Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum (Bermuda) – Review

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Sep 292025
 

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 the lords of the manor and their families, or members of the upper management.  Such “reserved” stocks, often older than the norm, were gradually commercialized, and released with titles like Chairman’s Reserve, Family Reserve, Private Stock, President’s Choice, or whatever, meant to capitalize on their unique, limited, elevated nature. They are, of course, meant to be premium rums, and priced accordingly, and if we proles could afford a bottle, then we could sip – vicariously, to be sure – at the tables of the upper crust and consider ourselves grateful (or so the theory goes).

The Gosling’s Family Reserve Old Rum, first brought to market in the very early 2000s (I’ve heard 2003, or 2005), is one of these. Subject to my opinion below, let’s accept (for now) that it’s a molasses-based pot-column blend, aged for sixteen to nineteen years, released at 40% and costing around Can$70-100, when it can be found. 

Considering the nose showcases some of its weaknesses to a modern audiences: it’s thin, it’s weak and takes far too long to open up. After about ten minutes in a covered glass, there’s little to mark it as being premium anything: we get some wet grass, dark cherries, cinnamon, caramel, toffee, a touch of white chocolate, and some dried raisins. With effort, one might make out some overripe oranges, bananas and walnuts, but that’s reaching.

The palate is similarly unprepossessing. It is soft and easy to sip, of course – the strength and the ageing have sanded off any rough edges – with notes of leather, vanilla, sweet smoky paprika and freshly cut bell peppers, plus honey and maybe a wine-y hint or two. Some raisins, some crushed nuts, stale coffee grounds and all this leads to a short, lacklustre finish that’s an indeterminate mish-mash of caramel, vanilla, orange peel, and those coffee grounds again.

From these brief notes, you can clearly see I’m not impressed, because, for a rum positioning itself as special, there’s not enough to justify either the cachet or the price. For its time, I guess it did its job. In this day and age, it’s fails the Stewart Affordability Conjecture, in spades. It’s clearly a rum, decent enough – it just doesn’t deliver anything we don’t already get elsewhere with more flair at lesser prices. And if you want a comparison, just take down any Foursquare ECS edition bottled at a similar strength, and meditate on the difference between this pleasant but one-dimensional rum, and real craftsmanship.  But you know, the virtual disappearance of the rum from any kind of “best-of” lists or medal winners in recent years makes the karmic point better than any rebuttal I could write here, so I’ll just shrug, smile and move on.

(#1130)(80/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Company background (from Review #1129)

Gosling’s hails from Bermuda, which is a British Overseas Territory, Britain’s oldest: the company is closely identified with the island and is, aside from tourism and some manufacturing, a mainstay of Bermuda’s non-financial-services economy. 

The Gosling enterprise has been in business on Bermuda since 1806, when the ship’s charter for business in the USA expired while on the high seas (the ship was apparently becalmed for longer than expected). So instead of landing in Virginia, James Gosling, the son of a wine and spirits merchant in England, went ashore in St. George’s instead, and set up shop there with his brother Ambrose, trading in spirits he had brought with him. Rum blending from imported distillates began in 1860, with the Old Rum brand launching three years later. The company’s rums were originally sold directly from barrels to customers who brought their own bottles, a practise that continued until the Great War; however, Goslings’ rums’ popularity and sales took off when they began salvaging used champagne bottles from the British navy’s officer’s mess, filling those with rum and sealing them with black wax.

The Old Rum was renamed the Black Seal, with the now-famous seal logo designed and coming into use in 1948: the champagne bottles are rarer now, used only for the Family Reserve line, but the logo has remained in use ever since. It is the company’s flagship brand and goes hand in glove with their signature cocktail “The Dark ‘n’ Stormy, which was developed in the mid 1960s and trademarked in 1980 (and rigorously enforced).

Commentary | Opinion

First released in 2005, the Family Reserve Old Rum proudly adheres — on both the label and the website — to all the annoying lack of disclosure I remarked on with the 151 Overproof. The provenance is murky, the outturn is unknown, the blend is supposedly but unconfirmed to be pot and column distillates, and it’s aged “up to” sixteen years – hardly the best way to flog a much-touted premium product which the Caribbean Journal named its Rum of the Year in 2012 (Goslings on their undated website entry for the rum, casually restates this as “the Caribbean Journal named Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum the No.1 aged rum in the world.”)

