Edward Young & Co. Blue Mountain Old Liqueur Jamaican Rum (1940s/1950s)

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Oct 302024
 

Rumaniacs Review #R-163 | 1097

A good part of the label is missing, but even without that, this is what we know: it’s a rum branded “Blue Mountain Finest Old Liqueur Jamaica Rum” which popped up on one of the two “old rums” auction-site booths I patronised at the 2024 German Rum Festival (unlike the token system at other commercial brands’ booths, here one had to fork out actual coin for one’s dram). It was hand-dated 1930s / 1940s, and the proof point was not noted (the torn label’s missing portion probably had all that).

Still, using that limited data set I was able to find an almost identical label (minor differences in text layout and colours), which came from a bottle of rum made by a UK company called Edward Young & Co. in the 1940s. Following that company’s filings suggested it existed between 1888-1986, except that other labels and logos made a better case that it had originally been founded in 1797 and officially registered in 1885; by 1936 they were exporting to other parts of the British Empire, including Ceylon and Canada

Unfortunately, there’s nothing deeper – names of founders, 20th century owners, addresses, etc, are all hard to unearth without paying for it, and the company is now inactive. Their blurb does mention they were “distillers and wine, brandy and rum shippers”. The dating of the1940s for this bottle seems about right, but I believe the 1930s is more conjectural.

There remain unknowns: the strength was on the missing part of the label, and other variations of this rum were made, some at 70° proof (40% ABV), others at 35%. Based on my tasting and the label, I’d say 40%. Also, the estate / distillery of origin is never mentioned – in the 1940s there were more distilleries in business than currently, blending multiple sources was common and mentioning a single distillery or estate was not a thing, so for me to say more would be rank speculation – there simply is no information to be going on.

Other points of interest:

The use of the word “liqueur” to denote a more refined and upscale rum was common at one time (the famous Wray & Nephew 17 YO was called a “liqueur rum” for example. If you’re interested, see Matt’s excellent article on the subject) but during the 1960s it appears to have faded into disuse and now the word has a distinct meaning of its own, clearly separated from rum as we understand it.

Edward Young & Co were the originators of one of my favourite low-end mixing staples, the Guyanese / Canadian Young’s Old Sam, which came under the umbrella of the Newfoundland Liquor Corporation in 1999 – to this day the rum’s label sports the date of founding and the name of that original company. However, since there is no Edward Young any longer, and the rum is bulk stock shipped by DDL to Newfoundland for bottling and blending (instead of via the UK as was once the case), one can only assume that the label has all that on it for consistency and as a line to the past – not out of any sense of current commercial reality. But honestly, I sigh when I read stuff like that – I’d love to know more about the connection and its background.

Rum Auctioneer and other auction sites have had the rum or a variant of it for sale a few times. A 1947 edition sold in 2023 for £470, anther for £310 and the Old Spirits Company, in an undated post, advertised another for sale at $2,761 (assumed US$).

Colour – dark brown

Strength – Assumed 40% ABV / 70° proof

Nose – Even taking into account its provenance and relatively mild strength, this is a serious rum. Opens with pungent fleshy fruits – peaches, apricots, range peel, tangerines. Salt, leather, plastic, olives, rubber, and a mild briny solution

Palate – Thin and underpowered, but with many of the same notes. Oranges, candy, flowers, some plastic and rubbing alcohol. Slightly sweet, some leather and smoke, a touch of bitterness and vanilla from the barrel, but nothing untoward.

Finish – as short and brisk and purposeful as a salaryman’s stride.

Thoughts – Little identifies this as one distillery or another, and indeed, I do believe it’s a blend of pot and column still sources. The nose is really good and the palate, for all the brevity of my description above, does present with authority and verve. Really good rum to taste, not least because it shines a light into what taste profiles were eighty years ago, and how they have developed since then.

