Barbados – Page 4 – The Lone Caner

Berry Bros. & Rudd Barbados 13 Year Old Rum – Review

Jul 292013

Good all round Bajan rum from Berry Brothers & Rudd, that’s worth its price and is a good note on which to close your day.

What a relief it was to try this well-aged rum, and to find that its Fijian 8 year old cousin which I had tried some weeks back was indeed something of an iconoclastic aberration. There’s not much I could say about a line of rums of which I have only ever sampled three, and it would have been wrong to extrapolate based on such a small sample size. So it’s a happy matter that I can confirm the Bajan 13 year old is an excellent buy all round.

One of the pleasant things about independent bottlers who make a “series” is the consistency of presentation – think Renegade and their frosted glass bottles, or Plantation and the straw netting. It saves the reviewer a whole bunch of time not to have to assess a presentational score (I know the principle has its detractors, no need to mention it). So, tall bottle, well fitting plastic cork, simplistic labelling utterly consistent with the other BBR rums I’ve written about (the Fiji and the Port Mourant 1975).

The lead in on the nose was caramel and molasses, muted and light, yet with some heat as well (the rum is 46% after all). Vanilla undertones had their place before segueing into subtler aromas of pineapple and nicely ripened yellow gooseberries. A flirt of citrus (ripe orange peel) coiled around all of this, well balanced with preceding elements, and then the whole was wrapped up in emerging perfumes of delicate white flowers and a barely perceptible wine background. Quite intriguing, all in all.

I must comment on the excellent mouthfeel of this thirteen year old, honey-coloured rum: it’s medium bodied yet quite smooth for all that, with some heat imparted by the strength, but not so much as to become peppery or overly spicy. There’s a luxurious creaminess in the way this runs across the tongue, a certain chewiness that was very appealing. The rum was neither too sweet nor too salty (while possessing elements of both), and what I came away with was vanilla, honey, white chocolate, light coconut shavings and bananas, all held together by a softer citrus hint than the nose had promised. And at the tail end the odd sweetness of a strawberry lollipop, fading into a long clean finish redolent of chopped fruits and some saltiness. Really quite a decent product – I enjoyed it a lot.

Where does the distillate originate? I wish I knew for sure. I almost want to say it comes from Mount Gay, but somewhere in that profile I’m more leaning towards R. L. Seale’s FourSquare (and indeed, the Masters of Malt website says that’s its home), and also, from its richness, that it’s a pot still distillate. The ageing in white oak barrels was well handled, in my opinion, because the resultant is in very good balance overall, and it’s a sipper’s drink rather than one to mix.

Writing this review as my life changes yet again, I am assailed by a sense of melancholy. This review will be one of the last for a while (the country I’m moving to is dry in all senses of the word). Perhaps it is fitting that one of the final rums I’ve tried and written up tasting notes for, is also one of the more pleasing ones. Not the best, of course (is there any such thing?) but certainly a rum to have and to enjoy at any point on the arc of your existence. Even if, or perhaps especially, as with me, you won’t be trying any more for a while.

(#175. 85/100)

SMWS R3.4 Barbados 2002 10 Year Old Rum (“Makes You Strong Like A Lion”) – Review

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Jul 142013

This feels and tastes mean, largely because it is. But just because it treats you like life on Keith Richards’s face isn’t an automatic disqualification…I just call it inspired insanity, and have (much to my own surprise) given it the highest rating I’ve ever awarded to a 75% overproof.

“Makes you strong like a lion”, the label remarks, in one of those tongue-in cheek references with which the SMWS likes to charm its buyers. After being battered into near insensibility (on more than one occasion) by the raging yak that was the SMWS R5.1 Longpond 9 year old 81.3%, you’ll forgive me for approaching the almost-as-torqued up 75.3% R3.4 rum with something akin to serious apprehension. I mean, I love strong and flavourful rums of real intensity, but it’s my personal belief that the folks at SMWS are snickering into their sporrans when they issue these massive overproofs, hoping that the lesser bred such as I will get a hurt real bad, be put under the table for the count, and swear off rums altogether. You kind of have to admire their persistence in the matter.

What we had here was a 75.3% rum issued this year (2013), with the usual obscure moniker “R3.4” which my research suggests makes the rum from the Rockley Still from the West Indian Refinery in Black Rock, Barbados. About which, I hasten to add, I know little, not having tasted their products (Bristol Spirits has a couple from there, which I hope to get my grubby little paws on one of these happy days).

Dressed up in that delightfully tall, menacing camo-green bottle that is their standard, the R3.4 decanted a pungent, blonde-amber rum into the glass, quite innocently. Here, come try me, it seemed to invite, and you just knew it was suckering me in…fortunately, I had previously sampled its sibling, so I was prepared, having learnt my lesson by now: I let it stand, and then nosed it very, very carefully.

Bam! it went, right away, even after a few minutes. My God, but this was strong. Shudderringly odd, this was a rum in psychopath mode, a snorting, rearing mustang of pent up aggression. Creamy, buttery, slightly salty, almonds and peanuts stomped my schnozz right out of the gate. As sharp as a sushi master’s knife, yes, but Lordie, there was a lot going on here. As it opened up it presented even more: bananas, some mustiness and smoke, the faintest odour of Benedictine. I was impressed in spite of myself, and marked it high for sheer originality, because all other 75% rums (the 151s, if you will), were so straightforwardly simple and relatively uncomplex, that finding this plethora of nasal riches was a welcome surprise.

As for the palate, coat your tongue with fire suppressant material before drinking, in case your rum-drinking life flickers before your eyes. Once the fire subsided, the same creamy chewiness from the nose carried over well upon arrival – butter melting in an iron skillet, fried bananas, all wrapped up in a herbal background I couldn’t quite separate out. Intense, very intense. Wood, grassiness, rosemary, sorrel, with a snarky element of smoky peat in there someplace making mischief. It honestly felt like it was powered with fire and brimstone, this one, yet nowhere near as barefacedly badass as any of the other 151 rums I’ve tried in the past…there’s some real couth here, honestly. But of course it is damned strong, and so warning of sobriety transmuted to drunkneness in 2.5 shots is not me being overly metaphorical..

The fade, as befitted an overproof rum, was quite long and very solid, heat and warmth without real spice, somewhat fruity, nutty, salty, and giving up last hints of oats and bran. I s**t you not, this rum was quite something, and Stuart, who was drinking it with me (he had been clouted about the ears with the Longpond as well, and was therefore understandably cautious with this one), liked it so much he immediately started calling around asking where he could get hisself some too.

All right, so let’s sum up. Short version, if you want a good time, no stress or aggro, buy something softer…like the Centenario Legado, for example. If you want to be astonished out of your socks by a rum explosion of startling, glute-flexing originality, this is the one to get (if you can). You don’t need to be a rum snob, collector or even a rum lover to appreciate a bit of overproof blending skill on your table (or your office desktop after hours).

It’s been a long running gag on Liquorature that I resolutely refuse to admit that whiskies have pride of place in the spirits world, and the crown should rightfully go to the rums. Here’s one I wish we could get more of, ‘cause it kinda proves my point (it’s made by whisky lovers, much to my annoyance). Drinking this, trying to describe it in words, I am faced with bafflement. I don’t know. It’s crazy. This rum is liquid, industrial-strength factory effluent that tastes three times as good as it should.

(#174. 88/100)

Plantation Grand Reserve Barbados 5 Year Old – Review

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Jun 042013

Among the best of the five year olds, and may actually be the best 5 I’ve had to date.

One of the surprising things about the Plantation Barbados 5 year old is the fact that it is bottled at what, for Plantation, is a relatively mild 40%. Still, for all my whining about wanting rums to be stronger, I can’t deny the overall quality of what many would dismiss as a mixer’s rum, because it’s a quietly impressive product that is the equal of the El Dorado 5 year old in every way, and exceeds it in others.

Cognac Ferrand is noted for taking rums from various plantations around the West Indies and Central America, ageing them in situ and then bringing them over to France where the finish it in cognac casks for a few months. This double ageing gives their rums a certain richness and depth that is really quite something, and while they simply classify the rums by the date of distillation (one is left to guess how old a given rum therefore is), in this case they have stated front and centre that it is a five year old rum, which makes comparing it against others a much less theoretical proposition.

A while back, I ran four fives against each other and commented on their various characteristics and how they stacked up – based on that, I felt (at the time), that the El Dorado five was the best of the (limited) lot. Well, here Plantation does it one better, and steals the crown. I got this impression right from the get-go, when opening it up and taking a good strong sniff. Most five year olds I’ve tried tend towards the slightly raw – there is usually a sense of better to come, with a spiciness and burn deriving from some ageing, perhaps not so complete. Here, precisely the opposite was true: the rum was quite soft, quite smooth (a bit of a nip, yes…just less than you might expect), quite pleasant on the nose. Vanilla, plums, dark berries (blackcurrants and blackberries with ripe cherries), and a dusting of coconut shavings were all in evidence, leavened as it opened up with some pineapple and cinnamon, butterscotch and toffee.

