Rum Club Private Selection #60 Galapagos Islands 2015 10YO Rum (Ecuador) – Review

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Jan 122026
 
Rum Club Private Selection #60 Galapagos Islands 2015 10YO Rum (Ecuador) - Review

The practise of wine and spirits merchants releasing their own branded products is a long and storied one, going back more than a century (think of Berry Bros. and Rudd, Doorly’s, Goslings, or even Masters of Malt, as just a few examples). They acted, therefore, as progenitors and continuations of the indie bottling scene that has so defined the upscale market in the modern rumiverse. One of the best of such shops in Germany is undoubtedly Dirk Becker’s Rum Depot in Berlin, which I have been visiting on and off since 2012 and remains a favourite stopping place of mine. [Click here for the full review…]


Mount Gay Single Estate Blended 5YO Rum (Release #1, 2023) – Review

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Jan 022026
 
Mount Gay Single Estate Blended 5YO Rum (Release #1, 2023) - Review

Introduction Perhaps it was inevitable. The spirits market has been on a downturn since COVID receded and rum has been hit hard. Several mid range indies have gone under or are having financial woes, while the bigger and well known big name producers – Mount Gay, Appleton, DDL et al – are being forced to do some belt tightening of their own, or trying to expand into newer product niches where the sales are smaller and costs higher, but potential margins are larger.  Such new entrants to the field seek to stand out via new production methods, different ageing, or [Click here for the full review…]


Habitation Velier Mhoba 2025 Unaged White Rum (EU release)(South Africa)

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Dec 212025
 
Habitation Velier Mhoba 2025 Unaged White Rum (EU release)(South Africa)

White unaged rums are often seen by the larger mass market audience or their suppliers — somewhat unfairly, I believe – as something of a niche market, fit only for cocktails. The idea that one might sip them neat is perhaps only an enthusiast’s conceit. Yet I believe that for those who want to know serious terroire, and see what can happen when a rum is taken off the leash and left to run around terrorizing innocent rum drinkers, HV’s white rum may be just what they’re looking for. There are two variations of this white unaged brutalist rum from [Click here for the full review…]


Erie Distillery White Rum (USA) – Review

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Oct 192025
 
Erie Distillery White Rum (USA) - Review

Recently, a rum that crossed my path was the US-made Erie White Rum, which is made in NE Pennsylvania by the Erie distillery, founded in 2019 by a Mr. David Harkness. This is a gentleman who has been playing with distillation since 2007, and he seems to be something of a cheerful mad scientist, experimenting with products as varied as limoncello, moonshines, whiskey, white rum, and vodka. In that way, he reminds me of some of the New Australians, who also go all over the map with their products so as to sell to just about anything to anyone who [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado Single Still “Enmore” Cask Strength 2009 12YO Rum – Review

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Oct 102025
 
El Dorado Single Still "Enmore" Cask Strength 2009 12YO Rum - Review

There are three of these cask strength single-still editions from El Dorado, one from each of the famed “heritage” wooden stills: Versailles, Port Mourant and Enmore. All are full proof, all are very exacting, and all point to the evolution of El Dorado into the premium rum space previously seen to be inhabited mostly by independent bottlers (occasionally  issued halo rums by producers don’t count).  Although there had been movements to issuing still-specific rums before (most notably the Rares in 2015-2018) one never got the impression DDL’s heart was in it: the outturns were too small, people were not initially [Click here for the full review…]


Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum (Rye Cask)(Bermuda) – Review

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Oct 012025
 
Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum (Rye Cask)(Bermuda) - Review

The Family Reserve Old Rum released by Gosling’s is, aside from the single barrel “Papa Seal” edition, probably their top end, limited edition, premium rum, and depending on where you are, costs around CAN$80-100. I’m not sure how regularly they come out, since this is not mentioned on the bottle labels or the website, but based on secondary sources, I think it’s an annual thing. The original release, which was first seen in the early 2000s and is not a seriously limited anything, is the most commonly seen. But in 2024, Gosling’s decided to put out something a bit different: [Click here for the full review…]


Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum (Bermuda) – Review

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Sep 292025
 
Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum (Bermuda) - Review

In the current lineup from Goslings, the Bermuda-based blenders and bottlers (as far as I know they are not distilling rums), there are four different quasi-premium products: the “Spirited Seas” 44% ABV rum which is partially matured on the high seas, the “Papa Seal” single barrel aged rum at 41.5%, and two variations of the “Family Reserve Old Rum” at 40%, one of which we will look at today. In the last century or before it may really have been the practise for estates and distilleries – many owned privately – to hold back some exceptional barrels to bottle for [Click here for the full review…]