(#1097 | R-163)(87/100)

Other notes

Makazai Gold “Tribute” Rum (Goa, India) – Review

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Aug 192024
 

For those of not actually from India or part of the extended diaspora, the only rums from the subcontinent which most of us ever knew about were the Old Monk, the Amrut Two Indies and Old Port, and maybe a smattering of others like MacDowell’s, Hercules, Contessa, and, more recently, the Camikara. Yet India has been making distilled spirits for centuries, including from sugar cane, and so it comes as no surprise that as the growth of rum as a premium spirit continues around the world, local entrepreneurs would look to establish small craft brands or distilleries of their own. Such spirits would go beyond the doctored mass-market hooch which permeates the local market and adhere to more exacting standards set by small microdistilleries around the world.

Whether the recently established company of Stilldistilling Spirits will be able to mine that vein of perceived quality remains to be seen. I do not hold out much hope when a company tells us little (or nothing) about sourcing methods, production, blending and ageing strategy. We do, on the other hand, get a lot of hagiographies about the founder, and much elevated rhetoric about inspirations, logo selection and mission statements. Which, to me, is less than helpful in assessing the rum itself.

Be that as it may, here is what is known about the Makazai Gold “Tribute” Rum. All ingredients and physical components of the bottle are Indian made. The actual source of the distillate is never disclosed, though it is implied to be Goa or Maharashtra, and is stated in a 2021 Rumporter article to be 2½ year old aged cane spirit from the Punjab (something of a problem since that could mean a neutral spirit or one from cane juice) combined with molasses spirit (ditto, except now we don’t know if there is any ageing involved here as well). Blending and bottling takes place in Goa where the owners have leased a facility to do so, and until recently the rum was only sold there. It’s 42.8% ABV, which is sort of standard strength over there, and equates to 75 proof (or “25 degrees under proof”) under the old Imperial system.

With this background dispensed with, what is the gold rum actually like?

Succinctly put, it’s a bit better than entry level, but not much. There you are. You may cease reading.

The nose is immediately problematic because not much happens and what does happen is lacklustre – which is a shame, because what little one does sense, is at least intriguing. There’s ghee and cooking oil smoking in an overheated cast iron pan, plus turmeric and honey as the primary elements. These are then added to with a slightly sweet aroma of stewed apples, cinnamon, light vanilla, cardamom and tinned peaches. It’s all very delicate and vague, and there’s a thinness to it that doesn’t really work for me.

On the palate it’s no better: “thin and flat” read my terse notes. It’s somewhat akin to the let down of the Camikara 3YO (review coming soon to the unread blog near you) which was also 42.8% and had a similarly scrawny corpus. It is only with some effort that I can pick out honey, figs, biscuits in milky tea, and (oddly enough) some red currants – it’s nice but honestly, not enough either; and the finish, which is short in duration and quite easy, closes things off with something of a whimper: some indeterminate dark fruit, cinnamon, vanilla and a touch of brine and salty caramel chocolate

That there are so many notes to write down is to the rum’s credit, and there is a certain “tawniness” to it that I like – I’ve detected that ghur note in the profile of many Indian rums, suggesting a jaggery based source. The issue is that the various parts don’t play well together – the balance is off and it leans too much to the sweet spices side without a countervailing tart or sour aspect that would make it more interesting. Plus, the whole thing lacks body, heft, a certain force that would make it memorable. If they ever solve that issue – whether by naking it stronger or improving the blend or actually distilling their own rum instead of getting it from elsewhere and cobbling a blend together – then they may really have something to show off. For now, the rum train has limped into the station minus several cars.

(#1087)(79/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • My deepest appreciation to Nikkhil of WhiskyFlu, who provided the bottle gratis. His website and IG feed is always worth a look, and he’s a great guy to boot.
  • My hydrometer tests this out at 43%, so it’s clean from that perspective.
  • The now-usual video review of this rum is here

Company background

Makazai is actually a two word term “Maka Zai” meaning “I want” in Konkani, the language spoken in Goa and Maharashtra (in central-west India). It was made the brand name by the founder of the company, Katsuri Banerjee, who left a career in financial services to take up bartending in a bar named Koko, located in an upscale neighborhood in Mumbai called Lower Parel.