Maybe those were simpler and more innocent times in the rumiverse, and maybe my impatience with marketing-speak informs my snark. Frankly, it surpasses my understanding how in this modern day and age, when the provision of information has been a hotly discussed point for over a decade, we still have to be Sherlock Holmes to get some bare bones, basic info. Goslings positions the rum as some kind of premium rum while telling us almost nothing about it. It was perhaps understandable back in the day, but now, it’s indefensible. 

Other notes

  • Video recap link
  • The bottle number is 4992/19 – my conjecture is that the last two digits represent the year of release.

Costa y Montserrat Ron Marina Blanco (Spain)(1960s)

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Oct 292023
 

Rumaniacs Review R-159 | #1036

Few references exist to track down this aged bottle with stained yellow label and a description remarkably thin even for the Days of Ago when nobody cared.  There is no distillery of make, no strength, no country of origin we can evaluate, nothing.  It is a white rum, has pictures of several medals on it (or maybe those are those coins, like pieces of eight?) and the implication of the words “The Spanish Town – Jamaica” is that it hails from there. One does not even get the strength, though my hydrometer tested it out at 37.8%, so either it is 40% standard and then dosed down, or it’s clean and maybe 37%-38%. 

As for the dating, the best source is a May 2019 auction listing on Whisky Auctioneer which suggests it’s from the 1960s, and which I have no grounds to seriously dispute – the label fonts and design and lack of provenance tend to support it, however thin that is. However, the auction site’s notation that it was produced in Spanish Town itself is not, I think, credible.

This leaves us with just the company, Costa Y Montserrat, SL from Barcelona in Spain. That most invaluable of resources, Pete’s Rum Labels, doesn’t provide any true data, but it does have another label, which suggests they were into the retailing of Jamaican-style rums which makes them an importer and blender, and the whole Spanish Town thing is just atmosphere and a cool label design but held no real truth (which is a shame, but okay…)

The company hails from the Catalan town of San Fructuosa de Bages (officially named Sant Fruitós de Bages), just to the north of Barcelona and the industrial estate of Manresa immediately to its west; wine has been made there for centuries. The Costa & Montserrat company refers to a famous Benedictine monastery of that name, built on a mountain nearby 1 However, that aside, what we have is the founding of the company in 1840, which made brandy in the early 20th century, and also fruit liqueurs in the late 1970s. I think it still exists, but under some other name I was unable to trace, and if it does, it’s not making rums any longer.

Colour – white

Strength – Tested at 37.8%

Nose – Astringent and sharp. It smells alcoholic (no pun intended), speaking more of raw ethanol than the easy lightness of a finely blended white cocktail rum. The puling strength is partly responsible for that of course.  Also some rubber, minerally notes, green peas from a can, watermelon and a touch of sugar water. 

Palate – Surprisingly there’s some brine here, again those canned peas (or, to be more precise, the water from that can), vague light sweet fruits such as papaya, watermelon and pears, but all very lacklustre, very much in the background.  It’s like a dumbed down, weakly flavoured, underproofed vodka.

Finish – Almost nonexistent, really. Light sugar water, no burn, no tickle, no real taste.

Thoughts – If the intention of the label is to point towards Jamaica, I assure you that sampling it dispels any romantic notions that somehow I had picked up an undreamed-of pot-still Rum from the Cocktail Age. No such luck.  It lacks strength, it lacks taste, it lacks any identifying characteristics of country or terroire, and is best seen as a pre-21st-century-Renaissance historical artefact that sheds light on rum’s development over the decades, rather than some kind of distant classic from a long vanished era. There’s a reason why it only fetched £31 on that auction. It’s a historian’s rum, not one for the bar crowd or connoisseurs of unappreciated rum, or even speculators.