As for the taste, well now, colour me impressed: amazingly robust on the palate, deep and intense, oily and quite smooth, warm and easy to sip. Just sweet enough to please, with simpler, forceful notes of vanilla and cinnamon segueing gently into molasses, burnt sugar, caramel, the aforementioned coconut shavings and a dark chopped-fruit melange. The feel of this rum as I drank it was of a warm freshly laundered pillow, something quite soft enough to hug, definitely more polished and nuanced than the ED5. Finish was sweet, honeylike, relaxed, and gave you no attitude whatsoever. In it, you could see the Plantation Barbados 20th Anniversary take shape. It’s that decent.

On its own you’re not necessarily going to get all this: but trying it in tandem with a few other similarly aged offerings gives you a gist of the quality I describe here. It really is quite an experience, to be able to sip – not even adding water – a rum this young and this cheap. I thought Josh Miller at Inu a Kena was kidding when he muttered disbelievingly “I’m sipping a sixteen dollar rum! Neat!” But he was doing no more than telling the absolute truth.

The Plantation Barbados 5 year old may be relatively uncomplex compared to older rums, not too much oomph in the trousers alcohol-wise, but you simply cannot argue with its put-togetherness. Okay, so maybe it’s not a top ender, but in my mind, it perhaps should be – it takes its place among the best young rums out there. On smoothness, taste, texture, mouthfeel and finish, all for that one low low price, it is a rum that will be difficult to beat even by products many times its age.

(#166. 84.5/100)

Other notes

I am aware that I scored the El Dorado 5 78 points back in 2010. For that time, it was right. Now, three years down the road, I would probably rank it quite a bit more generously (and may yet do that, if I pick up another bottle). I’ll just note the discrepancy, and remark to my fellow bloggers who are kind enough to read this review, that this is why one should never taste a rum for scoring purposes in isolation but always as part of a series of some kind.
Also, it may cost twenty bucks or less in the US, but in Canada it’s closer to forty.
Plantation has been known for (and has admitted to) the practice of “dosing” which is the adding of sugar to round out and smoothen their rums. In this case the various sugar lists maintained by the fatrumpirate and others work out to about 22 g/L for this rum. Different people have different attitudes towards this practice, so I mention the matter for completeness.
Update 2021 – No, I would not now score this as high as I did back in the day. In the last eight years I have gained much more experience in the dampening effects of this kind of dosage, and my preferences have evolved towards less rather than more. So the enthusiasm displayed above is muted, as I’m sure Josh’s is, as well. (NB: The issue with Plantation’s business model and the Barbados GI do not affect this comment, which is a puzzling linkage I find on many others’ remarks on the rum).

Renegade 2003 Barbados (Foursquare) 6 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 122013

Schizoid, androgynous, curious rum. Too well made to ignore, but not appealing enough to collect.

Right during the tasting, before I had done a single bit of research or perused the label beyond the obvious, I looked at my glass, smacked my not quite toothless gums and opined loudly and dogmatically (if not quite coherently) to an empty house that this was a rum from the Foursquare distillery in Barbados.

You might well ask whether my snoot is that good (it’s not), my memory that clear (it’s not) or I knew it for sure (I didn’t). It was more a process of elimination from the Bajan rum canon – it was too clear taste-wise — and not soft enough — to be a St Nicholas Abbey, lacked the discombobulated, raw nature of the Cockspur and sure wasn’t a Mount Gay. That didn’t leave much, no matter how or with what cask Renegade decided to finish it.

Take the opening: soft, flowery, dark sugars, bananas and unsweetened dark chocolate. A bit sharp (it was bottled at 46%, so, okay). Red grapes just starting to go off, bananas, orange peel (not anything sharper like grapefruit or lemon), and a final flirt of cherries, yet overall, the scents married uneasily, resulting in something vaguely androgynous, neither strong or puissant enough to be a bellowing buccaneer (it waved the cutlass to genteelly for that) nor weak enough to be an underproof…it was an uneasy mix of delicacy and clarity without strength of real character (did someone say “Prince Myshkyn”?).

No relief on the palate, however original it turned out to be. The medium bodied amber spirit was drier than I expected, and even a bit briny, and pulled an interesting rabbit out of the bottle…it tasted good enough, full enough, to seem more robust than it actually was. Bananas and white chocolate, a certain creaminess (like unsalted butter, really), white guavas and pecans. I know this sounds odd, but it almost seemed a shade…crunchy. It’s the craziest thing, a sort of dichotomy between the taste and the nose that had heat and citrus-plus-grapes to sniff, yet more settled and softer to sip, finishing off with a sweet, dry exit, segueing into final notes of bananas, apricots and salt biscuits.

I have some mixed feelings on the Renegade here, admiring its professional make and the clarity of the various notes, without actually enjoying the overall experience due to a discordance in the overall marriage of constituent elements. It’s not a bad rum at all, just not one I really felt like raving about to any who would listen. Yet I cannot help but admire how Renegade doesn’t really care – they tried for something off the reservation, and they succeeded. It’s original, that’s for sure.

Unlike most of the Renegades I’ve tried thus far, the label gave me little to work with on the details (I like knowing as much about a rum as possible when doing the write-up). Nothing about the finishing which Bruichladdich usually likes to trumpet front and center, for example…I don’t know why, so here’s what my research (and the bottle) did bring up. Pot still origin. Finished in Ribero del Duero casks – this is a fruity red wine from north central Spain, which explained something of the profile. Yes, the Foursquare distillery supplied the rum, so I called it on that one…though it wasn’t until I took a hard look at the label that I saw it self-evidently mentioned. I should get my glasses changed, or perhaps research before I drink, not after.

But it’s not that any of this matters, really. I’ve said before that Renegades are something of an acquired taste, should never be one’s first try at a rum, and are all quite fascinatingly different — this may be, as I’ve remarked elsewhere, because they are made by whisky makers for whisky drinkers with rummies perhaps as an afterthought. They fail to craft a consistent rum from one bottle to the next (the variations in the line are occasionally awe-inspiring) but they know that the best way to approach making any of them is with a bold and unapologetic take-that attitude that finds ‘em swinging — hard — for the fences, every time, with a sort of giddy, joyous abandon one simply has to admire. So, the end product may not always be what we expect…but man, it’s like watching a Sobers, Worrell, Lloyd or Lara on a weird day. It’s never, ever boring.

(#161. 82/100)

Other Notes

Rum Nation Barbados 2001 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Apr 182013

The Barbados 2001 from Rum Nation is a solid plate of eddoes and plantains, black pudding and cookup on a refectory table…the spirituous equivalent of comfort food. It’s a warm bosom against which one can relievedly lean after a tough day…and call it Mommy. A good, warm-hearted, undemanding rum of unexpected depth.

Rummaging idly through my shelves the other day (“Jeez, what am I going to look at this week?”) I came across one of the last two unreviewed Rum Nation products I had bought back in 2011 after having been impressed as all get out by the Raucous Rums tasting session where the host had introduced them. Rum Nation is that Italian outfit which opened its doors up in 1999, and has produced some of my favourite rums – the 1985 and 1989 Demerara 23 year olds, and the Jamaican 1985 “Supreme Lord” 25 year old among others. This Barbados variant was laid down in 2001 and bottled in 2011, and it’s a very decent product in all the aspects that matter, though not of a level that exceeds the pinnacles of achievement represented by the rums I refer to above.

So it’s not a top end rum, but it’s not a lowbrow piece of entertainment either, much as the cheap, plastic-windowed cardboard box reminiscent of an unwelcome bill envelope might intimate otherwise. The nose for example, is very pleasantly warm and almost thick, with initial flavours of bananas, vanilla and crushed walnuts mingling pleasantly with an earthy scent of ripe fleshy fruit, more cashews than peaches. It had an odd kind of richness about it, very near to cloying (though not quite there), that gradually transmuted into a floral hint with a last snap of smoke. Estery, I guess you could call it. Not entirely successful, to my mind, the aromas didn’t quite marry properly into a cohesive whole, but overall, it’s not bad at all.