Once she qualified as a bartender she wanted to also become a blender and create her own spirits – whether whisky or rum or gin is not entirely clear, though eventually, as we see here, it was rum that won out perhaps because the competition for premium craft rum space was less. After interning at an (unnamed) Indian distillery and settling on making a rum, Stilldistilling Spirits was incorporated in 2020 with funds raised from friends and family and managed to survive the global COVID shutdown by concentrating initially on branding and packaging, before emerging in 2021 with a white rum (the “Bartender’s Edition” geared to the mixologists) and a gold one (the “Tribute Edition” – it is meant to be a standard celebratory tipple for everyone). There is an aged limited edition called the Mesma with a mere 600 bottles in circulation, about which as little is known as the other two.

What little most non-residents know of alcohol in Goa comes about because they went there on a vacation, or tasted the local liquor called Feni. However it would appear that Goa has, of late, become something of a manufacturing hub for distilled homegrown spirits (Google maps shows around forty distilleries there), not least due to the ease of laws relating to liquor production and marketing which constrain other provinces in a still-conservative India. Whether these are new or old companies, at least some of the blend components of the rums released by the Makazai comes from one or more of these establishments, though it is my personal belief that some is sourced from elsewhere in India (the references to “heritage suppliers” suggests this). The company has leased a blending and bottling plant in Goa to handle the physical production, and has expended from and initial 200 cases of sales back in early 2021, to 2,000 in early 2022, at the time mostly sold in Goa, Karnataka, and Maharashtra (and expansion to other parts of India ongoing).

Opinion

While I appreciate the sheer guts, blood, sweat and tears that must go into getting an enterprise like this off the ground in India – especially for a female entrepreneur in what is a resolutely male dominated profession and tipple – I am somewhat impatient with Stilldistilling’s website and the press articles I’ve referred to in this article. That stems from an excess of marketing folderol that’s all sound and fury signifying nothing, versus a paucity of facts that might help a consumer get, you know, some real info. This is the sort of thing that annoys me with rums from the Americas, but irrespective of location, for people who should have their fingers on the pulse of current trends in transparency to be pulling this kind of advertising-only crap on us when launching a new brand strikes me as shortsighted, and somewhat indifferent to us as consumers.

I deduct no points for lack of disclosure: however, the lack of details in what makes the rum what it is annoying. We don’t know too many things here. Which distillery (or distilleries) provided the distillate; data about the base source of cane juice, molasses or neutral spirit; what kind of still or stills made it; anything about fermentation; how long it was aged for and where and in what kinds of barrels; or what the outturn was. Not all of these things are necessary – indeed, one could cynically argue that none of them truly are, if all you want to do is drink the thing – but the fact remains that in today’s rum world where the scars of the sugar wars and battles over transparency still run deep, and cause elevated blood pressure to this day, it is ridiculous to not be provided at least some of it. And purported alco-bev veterans are supposed to be behind behind this rum? One wonders if they learned nothing from all the social media bloodletting over the last decade.

Modern consumers and producers who really want rum to be taken to the next level cannot be made or expected to accept a rum on trust, which has zero verifiable background info. Not in this day and age. Trust and reputation for square dealing and disclosure go a long way to establishing a company’s street cred and character. If a new rum producing company claims to want to become a true craft premium rum producer, then it had better start making disclosure a priority – otherwise, like so many other Indian rums, it will remain there and never attain the global heights to which they aspire.

 

Bumbu XO Blended Panamanian Rum – Review

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May 032024
 

Sooner or later, even those rums that many regard as no more than the mangy spirituous curs, the spavined, rice-eating, lice-ridden mongrels of the rum world, need to be acknowledged. We all know who makes them, and who they are. To those who dislike them, they yap at the doorsteps of the rumhouse with an incessant sort of insistence day in and day out, and are dissed and dismissed with sneers and contempt at every turn. And yet there are those who swear by them with truculent blue collar appreciation as well: such rums have always existed, and have always invited disputation. They are part of the Great Rum Tree, and must be acknowledged at some point, if only to demonstrate what they are and why they elicit such strong reactions.