(65/100) ⭐½

Ron Superior Carta Reserva Aruba Rum – Review

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Jun 242019
 

This is one of those strange rums that clearly exists, but about which nobody seems to know anything, even though I was informed it remains on sale in Aruba to this day. Jazz Singh out of the UK couldn’t help – he rather witheringly remarked that the only local stuff he found on the island was “a lot of imported column rubbish” and that the one distillery Aruba used to have is definitely closed. And good luck with finding any info on the company whose name is on the label, Playa Liquor and Bottling Co, ‘cause that’s equally opaque and non-communicative. So for the moment I’ll treat is a sort of low rent tourist trap hooch. In fact, I’m not even sure what else the company does, so spare is Playa’s online footprint, on FB or elsewhere.

There is an air of “generic” about the rum. It has a title used before – “Superior Carta Reserva” was also a 1970s Puerto Rican rum made for E.F. Debrot Inc (a liquor merchant in Aruba), and it’s white, it’s 35%, and that’s about all you’re going to get here.  I’d hazard a guess it’s a column still product, and that it’s made elsewhere under contract by a third party…assuming it continues to be made at all, because there’s simply no way that any rum company would not advertise its own product, even locally, with this kind of promotional black hole. 

Tasting notes, then, because what else can we do? Nose: a thin, watery, a slightly salty cream soda and Angostura bitters…what we used to call a “rockshandy” when I was a boy.  Plus vanilla and a whiff of citrus. There’s not much more – it’s like light alcoholic water and no aroma of any distinctiveness whatsoever.

Palate? Nope, not a whole lot there either. 35% ABV excites little beyond my indifference.  Even having it first thing in the morning with nothing else before, so that the strength would be less of a factor than later, achieved nothing.  A splash of salt water and an olive or two, vanilla again, a short, faint bite of a very ripe apple, and maybe a pear…or was that a cucumber? Who cares?  The thing is so dim, so bland, so lacking anything resembling character, that you be forgiven for thinking it was in witness protection. The best part is the short, sweet, slightly salty, slightly dry finish, because, you know, it finishes. 

So there we are. Probably molasses based, filtered, an uninspirational, boring, flaccid excuse for a rum, distinguished only by its remarkable lack of anything in particular. It’s a hollow rum, a watery alcohol delivery system, eliciting nothing in the rum drinker except perhaps a big yawn. I’ll just leave it there.

(#635)(65/100)

Rhum Negresco “First Quality” Very Old

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Sep 172017
 

Rumaniacs Review #056 | 0456

I got this curious thing through separate channels from the usual Rumaniacs (a trend I foresee continuing) and it’s a mini-bottle insufficient to allow me to share it to everyone…so, sorry mes amis.  Still, it’s one of these delightful mystery rhums about which just about nothing turns up on a search, except an old French eBay listing which suggests this is a French West Indian rhum from 1953 (unconfirmed, but how cool is that year, right?) bottled at 44% ABV, so in that sense it conforms to all the reasons the ‘Maniacs exist in the first place – an old, out of production, heritage rhum, a blast from the past which only exists in memories and old internet pages (and now this one)…

Trawling around suggests that “Negresco” was not an uncommon label, used rather more commonly, it would seem, for Martinique rhums; there are references with that title from several bottlers, including Bruggeman out of Belgium, and my little sampler has “R.C Gand” as the company of make – about which there is exactly zero info – so unless a Constant Reader can contribute a nugget of information, we’ll have to be content with that.

Colour – Mahogany

Strength – Assumed 44%

Nose – Reminds me somewhat of the old E.H. Keeling Old Demerara rum (R-019): prunes gone off, bananas just starting to go, plus vinegar, soy and caramel.  Quite a “wtf?” nose, really.  There’s a musty air about it, like an old cupboard aired too seldom.  After a while, some sawdust, old dried-out cigars, a bit of anise, and indeterminate fruits and herbs

Palate – Not bad at all, perhaps because it displays no single island’s characteristics, making it something of a Caribbean rhum, maybe a blend (which I suspected was the case anyway); oddly, though labelled as a “rhum” it has faint hints of anise and deep woody and fruity flavour points in the direction of some Guianese components. With water there are plums, anise, prunes raisins and a salty bite of tequila, coffee, caramel and soya.  I’m convinced the strength is around 50-55%, by the way, though the bottle doesn’t mention it. (Note that I saw a very similar label on rum.cz — a rum label collector in Czecheslovakia — which suggests it is actually 54%, and that makes sense).

Finish – Medium long, warm, coffee, licorice and caramel, very pleasant and easy going.

