Rum Essays
This Page contains various essays of a more factual nature that relate to rums, as well as articles or short pieces I have contributed to other fora and various lists compiled for my own amusement. For more subjective matters, see the “Opinions” page.
Rum Information / Reference Material
- Rum – An Introduction – An intro to the site, and some words about rum
- Classifying Rum – a brief rundown of the various styles or types of rum in common useage
- The Proof’s In The Drinking – an explanation of ABV and proofs
- Stills, Stills and More Stills – Short essay on distillation methodologies
- The Age Of Velier’s Demeraras (June 2018)
- Big, Bad & Brutal – A Short History of the 151s (April 2020)
- Plugging In To Rum- A Guide To Online Resources (November 2020) – A survey of the major websites and social media places that are available to rum fans who want to broaden their knowledge and engagement
- Barrels, Butts, Casks, Kegs, Tubs, Vats and More…a roundup of the most common (and some not so common) containers used to store and age spirits (March 2021)
- Creating the Ultimate Rum Database – Part 1: Early Efforts
- Creating the Ultimate Rum Database – Part 2: The RumX App
Essays on Tangential Rum Matters
- Single Digit Rums – musings on rums less than ten years old (and often younger)
- Wives & the El Dorado Problem – how to afford your favourite tipple
- Liquor Privatization and Deregulation in Alberta – A somewhat unfocussed look at deregulation as it affected this Canadian province.
- Who was that masked man? – A series of thumbnail sketches of people who influenced the world of rum (also known as “Movers and Shakers of the Rum World.”)
- A Short & Personal Essay on Agricole Rums (July 2017) for Coeur de Chauffe as part of a roundup of bloggers’ opinion on agricoles.
- Some Miscellaneous Rum Trivia (August 2017) was written with contributions from across the blogosphere, in response to a guy on reddit who said he wanted some not-so-well-known factoids.
- Rum Cask asked for a list of my three favourite rums of 2017, so I gave them three times that many in this short piece in January 2018; repeated the exercise in early 2019, and again in 2020.
- 12 Unusual Bottle Shapes and Designs…just because they existed and I felt like it (June 2019)
- Notes on WIRD’s Rockley Still in Barbados (November 2021)
- A User’s Guide to Surviving A Rum Festival (September 2022)
Other Sugar Cane Spirits – A Series On Indigenous / Artisanal Cane Juice Spirits
Formal Tastings, Lists and Multiple Rum Side-by-Sides
- A Tale of Four Fives
- Three Italian Fantasias
- Three Cachacas from Delicana
- Three More Cachacas from Delicana
- Three German Rums from Severin Simon
- Nine Rums From Out Of Left Field
- The Three Amigos – El Dorado’s Single Barrel Rums
- Velier PM Tasting Blowout
- El Dorado 15 Year Old “Wine Finished” Series
Lists
- Ten Decent Rums (Roughly) Under $50 (2010)
- Ten Decent Rums (Roughly) Under $100 (2011)
- Ten Decent Rums (Roughly) Under $200 (2011)
- Eight Rums I’ll Never Buy Again (2012)
- Ten Reasons to Prefer Rums (2014)
- 21 Great Whites (2017)
- 21 More White Rums (2019)
- Yet Another 21 Great White Rums (2022)
- 9 Bajan Rums (2017)
- 8 Guyanese Rums from Velier & El Dorado (2018)
- The Strongest Rums In The World (2019, with updates)
General
- The 100th Review
- The 200th Review
- The 300th Review
- The 500th Review
- The 2012 Wrap-up
- The 2022 Wrap-up
- The 2023 Wrap-up
Note to File – Longform Answers, Comments & Discussions on Other Sites / Platforms
Where the issues were of interest and importance, I’ve commented at length on in other fora (mostly reddit) many times, and several of these are mini-opinions or even full essays on their own. I include them here for completeness.