Bumbu, in spite of the suggestive narrative on their website, is not a distillery, it’s a brand owned by Sovereign Spirits which also owns similarly hyped and marketed sparkling wines, gins, liqueurs and three Bumbu products, two of which pass for rums with only the greatest of generosity. They are all aimed squarely at the cocktail crowd and show off slick press, cool looking bottles, celebrity endorsements, and make absolutely no imprint on the minds of those who actually know their drinks. And who is Sovereign? A family owned spirits company from NY founded in 1999 by ex-merchant banker and entrepreneur Brett Berish, with a wide marketing footprint around the world.

To understand exactly what excites the reactions to the brand that it does, one has to go back to the Original (which I’ve tried but never written about). This was a rum that emerged around 2017 or so and was supposedly made from a Barbados distillery in existence “since 1893”, which is to say, WIRD. Serge of WhiskyFun, in a savagely eviscerating review that awarded a contemptuous 15 points to this 35% “rum” (it is now marketed as being spiced, though it was not at the time) remarked that it was blended with other countries’ rums but I’ve seen no other corroboration of this claim. At 35% ABV and testing out at 40g/L of added sugar and tarnished by all the subsequent bad press WIRD’s owners got, and its undisclosed additives, it was no surprise that connoisseurs avoided it like the plague. Yet so popular did the rum prove – let’s face it, easy and non-complex and tarted-up spirits are catnip to those who just want to get hammered on something that tastes ok – that a mere couple of years later, the XO came on the scene.

The XO boasted the same slick marketing. Originating from Panama this time, words like “premium” “craft” “by hand” “artisanal” “120 year old distillery” and “18 years” were tossed around, the presentation was first rate and was competitively priced. No mention has ever been made about a solera style system (which is suspected by many since 18 YO rums do not usually got for €40), but parsing the language finds the usual weasel words of “up to 18 years old” on some websites, which nails it as a blend about which we therefore know nothing — especially the proportions — except that it comes from Don Jose distillery, is columnar still and made from molasses in the Latin/Spanish style. Aged in ex-bourbon and finished in sherry barrels. Being issued at 40% is, I guess, a step up for the producers, who trumpeted it as “full strength.” Right, But in an interesting turnaround, my hydrometer clocks this at 38.25% ABV…or 8g/L of something added, which is not a whole lot – it may be that they’ve been revamping the blend somewhat of later, who knows?

So, with all this introduction out of the way: does it work or not, and is it a “boring” piece of blah, as Wes Burgin remarked in his own 1½ star 2019 review?

Yes and no. It’s way better than the oversweet mess that was the banana confected coconut-tasting Original I recall from a traumatic tasting a few years ago. It’s crisper on the nose, with elements of banana, damp tobacco, ginger, molasses, brown sugar, coffee, vanilla and caramel. All the usual hits are playing, in other words. The additives are there, while fortunately having a less than overwhelming impact in how it smells.

It’s on the palate that it fails, I think. Here there’s much less to enjoy. Tannins, coffee grounds, caramel and vanilla, some molasses and sweet cherries…even the faintest hint of astringency. It’ll bite at the tongue somewhat, sure: what starts to happen as it opens up, however, is that the sugar (or whatever else they added in to smoothen things out) begins to flatten out the peaks and troughs of what could have been a much more interesting rum if left to develop on its own without it. It just starts to feel vaguely one dimensional after a few minutes and adding in “a single ice cube” as the web entry suggests is ludicrously self defeating — it closes up the drink so you get even less than before. The finish is almost nonexistent, whispering of ginger, coffee, tannins and tumeric, but honestly, it’s slim picking by this point.

