Bros. & Rudd 1982 33 Year Old Jamaica Rum - Review

The stats and the label speak to a rum that can almost be seen as extraordinary, which usually fills me with dread as a reviewer: for, how could any rum live up to that? I mean – from Jamaica in the 1980s, 33 years old, a cousin to another really good rum from there, bottled by an old and proud indie house…that’s pretty impressive, right? Yet somehow, against my fears,  Berry Bros. & Rudd have indeed released something special. The initial tasting notes could come from any one of a dozen rums, but as it develops and moves along, it [Click here for the full review…]


Smooth Ambler “Revelation” 1990 23 YO Rum – Review

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Apr 072019
 
Smooth Ambler "Revelation" 1990 23 YO Rum - Review

When a bunch of the rum chums and I gathered some time back to damage some rums and show them who was boss, one of them remarked of this rum, “Easy drinking” — which initially I thought was damning it with faint praise until I tried it myself, and continued with it three or four more times after they all staggered back to their fleabag hotels, surprised by its overall worth.  It’s not often you get to try (or be really pleased by) an indie bottling from the USA, given how much they are in love with starting whole distilleries [Click here for the full review…]


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