One of the things I genuinely appreciate about Europe is the plethora of small, almost unheralded local spirits shows they have all over the place. Granted, many of these are for spirits other than rum – whisky continues to hold the pride of place – but almost all of them have a few booths squirrelled away where the good stuff is shown off over (or under) the counter.
One of these was the Budapest whisky show I went to back in May 2026, less for the rums than to meet my old friend and long time correspondent Sandor, who runs that really amazing site Rumnagykövet (the Rum Ambassador), the only one I know of in Hungary. Sandor almost single handedly flies the flag of rum in that country, and his reviews are great – so to have the opportunity to hang out with the man after years of correspondence, was not one I was willing to forego.
As it turned out, the show was a small one and rum pickings were slim. But off in the corner was a booth showing off the wares of the Colours of Rum, a small indie bottler I have long admired, not just because of their selections, but also because of the vivacity and style of their ambassadors (especially Dominic and Magda, who alas, weren’t there this time). Still, I was happy to sample some of their wares… including the subject of today’s review
The rum we’re looking at here is their Edition No.16, a Jamaican rum from the Clarendon distillery distilled in 1995, and a serious 29 years old, at 61.5%, which was released in April 2025 with a relatively limited outturn of 148 bottles. It has a sort of bifurcated ageing: 23 years in Jamaica, the remainder in Europe, a low ester count of about 250 g/hlpa, and a marque of EMB.
Jamaican marques from Hampden and Worthy Park are fairly well known, but if EMB — which is a Monymusk-Clarendon designation for ester counts and ester counters — has any kind of fame it’s from the Velier EMB/MMW experimental quartet issued almost a decade ago, and other releases from Holmes Cay and 1423 which brought the marque to a wider audience.
Stats never tell the whole tale, and the proof’s in the sampling, so to speak. Here, we have something really damned fine. The nose is amazingly rich, and is both deep and light at the same time. There are aromas of molasses, mint, brown sugar, caramel and vanilla, of course, and for a while, that seems to be all. But stick with it, it’s deceptive that way, and has more to give to the patient: sandalwood, flowers, light fruits,pineapple, lemon juice, cinnamon, plus a bracingly strong tea. Sweet creme brulee, more caramel, toffee, with just a touch of apples, citrus and overripe mangoes. I mean, this thing covers all the major food groups, including some glue and rubber that whisper behind the more assertive aspects of the profile.
The palate continues along this vein of starting slow then building up a head of steam. Initially there are tastes of strawberries, caramel, creme brulee, french toast with syrup, vanilla and some tart unsweetened yoghurt notes, with some indeterminate breakfast spices. And with a tuch of water and time, a tasty saltiness starts to emerge — miso soup, lentils, with crisp vegetables dropped into a hot bone broth. The apples and citrus mellow out but provide a nice counterpoint to the whole thing, and the finish, no surprise, lasts a hell of a long time. Pine sap, some bitter tannics, but nothing to make you swear off the experience. It’s pretty damned fine, and maybe I should have bought me a bottle or three.
The thing is, looking at these tasting notes suggests a sort of standard rum with a few extras added in later, imparted by the long ageing, and whose main claim to fame is the time spent in the barrel. There’s that punchy ABV of course, as well as, perhaps, a relatively obscure Jamaican marque with which not many are familiar. What these points don’t quite convey is the amazing mouthfeel of the rum itself. It’s an oft-bruited complaint for many popular commercial rums, that they should be stronger, but this one carries off an interesting trick – it’s a monster of a rum, yet feels ten points weaker, and believe me, that’s a compliment. The texture and consistency of the delivery is one of extraordinarily firmness without being too forceful, really sipping quality stuff. I liked the nose and rated that around 89, but man, that palate? It elevates the entire experience, and as a consequence, I’m jacking up the score to account for what really is a great rum to have on its own, and one which I wish I had in my own collection.
(#1153)(90/100) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Other notes
- YouTube video review link TBA
- For a good primer on Jamaican rum marks and identifiers, check out the Cocktail Wonk’s article on the subject, which remains relevant.
- The price may be the only thing that should give us pause. This rum retails for around €300 to start and I’ve seen it go for more. That’s not a cheap drink, and I guess each person should make the decision for themselves as to whether my enthusiasm in this review makes it worth a flutter.
Company bio (from review #1090)
The Colours of Rum brand is not the first foray into spirts made by Wealth Solutions, the Polish company founded in 2007 by Masiej Kossowski and his colleague Michal Kowalski. They both hailed from the financial sector, but (possibly as a result of their investment activities and knowledge) they created Wealth Solutions to concentrate on the alcohol market, specifically the investment side of things – not production – and began their work with Bordeaux wines.
Things got interesting in 2012 when they started to go more seriously into distilled spirits: whisky and cognac for the most part, at the top end of the market, and instead of always and only buying and selling, they began bottling their own (for the detail oriented, this included a Karuizawa 1964 48YO, Glenfarclas 1953 58YO, and a trio of Glen Grants 65, 66 and 67 years old). The aha! moment for rum came when Michal Kowalski met with Richard Seale of Foursquare in 2019 and Richard agreed to bottle a “Private Cask Selection” edition of 600 bottles for Wealth Solutions (it was a 12YO), and it sold out so fast that the two founders sensed an untapped market to work with.
This led to the founding of Colours towards the end of 2021 as an independent brand, with the usual concept of bottling single cask rums from different regions. Although initially the idea was to use a colour per country — from the flags of major and well known rum producing nations — there just weren’t enough colours, they soon ran out, and the company switched to just using the colours to make the labels simple and informative.
By 2024, CoR had bottled 63 expressions, mainly from Barbados, Guyana and Jamaica, and as of this writing in 2026, is closing in on 100. The staff of the company have travelled a lot to bring themselves up to speed on the distilleries and to learn about productions techniques. Of late they gained the ability to buy directly from distilleries instead of just through brokers, and that opened new possibilities: for example, in 2024 they launched a series of Hampden DOK expressions aged nine months in various casks (Madeira, Oloroso, PX) and those sold out quickly.
The company markets itself online quite extensively, and is helped by their two best known brand ambassadors — Magda Reszke and Dominik Rudnicki — who also have strong social media profiles, and are, as I noted, very likeable and outgoing people in their own right. So well received has the brand been at various festivals around the world, that a few dedicated bottlings for such expos have been issued: one for Rum Love in Wrocław, another for German Rum Festival, to name but two.