Summing up, there’s some bite here, quite welcome and as the notes above demonstrate, you can sink your teeth into it and enjoy it…up to a point. I’m not sure making it stronger would help, frankly, there’s simply too little to work with. Moreover, as with many such rums made in this way, there’s no sense of originality or something that would make you sit up and take notice. It could come from anywhere, be made by anyone, and exists to sell not to enjoy.

So: no real information on bottle or website; no age statement that can be trusted; flashy pizzazz and marketing; a profile that’s indifferent; standard strength; not a whole lot to be tasting. It’s the sort of entry-level rum that’s made to move by the cartload, and evidently it does. For those who actually know their rums or care that they are well made, it’s a product that is content to be boring, I guess, and one they would be happy to pass by for that reason. Rightfully so in my view, because there’s too little here to make even that low price seriously attractive.

(#1069)(76/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Caves do Barrocão Rhum Fantasia (Portugal)(1970s)

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Feb 062024
 

Photo (c) Whisky Auctioneer

Rumaniacs Review R-162 | #1055

Fantasias as a class of rum have pretty much faded from public view, only resurrected periodically in retrospectives like this one – these days spiced rums and spirit liqueurs hog attention and wallets. Yet they were popular, once, mostly in Europe around the 1950s to 1970s. By the eighties the style had started to diminish in popularity and the rise of standards and production regulation at a country- or regional level, as well as the emergence of a “pure” rum culture probably caused is eventual demise…though not it’s complete extinction..

What Fantasia rums were, was an evolution of the “Inlander” or domestic rhums of Germany and eastern Europe, also called verschnitt: Stroh, Tuzemak, Badel Domaci, Maraska and Casino 50° are its inheritors. Originally it was cheap or neutral alcohol – often from beets – that was then added to: sometimes that addition was high ester Jamaican rums like DOKs, at others it was herbs and spices or infusions that gave it a local touch. It was always meant to be a sort of digestif, and this was why many of them were noted as being liqueurs. Italy was famed for them and indeed the first ones I ever found were from there, made by companies like Antoniazzi, Pagliarini, Tocini and Masera, who almost nobody now recalls.

As with those, not much is known about the company that made this one, except that it hails from west-central Portugal south of Porto; it was a wine wholesesaler and importer that also dealt in brandies and sparkling wines, and the “manufacture of prepared and unprepared spirits” (the Portuguese term is Aguardentes preparadas / não preparadas – fabricantes for those who want to try a better translation than my evidently wobbly one here). As far as I can tell, the company, which had a history dating back to the post-war years, eventually filed for insolvency in 2012 and was completely liquidated in 2023.

Nose – No surprise: wispy and faint, and quite thin. Apricots and cherries in syrup, Ripe peaches and the tartness of unripe fleshy fruits. Cherry syrup and myrtle, rosemary. White wine, green grapes, toffee and some vanilla. A touch of apple cider and lemon pie.

Palate – Sweet, but with an edge. Ripe apples and riper mangoes, plus those cherries in syrup again, which if I recall those first Italian fantasias from the 1950s I tried so many years ago, was something of a characteristic for them too. A nice hint of brine, olives and hot black tea; vanilla zest and some ice cream is about all.

Finish – Sweet, light, bland; vanilla and light pears, a touch of salt.

Thoughts – Such a mixed bag of various tastes and aromas, that it comes out as indeterminate, and the additions are clear: no barrel ever imparted flavours such as these, although there is a tinge of “ruminess” coiling about the whole thing, so it’s not completely bad. Still, even at 40%, discerning a real profile is an effort in concentration: at end, what we conclude is that it really is mostly like flavoured rum-like ethanol and sugar water, without enough of a body or character to make a coherent statement for today’s rum enthusiasts. We buy it more for history and curiosity, not for sharing or showing off.