- Some notes on my tasting methods (Aug 2023)
- The Rum Equivalent of Jim Murray’s “Whisky Bible” (Aug 2022)
- Urging caution with the rhetoric around the new Barbados GI (July 2022, here and here)
- Riffing on Australian Rums (July 2022)
- Sponsored content and advertorials commentary (based on a Tony Sachs article) (July 2022)
- Comments on the SMWS’s lack of (good) rum bottlings (July 2022)
- A Retrospective on Velier’s Demeraras and Caronis for a new enthusiast (June 2022)
- Comment on 2022 San Francisco World Spirits Competition (May 2022)
- Comment on the simplistic article “Why Are Fine Rums Not Known?” (April 2022)
- Discussion on Foursquare LFT Rum naming (April 2022)
- What Is a rum really worth? (August 2021)
- The Mishandling of Michael B. Jordan’s “J’Ouvert” Rum (June 2021)
- Rebutting HipLatina’s story of Bacardi and rum (June 2021)
- Some notes on Ferrand purchase of SPD stocks (March 2021)
- Classifications and white rums (February 2021)
- Sourcing and dosing of rums (January 2021)
- Appropriation and the naming of Tamosi rums (October 2020)
- In Defense of Pietrek’s Editorial Standards (August 2020)
- Barbados GI and WIRD’s stance (Jan 2020)(Nov 2019)
- Zacapa 23 and sweetening (November 2019)
- Why small samples for reviewing aren’t a bad thing (September 2019)(January 2022)
- Expanding on the “Age of Velier’s Demeraras” essay (June 2018)
- Rum Rating site and other reviewers’ usefulness (Feb 2017)
Shameless Plug Section: Mentions, Selfies & Interviews
- November 2016: The RumLab kindly ran me through their ten point interview questionaire
- November 2018: Guyana’s daily paper the “Stabroek News” reflected on the Skeldon 1973, rum, the 2018 Tasting of the Century, Velier and The Lone Caner.
- May 2019: Rum Compass also asked me to weigh in…abot the rum world, my background, thoughts, experiences….it was fun to do (if somewhat self serving).
- March 2020: The American Rum Report commented at length on skepticism about American rum, using the review of the Mad River PC Limited edition Rum as a reference and talking point.
- April 2020: Rumcast said some nice words about the site at around 22:30 of their podcast #6 and in the same month Rum Ration (online) magazine listed the Lone Caner as one of five must-read rum sites for the curious drinker.
- July 2020: RumCask put the ‘Caner on the stand and let me ramble on for 90 minutes about blogging and the state of the rumiverse. Link leads to a YouTube video which has now unfortunately been truncated at 22 minutes.
- February 2021: Japan Distilled, the online podcast-magazine of Japanese spirits, did a session on the nations rums and the ‘Caner came in for a hat tip around 28:17…probably because I talked to the guys on the subject when they were prepping it.
- July 2021: The Whisky Magazine issued their second Rum edition and gave The Lone Caner a small feature page alongside some other writers of note in the current rumworld.
- July 2021: The podcast RumCast and I talked about the Key Rums series of rums plus a look at various issues and what it takes to write the way I do. A Part II of my July 2020 interview, really.
- August 2021: I wrote a small piece in SMWS’s “Unfiltered” in house magazine, on why their members should be trying rums.
- October 2021: Jordan Michelman wrote a piece for Punch Magazine about Japanese rums, and since I provided him some background material, he was kind enough to mention the site and a quote or two.
- January 2022: Tony Sachs, who writes so very engagingly on matters spirituous and has turned into a good friend, gave me a gracious hat tip in this Forbes Magazine roundup of what cocktail and spirits gurus are looking forward to drinking in 2022.
- October 2022: Roger of Le Blog a Roger did an email interview with me for his blog. Here’s the French language post, and here’s my original email transcript in English.
- April 2024: Rum Revival credited me with helping him get into white rums, which was nice of him
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