Goslings 151 Proof Black Seal Bermuda Black Rum – Review

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Sep 262025
 
Goslings 151 Proof Black Seal Bermuda Black Rum - Review

Goslings remains a well-regarded rum brand for Americans in particular, even if most rum geeks pass it by these days, in favour of better rums with more disclosure and more distinct flavour profiles. At the time when I began my own rum journey, they were a mainstay of the affordable and easily mixable rums (Appleton, Cruzan, Doorley’s, Flor de Cana, Pussers and El Dorado were others), but over the years they have receded somewhat from the minds of many. Still, the brand exists and has an ever expanding stable of releases, it couldn’t very well be ignored forever. So when [Click here for the full review…]


Don Q Double Cask Finish (Cognac) 8YO Puerto Rican Rum – Review

 1 Response »
Aug 222025
 
Don Q Double Cask Finish (Cognac) 8YO Puerto Rican Rum - Review

What a difference a few percentage points of proof and a second maturation can make.  I have gone through a fair few of Don Q’s rums that were all issued at 40%, and commented on the stuff I didn’t like, almost every single time.  Well, here is the proof that better is out there, and yes, they can do it if they really want to.  Because the Double Cask Cognac edition of the Serralles Collection, is a quiet stunner of a rum. No need to write more about the Puerto Rican brand of Don Q or Destilería Serrallés — previous [Click here for the full review…]


Don Q Double Cask Finish (Zinfandel) 8YO Puerto Rican Rum – Review

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Aug 132025
 
Don Q Double Cask Finish (Zinfandel) 8YO Puerto Rican Rum - Review

Don Q, the flagship brand of Destilería Serrallés out of Puerto Rico, is a company whose products I’ve taken the time took at in some depth over the last months; this is largely due to the courtesy of their enormously friendly brand rep, Duncan Hayter, who let me hang out at the Serrallés / Don Q  booth at the German rum festival some time back. I didn’t get to try everything the company has, just enough to get a good feel for the line from their bottom feeders to the top end.  What’s interesting here, now, is how many rums [Click here for the full review…]


Marauda “Steelpan” Blended Rum (USA) – Review

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Aug 062025
 
Marauda "Steelpan" Blended Rum (USA) - Review

Rumaniacs Review #R-165 | #1126 There’s a lot about the presentation, background, labelling and online information of the Marauda rum which is frustrating, so it’s a good thing I had my tasting notes and scoring down pat before I ever did a lick of research, since my snark might just have bled over into the evaluation, and that would be unfair. So I’ll leave that until the end and lead you right into the rum itself. The Marauda is a rum supposedly bottled in South Carolina (but maybe in Europe) by an outfit of the same name, is apparently the [Click here for the full review…]


Don Q Gran Reserva Añejo XO Puerto Rican Rum – Review

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Jul 282025
 
Don Q Gran Reserva Añejo XO Puerto Rican Rum - Review

It’s a peculiarity of the Don Q Gran Reserva Añejo XO, one of the last un-messed with editions of the Serralles Collection issued by the Puerto Rico firm of Destilería Serrallés, that the more specific details of the components aren’t actually on the label – one has to check the website to find out what makes it so special. Though it may just be so in the eyes of the producers, in this case they might actually be on to something. Now, further up the line we start running into various finished editions (like the Vermouth, Cognac, Zinfandel and so [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World: Destilería Serrallés Don Q Reserva 7YO Rum

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Jul 192025
 
Key Rums of the World: Destilería Serrallés Don Q Reserva 7YO Rum

Five years after its introduction, the Don Q Reserva 7YO rum from Puerto Rico has established itself as something of a quiet underground rum that is not usually recognized for its quality in the online rum fora – most of the time people skip over it to try the slightly older Gran Anejo, for example, or the single barrel release. And yet, it comes up for discussion quite often – rarely by itself, as itself, but usually as a comparator, something looked at with other rums of its kind (like the Bacardi Ocho, for one).  It flies under the radar [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado Grand Special Reserve 1997 25YO Rum – Review

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Jul 162025
 
El Dorado Grand Special Reserve 1997 25YO Rum - Review

  In my rum drinking life, I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have tasted up and down the pantheon of great and not so great Guyanese rums – blends, single still bottlings, caskers, aged dinosaurs, special editions, the works. These days independent bottlers and single barrel offerings hog the lion’s share of the limelight, the rums of Velier remain grail quests for many, and therefore DDL’s standard offerings (3, 5, 8, 12, 15 and 21 year olds) which put Guyana and the famed wooden stills on the map have lost a little of their lustre. Yet, perhaps because of their [Click here for the full review…]