The palate? All is forgiven, come home please. Oh, this was just fine. Smooth, warm, creamy, like banana ice cream liberally drizzled with caramel, toffee, a little licorice and nougat, all sprinkled with white chocolate and a shade of mint: put a cuckoo clock on top of it and you could almost pretend it was swiss. Rich and pleasantly deep for a 40% rum, and unlike some drinks where the nose was spectacular but the taste less so, here it was the other way around. The denouement was also quite good, pleasantly long and fragrant, exiting to the tune of cinnamon and vanilla and a last bash of the banana.

According to Fabio Rossi, the owner of RN, this is considered an entry level rum (retailing for about €30…Can$50 in my location), and is Barbados-sourced pot and column still blended rum from the West Indies Refinery, matured in American oak casks and then finished for about twelve to eighteen months in Spanish casks that once held brandy. I was unenthused about Downslope Distilling’s wine aged rum some months ago – this is the rum that it should have been, could have been, had they been more patient and aged it properly.

Is it better than the other Bajans in my collection? Yes and no. It’s not as good as the Mount Gay 1703, but exceeds the XO by quite a bit, I would say, and edges out the A.D. Rattray 9 year old from R.L. Seale I looked at not too long ago. Its relative softness and smoothness is the key here (see other notes, below): it pulls an interesting trick, by seeming to be more full bodied than it is, and therefore coating the mouth with a sumptuous set of tastes that, had that slight cloying over-estery note not been present, would have scored higher with me than it did.

Still, if you’re after a good, solid sipping rum, the Barbados 2001 won’t disappoint. It’s soft, warm and easy on the palate, forgiving on the finish. It may be a rum to have when you’re feeling at peace with the world (or unwinding from it), don’t feel like concentrating too hard, and don’t need to protect your tonsils. On that level, it’s excellent at all it sets out do, and if it doesn’t ascend or aspire to the levels of some of its pricier, older cousins, at least it’s an excellent buy for the money you do shell out.

(#156. 85/100)

Other Notes

February 2018 – By now it is common knowledge that Rum Nation, like Plantation, practices the addition of something (usually caramel beyond just colouring) referred to somewhat inaccurately but descriptively as “dosing”. This rum measures out at ~10g/L of adulteration which actually quite minimal: enough to smoothen out some rough edges, but not enough to make it a mess. Potential buyers and drinkers will have to take that into account when deciding on a purchase here.

A.D.Rattray Barbados (Foursquare) 2003 9 year old rum – Review

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Mar 142013

To date, the only A.D. Rattray rum I’ve tried was the excellent Caroni 1997, which was quite impressive, if no longer readily available. To this is now added their Barbados 9 year old, also bottled at 46%, non chill filtered, with exactly zero additives, very much in line with the puritan, zen-like production ethic that so characterizes, oh, Cadenhead. This one was taken from a single barrel for the likker establishment “Wine & Beyond” in Edmonton (they have a few others as well, but my slender purse ran out and Mrs. Caner was watching).

I must say that after decanting this honey-hay-blonde rum into the glass, my first thought on nosing it was a rather startled “This smells like Thai food.” No, really. Sweet, and salty, with faint fruity and vegetal notes, and quite dry at first blush. I wasn’t entirely sure I liked it, but then it kinda won me over, because the aromas morphed into a herbal, burnt lemon-grass smell, which then stopped being pissy, and comfortably settled into cherries, fleshy apricots just on the edge of too ripe, and a subtle light honey. It was like breaking in a new armchair that was too stiff at the outset, but then conformed to my buttprint after I had reposed in it for a while.

This medium bodied rum was initially spicy, sharp – following on from the nose, and probably due to the 46% ABV bottling strength – as well as dry. It rewarded some time for it to have those alcohol fumes to burn off, and then the rather stern, starch-stiff lead-in flowed into a warm and fuzzy embrace, as if a nun stooped to hug me and it became a teddy bear. Really, it followed on from the nose like Mary’s little lamb (if not so gentle) – those sweet/salt notes were there again, followed by a smoky background, and then a softer, creamier taste, quite pleasing, of soft white guavas and bananas. The palate then took me by the hand and sat me down with a flourish of burnt sugar – the grassy hints from the nose were as gone as yesterday’s news. And it all segued into a long and warm and dry finish, with final hints of leather, smoke and caramel.

Note the difference with the Coruba 12 year old “Cigar” I looked at not too long ago. In that product, the lightness, the smokiness, the overall mouthfeel and exit were simply not that pleasant for a rum so aged – A.D.Rattray have managed to take a younger rum and keep the character while losing the bitchiness. Granted the source stock was from two separate islands with different distillation methodologies and starting points, yet to my mind the ADR Barbados 9 year old succeeded in combining its core elements in a way that the Jamaican product did not.

Foursquare distillery is one of four rum producers left in Barbados – the others are Mount Gay (of course), WIRD and St. Nicholas Abbey. The first is something of the big guy (reputation-wise) on the block, the second a behemoth which does noting special and specializes in bulk sales, and the last is a micro-boutique establishment, several orders smaller. Foursquare, part of R.L.Seale & Co and owned and managed by Sir David Seale, sits somewhere in the middle (a good link on the MoR which describes it, is here). They also make the Doorly’s line, with which I have always been unimpressed, but fair is fair: I have not seen enough of their products to make any kind of generalized statements about them.

Summing up: this rum is a spirit meant for those who know what they like, and have slept around a bit in the caramel boudoirs of the rum tasting world. Please don’t take offense if I remark that it should not be the first rum you ever try. I consider it to be a rum very much in the Renegade vein – limited, distinct, with a character and a profile very much its own, that makes no attempt to hew to any kind of generalized “let’s see how many people we can please” philosophy. It’s too early for me to say if the other ADR products I saw that day are as good as the Caroni, or how the overall line will pan out: as far as this one goes, it’s quite a good dram, which should simply be treated with a little respect and a little care, otherwise you might find yourself dismissing it too quickly, to your own detriment.

(#149. 83.5/100)

Other notes

Cask #15, 363 bottles. Distilled 2003, bottled 2012.
Update, July 2021 – This is a very dated bottling, and provides an interesting insight into how Foursquare was perceived at the time (2012-2013).
There is no indication on the bottle as to whether it is pot- or column-still or a blend of both.

Plantation 20th Anniversary Barbados Extra Old Rum – Review

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Dec 282012

This lovely product will always be one of the top sipping rums of my 2012 experience. The awards it has garnered since 2007 state boldly that many others think so too.

Stirred by the Rum Howler’s listing of the Plantation Barbados XO in his intriguing top 30 rum list, and having brought back a bottle from the amazing Rum Depot store in Berlin back in August (yes, it was gathering dust for several months, them’s the breaks when you have a day job and a family and other interests), I resolved to check it out after finishing off the St Lucia series. It was run up against three enormously different rums which could not possibly be mistaken for each other: the Renegade Cuba 1998, Downslope Distillery’s wonky 6-month wine-barrel aged rum from Colorado about which I can’t say enough bad things, and the amazing 2012 Rum Nation Demerara 1989-2012 23 year old about which I can’t say enough good things.

The Plantation series of aged rums from Cognac-Ferrand are the major remaining hole in my review lineup (as of the beginning of 2013) of widely available commercial rums, if you don’t count other rather more exclusive European independent bottlers like Bruichladdich, Cadenhead, Berry & Rudd, Bristol Spirits or Fassbind (among others) which rarely touch the Great White North. Knowing what I know now regarding how to begin a review site of popular spirits, I really should start with the younger Plantation variations and move up the scale, but when you have twenty to chose from and can only pick one, you might also do as I did, and start at the top…assuming your wallet holds out.

And I’m glad I did. Barbados rums tend to be on the soft side, but this one was like a feather pillow for the nose, truly…it handily eclipsed the Mount Gay 1703 with scents of white chocolate, buttery toffee, the nutmeg of a good eggnog, vanilla and caramel, and a lovely background of ground coconut shavings in a melange that was utterly terrific. It was a rich sensory love-in of a nose, solidly constructed, soft and breezy and if you ever wanted to have a Christmas rum to sip by a roaring fire, you would never have to go further than this one. I thought of it like a liquid, warm Hagen-Dasz, with all the sweetness that implies.

The palate was similarly excellent: sweet and a shade briny (not too much), soft as a mother’s hug before school on a cold day. It had hints of bananas and orange peel on the medium-heavy body, salty caramel, white chocolate vanilla. My lord this was good, rich and pungent and smooth as a cat’s tummy fur, with just a shade of heat to lend character, a touch of oaky spice and burnt coconut…if this rum was equated to a painting, it would be a lush impressionist Monet or Degas, colourful, vibrant and above all, real. And for once the finish completed the overall picture without failing, warm, medium long and rich, with traces of almonds, citrus and oak on the slightly astringent close.