Thoughts – Quite liked this one, wish I could have had a bottle to take a real long pull at it and take it apart some more.  It’s certainly a decent rhum from Ago, which, if one were to ever find it again, and at a reasonable price, is worth getting.

(85/100)

  • No other Rumaniacs have sampled this rhum, so no links this time.
  • Many thanks to Etienne, who sent this to me.

Professor Cornelius Ampleforth Rumbullion – Review

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May 312016
 
ampleforth

Picture (c) Ocado.com

Too much spice, too much sugar, too little interest.

The name is almost Dickensian in its imagery.  Professor Cornelius Ampleforth could be straight out of the Pickwick Papers…you know, some chubby, benevolent older fellow in half-specs and a faded waistcoat, with rather limited mental capacity, down on his heels, but possessing a good heart. Whatever – the name evokes a certain good humour and indulgence from us, and at the very least is evocative.  That, unfortunately, doesn’t make the Professor’s Rumbullion a rum worth drinking, unless you are into spiced rums and like to have that in your drink (which I’m not and I don’t, so be aware of my personal preferences in this review).

Whether there really is a Professor Cornelius Ampleforth is subject to intense and spirited debate by all the same people who can tell you the middle name of the runner up of the 1959 Tiddlywinks Championship in Patagonia.  The UK company which releases the Rumbullion is called Atom Supplies and under its umbrella of e-commerce and business consultancy, also runs the online shop Master of Malt, and the brand is their independent bottling operation.

They certainly have a sense of humour, as evinced not only by the Professor’s name, but the “Bathtub Gin” they also sell.  What they don’t have is a desire to tell you anything meaningful – one has to go outside their website to find it’s a blend of unnamed Caribbean rums flavoured with various fruits, spices, and Madgascan vanilla. No countries, no distilleries, nothing else. An informational sinkhole of annoying proportions.

Bottled at 42.6% and darkly coloured within an inch of the Kraken, what we had here was a rum that assaulted the nose immediately with enormous and instant nutmeg, vanilla and cinnamon notes, caramel and toffee and chocolate, all of which rushed and jostled and ran heedlessly together like a mob entering a Black Friday sale where everything is  90% off. It was also rather thick and almost chewy, and while back in 2010 I appreciated the Captain Morgan Private Stock for precisely those reasons (no longer, mind you), here it was simply excessive, and there was no order to any of it, no gradual progression from one series of well-blended, coherent smells to another…and that made the whole experience something of a disorganized mess.

And by the time I got around to tasting it, those spices really became too much, which led to flagging interest, waning ardour and a lot of grumbling and head shaking.  So there was cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and sweet dark chocolate – these were somewhat better behaved now – to which, with some water, were added scents of cloves, marzipan (I liked that) and candied oranges, at which point the party was over and I was blatted into near catatonia by just wave upon wave of cloying sweetness (quick Prof, pass the insulin!). So yeah, there were additional elements of taste that weren’t bad, just so strong and so much that it was like having seven incidences of coitus in one night – one wakes up the next morning with an utterly blank brain and no desire to do anything meaningful. Even the warm, short fade exhibited this oversweet sense of warm syrup, without adding any new notes – there was the incessant hammer of cinnamon, caramel, vanilla, and to me it was just overkill.

To its credit, as I don’t hide my preferences, the makers don’t hide anything either: it is a spiced rum, it’s trumpeted as such, and they’re proud of it. But as always, it’s mostly marketing that one gets when one checks: a secret recipe (hate those), fancy wrapping and no information on components or ageing, if any. I guess for less than thirty quid we shouldn’t be asking for more.  This rum is squarely aimed at the casual imbibers who just want a tasty, tarted up, adulterated drink with a little bit of oomph and no hassle, and so although I acknowledge that spiced rums sell briskly for precisely those reasons, they really aren’t my tot of grog.

(#276 / 72/100)

Other notes

  • For the record, I disapprove of an online shop not disclosing in its listings that it is itself the maker of a rum whose tasting notes (by its own staff) are rabidly enthusiastic.
  • The RumShopBoy posted a truly funny and apropos review of this and the Navy Strength variation, and despised the ground it walked on…largely due to measured 43g/L of additives.