Below the Salt L’Ardois JaQ “Marc de Canne” Canadian Rum – Review

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Jun 272025
 
Below the Salt L'Ardois JaQ "Marc de Canne" Canadian Rum - Review

For those who trawl the Canadian rum scene and occasionally despair at ever finding a locally made hooch that would blow their hair back and wow their pants off, well, I have a new candidate for you: the very tasty, lightly (very lightly) aged, almost-white stinker of a rum called L’Ardois JaQ, made by a recently opened craft distillery in Nova Scotia run by (and I shit you not) a tug boat captain I met named Gregg Colp, whose business card very appropriately gives his position as “Chief Adept and Bottle Filler” and sort of gives you a flavour for [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Sponge 1998 Caroni 25YO Trinidad Rum – Review

 1 Response »
May 242025
 
Rum Sponge 1998 Caroni 25YO Trinidad Rum - Review

There’s a reason I don’t buy many rums from the relatively recently established indie bottler of the Rum Sponge, and that’s all about the price. It’s not that I can’t afford one here or there, but to get them all is just too much, and leaves me like a smelly over-the-hill mendicant whining for samples from the more generously endowed. In this case, however, a Calgary Book Club whisky lover bought a bottle and brought it along just to have the rowdies try it, and I was able to sample it without denuding my already slim purse. For those who [Click here for the full review…]


Don Q 151 Overproof Puerto Rican Rum – Review

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May 182025
 
Don Q 151 Overproof Puerto Rican Rum - Review

As I remarked in the Don Q gold rum review not too long ago, the Puerto Rican producer, Distileria Serrallés, has three tranches of rums in its portfolio, up and down the value chain. There is the “traditional” range which includes the Gold, the white Cristal … and today’s subject, the overproof 151. These are mixing agents of a little ageing and are quite affordable. Then there are some flavoured offerings I ignore, and after that everything is lumped into the “Serrallés Collection” which has some older offerings, a spiced rum (oddly enough), a single barrel or two and some [Click here for the full review…]


Bacardi Superior White Rum – Review

 1 Response »
Apr 272025
 
Bacardi Superior White Rum - Review

Bacardi’s white “Superior” rum is paradoxically both one of the most popular, best selling rums in the world, as well as one of the most sneered at.  Any time we extol the magnificence of the unaged Jamaicans, clairins, grogues, agricoles or charandas, it is very likely that the lightly aged, filtered Bacardi product comes in for mention, rarely in any kind of positive light. At best it excites a sort of monumental indifference. Yeah, we drink it but…. The Superior is one of those rums that made the name of Bacardi. At the time of its initial introduction in 1862, rums [Click here for the full review…]


Amrut Two Indies Dark Rum (India) – Review

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Apr 212025
 
Amrut Two Indies Dark Rum (India) - Review

You’d think that after a bit more ageing and less components to squabble together, the lacklustre performance of the underwhelming White would be somewhat redeemed, but naah, there isn’t much to report here either. Amrut continues to chase the mass market at the expense of something (anything) more upscale, and I guess we’ll have to accept that and move on. Just to recap the background, Amrut Distillers is an Indian-founded and Indian-run spirits company which, unlike several other Indian spirits combines, did not originate from a British run colonial enterprise, and has always been completely local. They have been making [Click here for the full review…]


That Boutique-y Rum Co. Ten Cane 2009 14YO Trinidad Rum (Batch #1) – Review

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Apr 182025
 
That Boutique-y Rum Co. Ten Cane 2009 14YO Trinidad Rum (Batch #1) - Review

Ten Cane rums don’t seem to be disappearing from the indie bottling scene any time soon, given the variety of small companies who put out small bottling runs from the now closed LVMH-created Trini-located micro-distillery every year or two.  We have seen expressions from The Duchess, TBRC, Rom Deluxe, Rum Artesanal, Kill Devil, Berlin’s Rum Club, Valinche & Mallet, BBR, Cave Guldive, L’Espirit, Holmes Cay, Rum Shark, Whisky & Rum, Familia Ricci, Blackadder, and, oh, quite a few others, some more than once. Here, from That Boutique-y Rum Company from England, we have an interesting one that was made in [Click here for the full review…]


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