The XO is a rum that is a blend of Plantations’s “oldest reserves” (not sure how old these reserves were, since no further details are available). The blends are first aged in Barbados in ex-bourbon casks, then taken to France where they undergo secondary ageing in smaller French Oak casks for a further year to eighteen months. I must concede that this process of double ageing (somewhat akin to the Dos Maderas 5+3 or 5+5) is much to my taste…it provides the resultant spirit with a depth and creaminess that is quite becoming and is absolutely meant for leisurely exploration when time is not a factor and a buzz is not on the menu.

As I noted above, this is a solidly built, well presented, utterly traditional all-round excellent premium rum. At €45 I think it might be one of the better value for money rums available for a 40% product. That sentence should be parsed carefully, because what this means is that it is superlative at genuflecting to all the expected traditional rum expectations…but without rising above or vaulting beyond (or violating) them…it lacks the passive agressive adventurousness of Fabio Rossi’s Rum Nation Demerara 1989 23 year old (45%) or the stunning-if-somewhat-oversweet Millonario XO (40%). This is not to diss the Plantation product, mind you, just to give you a sense of both its quality and what else it could have been had someone taped a pair of balles to it.

I wish I could tell you which rums in the Plantation lineup this one compares well to, but I can’t (Plantation Rums are not widely available in Canada). Suffice to say, the Anniversary XO is phenomenal taken merely by itself. It has a complex softness and style recalling the St. Nicholas Abbey 10 or 12 year old, or most of the top Panamanian rums, and a finish that is close to conjugal harmonies. If it has a weakness at all, it’s in hewing too closely to the profile of rums, and not daring to step a little outside the demarcations: I think that had it done so, beefed itself up, perhaps aged it a little differently, they may have been one of the top premiums in the world which all others had to beat. As it is, it’s a great sipping rum that any aficionado should have on his shelf, and share generously with people who simply don’t get how good a premium rum can be when made by people who are fully invested – and who care about – the resultant ambrosias they create.

(#138. 88.5/100)

Other Notes

This review was written in December 2012, and already there were cracks in the firmament: I had had the Panamonte XXV, various Panamanians, the Cartavio XO, Rum Nation’s Millonario, most of the DDL standard lineup, and was beginning to understand that dosed rums (an issue which would go on to explode two years later) could be bettered. By the end of 2014, my opinion on these smooth and sweetened rums had undergone a major shift, and if it hadn’t been my policy to keep rum reviews and scores intact, as they were when originally posted (I have to live with and defend the opinions and scores as they were then, not as I would like them to be later), I would have marked them a lot less generously than I had.

Mount Gay Eclipse Black 100 Proof Rum – Review

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Oct 172012

A serious rum contender for an middleweight-overproof title, but loses out due to a lack of polish and a glass jaw. The Cabot Town got this one by a TKO.

Much as I appreciate really good top tier, expensive and very old rums, I equally enjoy taking up what some might term lower ranked offerings: single digit rums, blends and hormonally unbalanced raging overproofs of any kind. In fact, as I’ve said on more than one occasion, I wish we could see more established distillers move away from 40% spirits, and exercise their muscles a bit with higher strength products. So when I stared at the shelves of Willow Park the other day, resolving to get myself something less pricey, my eye fell on the Mount Gay Eclipse Black 100 proof, which called to mind fond memories of the Cabot Tower 100 proof: and while the Mount Gay was nowhere as dark, 50% is 50% and I snapped it up.

As I’ve also remarked, presentation matters to me . And while I’m all for tradition, I admit to being quite attached to Mount Gay’s new sleek bottle design: flatter, taller, simpler. Very zen. You get a really good look at the colour of the rum inside: which in this case was bright amber…almost bronze. Too bad it had a cheap-ass tinfoil cap on top. Grrr. Maybe I was expecting too much for a $33 hooch.

Mount Gay and other Bajan rums are noted for their banana hints on the nose; this one was no different. Faint bananas, toffee, vanilla, brown sugar and a hint of cinnamon were preceded by a strong and majestic oaken sharpness that took its own sweet time dissipating. About on par for a strongly proofed rum. Sharp, for sure. I tried it in conjunction with the Cabot Tower, and that one was well muted: the two compared like a slow fire (Cabot) to a quick burning match on the fingers (MG).

The body was surprisingly light for such a strong product, like a diminutive American football player after all the equipment is taken off. The arrival was deep and almost cognac-like, and here the body bulked up a bit after pumping some iron and settled out as a solid middleweight contender, spicy and oaken, with a good heat to it. Peaches and apples and cherries with faint nutty undertones all wrestled in a surprisingly gentlemanly fashion for control of the palate, fading (again, in its own sweet time…this rum was in absolutely no hurry to depart your senses) in a gradually reducing heat, with a last cheerily overhard slap of bananas, fleshy fruits and burnt sugar, as if to say goodbye. Very firmly.

Mount Gay is known as the oldest rum distillery in the world – while the company was formally created in 1703 (hence the date on the “1703” rum and each and every bottle), rum production has been recorded there at least fifty years prior to that. Owners of Mount Gay over the centuries also had association with the St Nicholas Abbey estate, whose products I have enthusiastically written about before. The refinery makes use of both column and pot stills in its rums, giving the products a bolder taste, and in this case there is somewhat of a higher percentage of pot still distillate in the final blend, which is a combination of single and double distilled rums aged between two to seven years.

Overall, I’d have to say it’s a little too spicy: both the Favell’s and the Cabot Tower (the only other 100 proof rums currently in residence on my shelf) have that power, yet neither tried to stab me quite as brazenly: their makers muted the initial sting and subsequent harshness by some subtle alchemy the Mount Gay lacked or never bothered to try working on. Maybe it was because it was a fullproof; even among rums there has always been a sort of sweaty, Brando-esque ‘bad-boy’ glamour surrounding the stronger rums, so who cares if they toss you against the wall a few times? Isn’t that what they’re all about?

I doubt many will seriously try the Eclipse Black as a sipping rum…most will use it as a mixing agent, and here perhaps the venerable coke or ginger beer are solid options before heading into subtler and more complex cocktails. If I had to make a comparison with other rums, I’d say the deeper flavours of the Cabot Tower appeal to me more, and the Favell’s is also quite excellent in comparison, as is the Panama Red, largely as a result of a slightly smoother finish and darker, more complex profiles. Yet the Mount Gay Eclipse Black 100 proof is a solid accomplishment by any standard, and proves that before Mudlanders complain too much about the Bajans, the flagships of Demerara Distillers and Banks DIH could perhaps seek to make a few high-standard overproofs ¹ as well. That might not shut anyone up, but at least then they would have equal bragging rights.

(#125; 76.5/100)

Other Notes

The age is not mentioned either on Mount Gay’s own website page or the label. Both Spirits Review in an undated post, and Forbes in February 2020, noted it was a blend of components 2-7 years old.
The “Black” in the title comes from finishing it in heavily charred ex-bourbon casks. In 2013, the rum was rechristened “Black Barrel”, but the blend, as far as I could tell, remained the same.
In February 2020, Forbes magazine (link above) reported that the Black Barrel (as well as the XO) would be replaced in April of that year with another blended formulation. It was unclear whether the title would change also.

Dos Maderas PX 5+5 Rum – Review

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Mar 232012

First posted March 23, 2012 on Liquorature.

Dos Maderas 5+5 follows on from the middling 5+3 underproofed variation, and is in all ways a better rum. Better body, better nose, better taste, better finish. It takes everything the former did and takes such a sharp left turn on it, that you might be forgiven for thinking it’s an utterly different product, made by another company that stole part of the recipe and then ran off the reservation with it.

Just sitting there on your table top and opening up in your glass, the 5+5 is a thudding smack of cheery dark, brown-sugared rum of uncommon complexity. This is a rum that was never sad, never maudlin, never hated the world – this rum loves you like your almost-best buddy who always had that sh*t eating grin on his face and never outgrew slapping you too hard on the back.

The 5+5 was a full strength (40%) rum originating in stocks, like the Dos Maderas 5+3, from Barbados and Guyana, and aged five years in the Caribbean prior to shipping to Spain (yes, Spain) and then aged a further three years in casks which Williams & Humbert once used to make “Dos Cortados” Palo Cortado sherry, and a further two that were used to make Don Guido Pedro Ximenez sherry (hence the PX in the title). As both of these sherries were aged on average for two decades, the residual flavours in the casks are what give the 5+5 some of its profile (notably the sweetness). It was introduced in 2009 and immediately won a gold medal in the RumXP International tasting Competition at the 2010 Miami Rum Renaissance.

On appearance, the bottle was similar to its weaker younger sib the 5+3 (and was in a nice cylinder, as befitted its luxury cachet), so I’ll pass over that except to note the 5+5 was darker, with touches of deep red in the bottle and the glass. As soon as I decanted, I got a really nice medium bodies sniff of dark brown sugar, molasses, liquorice and chocolate, alleviated by lighter profiles of a good sweet sherry.

But this was a mere intro to the main act, because the palate was a lap ahead of that. Powerful and smooth, like a good Benz limo. Chocolate, tobacco, leather, anise/mint, honey, nuts and liquorice all mated spastically on the tongue until they settled down into a harmonious blend of surprising complexity. St Michael just opened a biblical seal there. I burped gently and birds fell out of the tree. The fade was a it less spectacular: at least it was long; it preserved the memory of that surge of power the palate teased with, without actually following it through to a satisfying finish, but I did note that it left licorice, caramel and nuts (plus maybe figs) on the exit, so points there. Overall, a very solid, very good rum, with one drawback I have to note: you’ll realize after a while that the central core of caramel, brown sugar, molasses and licorice takes on a dominance that is a shade startling…kinda sneaked up on me.

The Bodega Williams & Humbert goes back over a century. It was based on a winery founded in 1877 by Sir Alexander Williams (a supposed admirer and connoisseur of sherries) and Arthur Humbert, a specialist in international relations (don’t go looking in Wikipedia, neither name is to be found there). These days Williams and Humbert also produce the noted Dos Maderas PX and Ron Malabar rums and have lent their name to a Spanish company that acquired them, José Medina y Compañía; the company is well known for their solera systems, brandies, wines and sherries and if not well known in North America, is a bigger player in Europe.

I find myself with conflicted feelings regarding this rum. That it is a good one is beyond dispute. It’s deep, dark and has a powerful and distinctive taste profile. It ranks alongside the Pussers 15, English Harbour 10, El Dorado 15 and St Nicholas Abbey 8. It has the oomph its puerile predecessor the 5+3 lacked, is complex and well blended and tastes just wonderful…and at $60 in Calgary, is value for money. So why the qualification? I think, now that I run it past all the candidates above, that it’s that honey/brown-sugar core…it gets a bit too overwhelming, and you may not always appreciate that. In that sense it shares (to me, but maybe not to you) the failings of the El Dorado 25 year old

So yes, I’m giving it (what for me is) a high score to reflect those qualities I appreciate, and will concede its overall quality. I don’t believe it won the prizes it did because a lot of people felt sorry for it. But as I’ve remarked before, we drink rums for many reasons, at many points in the timeline of our mental state – I simply want to make the buyer aware that this dark sweet backbone exists, and if it works one day when you’re feeling maudlin, or a shade romantic, then it may just as easily fail the next time, when you’re as savagely vituperative as a mauled ex-spouse with a vengeful bent and an uzi, and the 5+5’s smoothly irritating and determined good cheer may be the last thing you want…or need.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

(#94. 83/100)

Dos Maderas 5+3 Rum – Review

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Feb 202012

First published 20 February 2012 on Liquorature

Dos Maderas 5+3 is a study in opposites, an examination into contrasting styles somehow coming together to produce something different from either. The rums are made in the so-called Spanish style based on ageing in sherry casks, yet have their origins in quintessential English style rums first created in Barbados and Guyana. The result is hamstrung by what to me is an utterly unnecessary dilution to 37.5%, and sinks what could otherwise have been quite an impressive product. (First posted February 19th, 2012)

Dos Maderas (“Two Woods”) is a brand of the Spain-based company Williams & Humbert, and have done something quite intriguing, in line with Rum Nation, Cadenhead, Gordon & MacPhail and Bruichladdich – they have taken a Caribbean rum or two and aged it their own way, in their own casks. The result is something I’ve been raring to check out for some time, and I bought both the 5+5 and 5+3 variations within weeks of each other last year. I was actually so curious about what they came up with that I didn’t even flinch at the 5+3’s 37.5% strength, which normally is an immediate disqualifier (for me, not necessarily for you).

Rums under 40% I tend to view with some disfavour, because they lack intensity of flavour which stems from their underproofishness (is that a real word?). They also present a certain smoothness that has less to do with a blender skilfully marrying the products of various barrels, and more with a lack of alcoholic content. Tastes are smaller, noses not as full, bodies somewhat less alluring, mouthfeel not as viscous or enveloping. They edge perilously close to exes you no longer love…or liqueurs, which may be worse. Damn. I must be turning into a rum snob.

All that editorializing aside, I shrugged and went ahead anyway. 5+3 was a gold coloured rum, medium bodied and created from rums hailing from Barbados aged for five years there in American white oak barrels, then taken to Spain, where they were aged a further three years in casks that once held Dos Cortados palo cortado sherry (aged for 20 years, as certified by the Jerez-Xérès-Sherry Regulatory Council).

On the nose, it was not a rampaging stampede of strong and dominant flavours reminiscent of a Serengeti stampede at dawn…more a gentle melange of chocolate, coffee, brandy, burnt sugar and mild cinnamon. And yes, the sherry came through, winding its way subtly around these scents.

The nose was lovely, yes; the taste not quite so much. This is where the lack of an alcohol content dissatisfied me, and perhaps those who like a stronger taste profile will agree (maybe not…). Sure there were the intermingling flavours of nuts, vanilla, creamy butter and burnt sugar – and had the right amount of sweet, which I would suggest is the residual bleed from the sherry casks it was aged in – but also some surprising oakiness and bite, barely held in check by the relative weakness of the blend. It was also quite dry, and while soft and clean, lacked some of that power and punch I would have preferred: in a word, it didn’t have oomph.

The fade, while pleasant came similarly short in character, and the most I can say is that it was not sharp or overwhelmingly piquant, nor did it seek to make up for its shortcomings in the taste department by trying to bitch slap your tonsils one last time to assert itself and say “Yo! I’m here!” In that sense, it was utterly consistent: a good rum in and of itself, just not, well…butch.

In fine, then, this rum is a homunculus of the breed: a perfectly formed replica in every way…but in miniature. That, I am afraid, is not enough to get either my undivided attention, or my undiluted appreciation. Bring it up to 40% or greater, mind you, and Dos Maderas might really be on to a winner. Until then, this lightweight rumlet lacks that final ingredient that would make me take it more seriously as a contender: a punch that means something.

(#90. 78/100)

St. Nicholas Abbey 12 year old rum – Review

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Sep 022011

First posted 2nd September 2011 on Liquorature

A worthy successor to the 10 year old which was also expensive and extremely well made. Succeeds, in my opinion, on just about every level: presentation, nose, taste, finish and aesthetics. This is the point where you start telling yourself maybe two hundred bucks may not really be that much to blow on a single rum…but ensure the spouse concurs.

You’ve got to hand it to the Abbey. Not being content to rest on their laurels with the very excellent 10 year old I was so taken by, they issued the dark gold 12 year old limited edition rum, and built on all of its predecessor’s strengths. This is not surprising since it was the remaining stocks of the ten which form the twelve (original barrels of the ten are now exhausted or aged past ten years). And they have changed nothing except the rum itself: the etched square-shouldered bottle showing the Jacobean plantation house, mahogany tipped cork, the cheap cardboard box which Keenan so applauds, the thin wrapping paper with the company logo…all this remains the same.

St Nick’s, having emerged as a surprising new quality distillery in 2006 after the Warrens bought out the prior landholders, initially had R.L. Seale distil their product and then aged it themselves; though previously they had shopped around for stocks from all over Barbados and other places which to age in their first offerings, these days they are laying down stocks themselves using a newly acquired German distilling unit, and have impressive plans to increase their product line (I made some notes about this in the 8-yr old review if you’re interested).

“It’s not about what the movie is about,” remarked Roger Ebert once, “But how the movie is about it.” By that standard, how should we discuss this rum? By its nose, its flavour, its look, the bottle, the colour, how it’s distilled, blended, bottled…what? Having written enough prose about both the eight year old and the ten year old, how can I go on from there?

I could say, for example, that it is a modern day reimagining of Bajan styles of old, or that it originates from both pot and column stills, and is aged for 12 years in white oak barrels. I could add that it is made not from molasses but from concentrated cane syrup subsequently double-distilled to about 92% prior to ageing (unlike agricoles from the French terroires, which generally limit their distillation to 70% before barreling). Then I could go on: that it has a deep, rich, dark rich nose of currants and jam, cherries, peaches and fleshy ripe fruits, redolent of breakfast spices and a touch of caramel, and tastes of jasmine and hibiscus arrangements dusted with cinnamon. But what does all this really tell you beyond dry facts you’re probably sick of and may not even agree with? Not much. What about taste, then? Would it make a difference if I noted its slightly salty-sweet tang, or its heavy body about on par with an ED 15, hints of banana and papaya melding gently into a buttery-soft mélange of fruit and brown sugar? And the long smooth, lasting finish that clutches your tonsils with the tenacity of a junkie clutching a five?

Maybe not.

So let me go off in a different direction for the more poetic among us. This rum is a hug from your mother when you had a skinned knee and came home holding back tears — in the warm softness of her comfort, all good things came back and the hurt was forgotten. The taste of this exquisite twelve year old is of a lazy Sunday breakfast with your first real lover after a good night before, and a great kiss after (substitute the word you’re thinking of), with french toast, hot strong coffee and the fixin’s melting in your mouth as you wolf it down in the warm morning sunlight of a great new day. And the finish is redolent of the smooth feeling of power that envelops you when you win a hard fought battle – in the office or on the field or in the street – and deservedly bask in the accolades. The world is your oyster. This rum goes well with it.

The St. Nicholas Abbey 12 year old Limited Reserve is not cheap. At two hundred dollars in Calgary, I have to be honest and concede that I thought long and hard about buying it – I can get the 21 YO El Dorado, or the English Harbour 25 YO, for less, and both are older vintages, proven tastes, made by well established companies for which I have great respect. I know I’m paying this price because of limited production, not entirely because it’s so good. Honestly, had it not been for the ten that St Nick’s had already won me over with, as well as their instant and honest answering of every question I had when researching this review, I might have held off.

But I must be honest: this is a reminder of what rums can be, in a conformist and lowest-common-denominator culture where blended product and cheaply spiced rums sell by the truckload, and many people have no idea that “top-end” and “rum” can be said in the same breath. And as I’ve observed before, rums are not for any one thing: some take the edge off our anger, some help us forget and take us away from our problems, some are best with which to observe a sunset, some are to toast the great events in one’s life, and still others are to share with one’s best friend over an evening spent playing chess and indulging in a desultory sort of harum scarum conversation. What is so wonderous about the twelve, and what makes me recommend it, is that in some measure, it is good for, and does, all these things.

(#084. 86/100)

St. Nicholas Abbey 8 year old – Review

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Sep 022011

First posted 2nd September 2011 on Liquorature

Much as I loved the St Nicholas Abbey 10 year old (and I have yet to meet a soul who doesn’t like it), I must concede that the corresponding 8 year old is not in its league. This is not to say it’s a bad rum…just not as good as its older brother(s). And that’s a shame, because left on its own, had I never tasted any of the Abbey’s other products, I might have given my pen rein, gone to town with loads of colourful metaphors, and in all ways harped on its observed qualities. However, I had had the others, and in a vertical tasting with all three rums in attendance, the eight simply suffered by comparison. Bummer.

I should note that part of what really sets St. Nicholas apart is stellar marketing. The whole story of the plantation and its lovingly restored Jacobean house; the creation of one of the first new rum-makers in decades (quite aside from massive commercial enterprises who create hollow rums by the containerful); the sand-blasted bottle with its mahogany tipped cork wrapped in soft paper embossed with the company logo, the limited production (they’re up to about 5000 bottles total per year now)…all these envelop the plantation operation and the resultant rums in a sort of enviable cachet of quality and history that many a maker would give his last heels of ten year old for. And when you consider how good that original ten year old was (quite a debut, I’d say), well, there’s some pretty good street cred right there.

Of course, Madison Avenue b.s. can only carry a rum so far (did I hear someone say Kraken?). Consider the Young’s Old Sam Demerara Rum, or a very nice (and very cheap) Potter’s rum I have had before – utterly unspectacular, unadvertised low-end hooches the pair of ‘em, and yet I can’t imagine my pantry without either. Word of mouth and individual tastes will overwhelm a clever campaign…and that other bugbear of the big sellers, real quality. I thought St. Nicholas really had something going there.

Having waxed rhapsodic over the softness and billowing fumes of the 10, I was somewhat taken aback by a younger, sharper nose of the 8 year old. Young, boisterous, aggressive, spicy and aromatic, it reminded me of a lady in high school I once asked for a dance, who then grabbed me with quite unnecessary force, and unsmilingly said in a tone that brooked no demur, “I’ll lead.” All kidding aside, it was an interesting scent: apples, a tad of brown sugar crystals…there was a buttery kind of quality to it, yet one that was thin and faintly medicinal at the start: it gradually opened up into something more floral – white roses and hibiscus.

The mouthfeel and taste on the palate continued that odd mix of aggressiveness and restraint. It lacked the smooth wash of tastes of the ten, that was a given; however, I simply cannot express what it was about the 8 that did not permit me to separate out flavours precisely. That there were tastes was undeniable, what I was having trouble with was figuring out what they were, because they ran together so seamlessly. Perhaps it would be better to tell you what this wasn’t: not very sweet, always a problem for me; not very oily, or lasting; not very, well… rumlike – this thing was more like a decent cognac. The body was light, gold and clean (it was the lightest colour of the three St. Nick’s offerings I was sampling), bottled at 40% just like the others, and displayed a sharpness I can’t say enthused me overmuch. And the fade was unexceptional: short, medium smooth, lacking a good long finish — yet to its credit, it did not have a bunch of bitchy fumes leaving their claws on your throat on the exit.

St Nicholas Abbey in Barbados, is currently distilling its own rum from its own sugar, using a German distillation apparatus they brought over from the heimat in 2009 – and unlike all others in the area, they are using sugar cane syrup (concentrated juice) rather than molasses – this may account for the lack of a caramelized brown sugar taste so prevalent in other dark or gold rums. However Foursquare Distillery (they of the dubious Doorly’s) did initially help produce the first rums here, after the Warren family bought the plantation from its previous owners in 2006. Currently St Nick’s is setting down rum at the rate of one barrel a week for ageing and they have plans to expand their line to include younger rums (3 yr and 5 yr olds, plus a white), and older ones to come – for example stocks of the ten are now past that age and are being re-issued as the twelve and the 2005 stocks they had are being held for yet older expressions.

Let’s sum up. Different production methods result in a nose that is excellent, but with a taste and finish less so. At $120 in Calgary, I’d hesitate to buy it a second time, when I can get the sterling ten year old for twenty bucks more. It’ll be interesting to match an eight year old from years hence with the one currently in my possession.

And yet, I should add this. I was similarly noncommittal and wussy about the El Dorado 12 year old (and to some extent the ED15). But this eight year old rum really isn’t made to be a high end product, however the price might suggest otherwise: it’s a bridge to the really top-tier product lines, the 10 and the 12 and (coming soon to the rumshop near you) the 15,18 and the 20. I think St Nicholas’s product strategy is based on the unexpected success of the ten, which I have been told there are no more stocks of — the stocks that went into making this 8 yr old will eventually be the new batch of 10 yr olds to come. Therefore my take is simply that for what it is, it is an excellent rum, however expensive; you are paying for rarity rather than the intrinsic worth, though – so if you really want quality, then spring the extra twenty bucks for the next one up the line.

(#083. 80.5/100)

St. Nicholas Abbey 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Mar 052011

First posted 5 March 2011 on Liquorature

This rum is one of the best rums of it’s kind I’ve ever had, and it will dent your wallet to show it’s no accident. Everything about it works: presentation, nose, taste, finish. Even the place it’s made has a romantic cachet and youthful exuberance that enhances the aura surrounding it. You see this, you buy it, and buy it now.

St Nicholas Abbey 10 year old is one of the unsung Jedi Knights of the Universe. It succeeds without seeming to try. It embodies a grace and style many rums aim for and fail to attain, and presents it in a bottle by which a rum twice as expensive would be proud to be embraced. For a maker just barely out of the Padawan stage, I’d hazard a definitive statement and say it’s a hell of an achievement. I liked it the first time I sampled it at a tasting held by Kensington Wine Market in Calgary, bought a bottle the same night for ~$150, and have not regretted the purchase for a moment. And given that my wife – notoriously parsimonious and gimlet eyed when it comes to my purchases of the noble spirit – thought it was a really wonderful rum, how can you go wrong?

A lot of bottles are either all good within and have lousy presentation without, or have “all outside and no inside,” but not this one. Now, the Last Hippie has noted how stingy I am when it comes to awarding points (I have similar problems with his generosity), but St Nick’s has come close to acing the presentation sweepstakes. The bottle is a tapering square flagon with a thick lip. It’s etched with a frieze of the plantation itself (The Great House, actually), and has a mahogany-tipped, leather covered cork that was simply stunning; bottle and box are both wrapped with soft tissue paper. If it wasn’t for the cheapo thin cardboard box it came in, it would have scored a perfect ten.

The name of the rum represents the name of the plantation in Barbados where the spirit is made. The land and buildings have been in existence at least since the 1630s but the Jacobean Great House on the grounds was only built in 1658, when the plantation was called Yeaman’s; subsequent descendants renamed it the Nicholas Plantation for tangled family issues which makes for interesting reading if you like generational history, but is too long to easily summarize. Various other owners came and went over the centuries; one of them was the man whom Mount Gay was eventually named after, Sir John Gay Alleyne: Sir John was instrumental in introducing rum production to Nicholas in the latter half of the 18th century, diversifying its fortunes from sugar and molasses production. However, it fell into debt and was sold off to new owners in the early 1800s, and was subsequently renamed St. Nicholas Abbey for what could be termed sentimental reasons by the Cumberbatch family, whose descendants held the property until 2006. Sugar production continued untiul 1947 when economic conditions caused a cessation of sugar and molasses production. but a new mill was brought to St. Nicholas in 1983 and sugar and rum production recommenced. However, the R. L. Seale’s Foursquare distillery is still the final bottler.

Whatever the stops and starts and hiccups of rum production on the island, they sure haven’t forgotten anything in the interim. You open the bottle and sniff and a buttery soft nose billows out to embrace your senses. No sting, no harshness, no fanged assault by a Colo Claw Fish or Sandpeople’s gaffi sticks. Just gentle caramel notes mixed with molasses, with cherry notes drifitng in and out of the dark sugary smells. Let it stand for a bit and open up, and you’re left with burnt brown sugar like it was Christmas come early. Others may find more complexity in the rum than I did, but what I discovered was quite enough for my personal enjoyment, believe me – whatever you detect on your own, you will not be disappointed.

As for the taste and body, well, umm…wow. It’s good. It could make C3P0 wish he could drink. It has hints of nutmeg, those cherries again, some well cured leather, all wrapped up inside a molasses and caramel blanket that was – unlike the DDL El Dorado 25 year old at twice the cost – just sweet enough, and dry as the humour you’d get if you mixed Monty Python with Lando Calrissian on a bender. St Nick’s gently and lovingly ravishes your throat all the way down, caresses your taste buds and coats your tongue in a way that carries flavour to every address of your taste buds. And the finish displays similar excellence of quality: it’s long; it’s lasting; it’s gentle – it’s the best kiss Leia ever gave Han, and carries with it no shade of spite or bitchiness or pain. I could sip this lovely ten year old all night long. Actually, I nearly did.

I don’t know what St Nicholas Abbey has done that makes all these pieces come together so well. They do eschew complex mechanical means of mass production and have stuck with pot-still distillation techniques – this may account for the rather high price, it being a function of rarity created by the slow and less efficient batch processing – so that may be part of it. They are right next to their source of cane juice, so maybe that has something to do with it too. Currently, the rum is produced for the plantation by R. L. Seale, initially aged at 65% abv in oak bourbon casks for 8 years, and then batched and re-barrelled in to the same casks at bottle strength and then aged for a further two years at the Abbey. Just about all rums are aged in bourbon barrels, so I sort of discount that as a factor.

But however and whatever they do, somehow the Abbey makers of this sterling ten year old have combined their accumulated knowledge and a production method of their own that surpasses expectations and have, I dunno, blessed it with the Force. And created a drink so all-round excellent, that if I was a Hutt, I’d sure as hell hire Han Solo to smuggle a few cases past the Empire.

(#069. 87/100)

Mount Gay Old Cask 1703 – Review

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Aug 282010

mount gay 1703

Stunning. Strong marriage of well balanced flavours, terrific nose and a silky finish marred ever so slightly by a slight bitterness at the tail end. A damned worthy entry at the top-end, showing Mount Gay is still a force to be reckoned with in the premium lines.

First posted 28 August 2010 on Liquorature.

Mount Gay. The premier house of rum on Barbados, the oldest rum distillery in the world, and this rum, their premium product, first seen in 2009. I was not entirely enthused with the Extra Old, but here, they have created a small gem that takes the qualities I liked in the Extra Old, and made almost none of the mistakes; and while it may not entirely beat the snot out of the EH25 or the Appleton 30, it is on par with the El Dorado 21, tastes like the Clemente XO, and can quit the field of battle with honour in the company of these exceptional opponents

The top end of their production line was not a part of the Liquorature gathering of August 2010, but because I had just blown the ~$125 on it and wanted to try it in company, I brought it along anyway — it’s become in an occasional thing of mine to bring something high-end to the table when I want the others to sample, because I am fully aware that without that, they’ll never spend the cash on anything but whisky (I’m fighting a valiant rearguard action here, as you might notice). As the sole ‘Caner here, I consider this my small contribution to their education in Matters of Rum.

All fun aside, let’s look at the 1703. The bottle is simple, blocky and new age, harkening back to the old jugs of yore (and I adore simple elegance, so this gets mucho brownie points from me); the cork has a sumptuously tight feel to it and is metal tipped cork, tightly settled: it makes a plump, happy sound when popped. The colour of the rum is a tawny dark gold, with reddish tints hinting of copper…perhaps a freshly minted new coin. Like both the Doorly’s and XO, it possesses a medium body, lighter than other islands like Jamaica (or Guyana’s molasses beefcakes), but about on par with Martinique’s agricole offerings. It’s a blend of rums between 10 and 30 years old, both pot and column still as far as I know.

I don’t often spend more than fifteen minutes on a tasting before I make up my mind one way or the other: neither my experience nor my sophistication being wide enough to take this further. However, when reviewing aged rums in particular, a more serious attitude really is needed (well, if you spent over a hundred bucks, doesn’t the object deserve more than just a cursory sip and disinterested demeanour?), and it’s always a good idea to let the opened spirit breathe in the glass. The initial nose is of cinnamon, nutmeg and a soft whiff of bananas (the Mount Gay signature), but when it has sat in the glass for another few minutes, it opens up like my wife’s arms when I come back from a long trip abroad, and I get that warm comforting whiff of caramel, burnt sugar and toffee coiling around subtle fruits and spices. And more than a hint of…well, leather. Maybe that’s just me, though.

In the mouth the 1703 is quite dry and low-to-medium sweet, another thing it shares with both the Elements 8 and the Clemente XO, and for which I marked them down (and again I have to stress how personal a thing this business with the sweetness is for me). However, in fairness I have to mention how smooth the rum is, in spite of the aggressive oaken taste – the 1703 is a blend of rums aged between ten to thirty years in used bourbon barrels – and how subtler flavours slowly seep through the backbone of the tannins: vanilla, caramel, sugar, and baked apples. Yes, taking one’s time with this is almost a given: unlike a young lover who is all energy and power with no character, this one is all about mature and sober reflection of what it means to make love. The lack of sugar makes the overall taste much like a cognac (and the dryness reinforces this impression), and for that reason I myself won’t rank this high on my pantheon of truly great rums, but I fully acknowledge the depth of skill Master Blender Allen Smith utilized in marrying various rums aged ten to thirty years into this excellent synthesis.

The sting in the tail comes at the end. On the pleasantly long and reasonably smooth finish there is that faint hint of bitterness and spite which so marred my enjoyment of the XO – less than that offering, true, but I was watching and waiting for it, and yes, it’s there: unlike the Appleton 30 which expended much time in muting the oaken infusion, here this was not the case, or at least, less effort was made. When one thinks of the overall brilliant beginnings of the rum, it’s subtlety and complexity of married blends, this is – to say the least – problematic. I think, however, that brandy aficionados and whisky lovers will look at me askance and ask me what the hell my problem is, were I to bring it up, and guzzle the thing down with great enjoyment.

As a gift for someone special, as a sundowner in your new McMansion overlooking a lake somewhere, this rum will not disappoint, and overall, it’s an excellent choice for a sipper (no, I didn’t even think of bastardizing this with cola), in spite of its final bitchiness, which is a minor blip on an otherwise straight line, in my opinion (enough to make me mark it down, mind you). Mount Gay has been officially making rums since 1703, and lost a little ground in the premium market over the last decades, but it appears their long tradition of rums for the cognoscenti is in no danger of disappearing anytime soon.

(#097. 85/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Mount Gay XO (Extra Old) Rum – Review

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Jul 302010

First posted 30 July 2010 on Liquorature

You’re not looking at two images here by accident: both of these are Extra Old. The one on the right is the new design introduced perhaps a year or so ago, and what I bought was the one on the left. There’s some confusion in the literature as to what you’re getting: the one on the right is supposedly 15 year old blends, while the one on the left is stated on some websites to be 7, 8 and 10 years old blended together…what the hell? However, after having contacted Mount Gay’s customer service (in France, because Rémy Cointreau has owned the brand since 1989), I can now tell you that both blends are exactly the same – a combination of 8-15 year old rums – and the bottle on the right is merely a newer, more “premium” design, which is in line with my observation that rums are now moving upscale in both blending and design (see the Elements 8 review if you doubt me).

Mount Gay is the rum from Barbados that essentially – after tourism, I guess – makes the island’s name. Not everyone has heard of Doorly’s, or Mahiki’s or St. Nicholas Abbey, and though Cockspur is pretty familiar to any West Indian (it’s had sniggering rights for decades) it’s not so well known outside the Islands: but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t at least heard of Mount Gay. It is the Bacardi of Barbados, you could say.

Maltmonster made the remark the other day that he likes to do his tasting in vertical rankings, because you get a better idea how the rums (well, he said whiskies, but I chose to think he misspoke himself in an unfortunate faux pas which he now sincerely regrets and will one day beg my forgiveness for) improve or develop as one goes up the price chain. The problem with that admittedly laudable theory here in Cowtown, is that while well-suited for the elephantine selection of single malts one can find in even the meanest mon-and-pop establishment, it utterly fails for the anorexic pickings of the cane around here. One is therefore left with the dubious methodology of simply comparing rums on age and price and hoping you can draw some reasonable conclusions from that.

Anyway. The oldest continuously operating commercial distillery in the western hemisphere is not in Scotland, it’s not in the American continents – it is this one, and it has the papers to prove it: in fact, legend has it that Mount Gay was distilling rum since the mid 1600s, which would bring it in a shade behind Bushmills, in Ireland (so look it up). The signature of their lines is banana and almond, the way citrus is for Appleton, and the premium offering is the Mount Gay 1703 Old Cask: what we had for the July 2010 selection was a few rungs lower – the Extra Old, a mixture of rums eight to fifteen years old (a note here: the kind of the bottle I review is the picture on he left: this is gradually being replaced with the sleeker new design on the right).

On the nose it’s caramel candy, with that taste of banana. A bit strong, burning gently but not offensively. Swirling in the glass shows the thin legs of a model from Milan, but nothing special to my mind (I don’t attribute much to the legs unless they are really running off the reservation). On the palate, this supposedly premium sipping rum does not, unfortunately, impress: while it shows off a medium brown colour, tastes of the usual molasses and brown sugar, and hints of pecan, the blend is somehow not assertive, not intriguingly complex…it is, to but it bluntly, a tad bland. Behind, stiffening it up, is the aforementioned banana and a slight note of citrus that almost disappears in the mouth. The finish, I’m gonna have to tell you straight out, is short and bitchy and bitter, like a Reno divorce, and about as pleasant. I kind of just looked at the glass on my second go ’round with it. What just happened to this thing? Did they not try to tone down the woodiness imparted by the Jack Daniels barrels, in some misguided effort to give it street cred?

No matter what my personal feelings about the Bajans (and my disappointing experience with the Doorly’s XO should have been a shot across the bows), I had really gone in prepared to like this one. Hell, I forked over sixty-plus bucks for the bottle, can you blame me for expecting more? Extra Old rum of any kind has this cachet of age and care and love about it – online reviews are almost uniformly positive and fawn over the rum as if it could hold them till the Rapture – and while I had wanted to stroke Mount Gay like a favourite cat, you’d think my prior encounters with other pretentiously named XOs would have educated me out of this delusion: as it turned out, I had forgotten my lesson, and simply got scratched for my trouble.

So it fails as a sipper for sure, in my opinion. It’s okay – nay, excellent – as a mixer and a cocktail base, but then, if I wanted okay and a mere ingredient for fancy-named drinks, I could have gone with the Coruba, and not blown my budget for the week with this thing.

I think one day I’ll fork out three figures for the 1703 Cask edition from Mount Gay, if some kind purchasing agent for a liquor shop ever gets around to bringing it over to this city of malts: by that time, I’m just hoping that I’ll have put this rather disappointing experience behind me, so I don’t treat the premium offering of a four hundred year old distillery with the same sort of indifference that this slightly less exalted bottle treated me.

(#096) / Unscored

Update February 2018

For years I felt Bajan rums lacked something and mostly stayed away…not difficult given the hundreds and thousands of rums available for me to try. But in a 2017 revisit, with more experience (and perhaps more understanding), I called the Mount Gay XO one of the Key Rums of the World
In 2017 Mount Gay released a cask strength expression of the XO, which I felt was quite good when I tried it in 2018
By the same year, most of the Bajan rum bragging rights had been transferred to Foursquare and its amazing run of the Exceptional Series, as well as its Velier Collaborations. It remains to be seen what response will be mounted by Mount Gay.

Doorly’s XO Barbados Rum – Review

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Jun 302010

Publicity Photo

This rum is simply too weak and underpowered. It is the Prince Myshkyn of rums.

Bajans like to say they did everything first, annoy and harass no end of Guyanese travelling through Grantley Adams, and are a suitably soft-spoken, deprecating folk to boot (“You may enter the war; Barbados is on your side,” went that famously modest telegram to King George in 1939). However, research shows their claim to produce the first commercial rums in the western hemisphere is likely to be true. Mount Gay is of course the most famous and widely exported, but for some reason they missed the boat on the emergence of premium sipping rums in the last few years, and so very few top-tier liquors emerge from Little England at this time from that house (they didn’t lay in enough stocks twenty years ago, or something). Other rums made on the island are less well known, though I’m sure most know of Cockspur and Malibu (a liqueur) and St. Nicholas Abbey, and maybe Mahiki. I’m still waiting for a good top-end Mount Gay to pass through Calgary, mind you.

Anyway, this XO is supposedly the best of the lot from this Barbados distiller R. L. Seale’s (of Foursquare Distillery) which blends and bottles it under the original marque of Martin Doorly, an old rum-making concern that was bought by Alleyne Arthur (yet another now-defunct merchant bottler from Barbados) in the 1970s and itself taken over by Foursquare in 1993. Doorly’s claim to fame was/is the double distilling and then ageing of the blend in used Spanish oloroso sherry casks, which impart a lighter, less dense and clearer aspect to this 40% rum (I’m not sure whether this is a practice has been discontinued).

I am in awe of people who can flex their probosces, sniff, gargle and spit, and come up with liquorice, aniseed, mint, grapes, treacle, walnut and raisins, plus ten other things including the breakfast cheese the blender had had on the morning of the bottling (plus, perhaps, the name of his favourite marmalade). I am, alas, nowhere so practiced or adept. Once I broached the squat bottle – love that rare blue macaw on the label – a sniff and a swirl suggested a lighter than usual rum, of toffee-brown hue, and a nose hinting at toffee, fruit, caramel (very lightly so), and a dusting of nuts of some kind. Sugar, and a sort of perfumed sweetness that goes well with the overall delicacy the rum seemed to embody.

Up front, I have to tell you – I wasn’t pleased. I didn’t pay an arm and a leg for the rum to be a delicate little wallflower, with lace curtains on chintzy wallpaper: I wanted the proverbial cutlass and yo-ho-hos, the dead man’s chest, a little pillage, rape and plunder, damn it. Was this what almost four hundred years of distillation had taught them? To make rum for the wussies and tourists?

Sipping it neat, and then on ice, confirmed some ideas, dispelled others: I tasted walnuts, cinnamon, sugar, and there were few hints of the usual burnt sugar which current tastings of other rums to this point had led me to expect. And yet there was that same delicacy again, that slight civilization of rum, which made itself evident in very light notes overall. In other words, here was not a rum that took you by the johnson and gave a good hard tug: rather, it politely tapped you on the shoulder to get your attention. Discreet, polite, effeminate. One could almost believe this was a stronger than usual but not-as-sweet port. This lack of assertiveness carried over into the texture and feel on the tongue. Light, smooth, yes, but was this not defeating the purpose of a rum?

I must admit to being left a shade irritable, as if by a girl who smiled and promised and then bailed just as I was getting my hopes up: it was a rum, sure, but I’d never had one that held back so much, revealed itself so shyly. I was unused to the concentration I needed to bring to tease out the notes on Doorly’s, and even then, my overall lack of a decades-long well-trained snoot put me at a disadvantage. I liked it – it was smooth on the palate and didn’t burn much on the moderately long finish, so on that level, not bad. But this lightness and complexity doesn’t work for me – I’ve always preferred strong tastes that “tek front” and don’t dick around.

On the other hand, maybe the Bajans really did overwork Doorly’s, they really did make it for the wussies, my feelings weren’t lying and it really is nothing beyond the gentle delicacy of a tamed wild libation that should have more depth and character. If that is the case – and I’ll go back to this one again to ensure I’m not marking it unfairly – then the rum remains a part of the starter line and should not be considered anything special.

(#029)(Unscored)

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