(75/100) ⭐⭐½

Other notes

  • The term “corado artificialmente” on the label means “artificially coloured”
  • The rhum was bought at auction – the 1970s era dates from the listing – and shared with me by ex-rumista, wrestling enthusiast and good friend, Nicolai, so thanks to the man for the assist.

Bayou White Louisiana Rum (USA) – Review

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Jan 282024
 

Consider for a moment the distinctive bottle shape and sleek label design ethos of the Bayou Louisiana white rum. The crystal clear white and green1 motifs (call me an overly-visual imagineer if you will) hints at cane juice, grass, and sunshine and channels thoughts of a clean and tasty white rum in fine style. Just as well that this is all in my head because while the text tells you the usual stats, little of the images and sense of what they represent, is real.

The company making the rum is called Louisiana Spirits LLC: it was founded in 2011 by brothers Tim and Trey Litel and their friend Skip Cortes, with Bayou as their flagship brand in January 2013 (the idea had been floated in a duck blind). The chosen name was obvious (and survey-tested for its recognition factor, as if this were necessary), and back then the design had a ‘gator on it. By 2018 in a rebranding exercise it had been renamed “White” and the modern design had snapped into focus. The wag in me suggests that maybe more surveys were done but actually that’s when the SPI Group (the owners of Stoli vodka and headquartered in Luxembourg) who had already bought a majority stake in 2016, acquired all the remaining shares and took over. Some still tout it as being the largest privately owned rum distillery in the US, which I guess depends on how you look at it and where the private hands are.

Anyway, the production details: those are scanty. The label says it’s made from molasses and “sugar cane” (what does that mean, I wonder?); the company website notes the molasses as being blackstrap, provided by a family-owned sugar mill in Louisiana, M.A. Patout and Sons (whose centuries-old history is quite interesting in its own right), yet don’t seem to have any interest in making cane juice rums in the one state which has oodles of cane fields in close proximity. They have a pot still. They blend. The white rum supposedly rests for forty days before being bottled. That’s it.

Based on how it samples, I wonder at that last bit — because all the solid character of a rum that’s had nothing but “rest” to calm it down off the still, is missing. The rum is a whole lot of standard strength nothing-in-particular. The nose channels a puling sort of weak candied ethanol, vanilla, watered down yoghurt (is there such a thing?) plus a whiff of shoe polish, sugar water and the faintest suggestion of pears and watermelon. This is a glass I poured first thing in the morning when the senses were sharp, kept there for an entire day, and that flaccid set of notes was all that was there the whole time.

There’s a bit more action on the plate, though I confess that this is damning it with faint praise since it started from such a low level already. Some sweet gherkins, a touch of tart fruit, biscuits, more ethanol and sugar water. I thought I spotted a green grape making out with a ripe pear at one stage, but admit this could be my imagination, the whole thing is is so faint and lacklustre. The finish is actually not too bad – it has some sharpness and dry robust character, and here one can get a vague sense of apples, green grapes and vanilla. Overall, however, it’s too little, too faint, too late and simply serves to demonstrate how everything that comes before is sub-par.

The Rumaniacs series boasts many examples of anonymous inflight minis, holiday-resort stalwarts and cruise ship staples exactly like it, and maybe that’s all this is really good for, because it channels the sort of bland, lightly aged, filtered, colourless mixers that Bacardi did with such aplomb in the seventies. Bayou continues this noble tradition, and lures you in with a great presentation bolted on to a taste that’s inoffensively boring and milquetoast, and so devoid of character, that one is, with genuine befuddlement, forced ask what they thought they were doing. If Bayou were trying to make a light vodka-like spirit, or a standard white back-bar mixer without pretensions, then they surely succeeded. If they were trying to make a white that wowed people’s socks off and put the US rum producers on the map, not even close.

(#1053)(72/100) ⭐⭐½

Other Notes

  • From my experience, I would suggest the rum is slightly aged and filtered to white, even if this is not mentioned anywhere.
  • Although taken over by SPD, much of the original staff seem to have remained involved, especially the head distiller, blender and even the owners.
  • Video review can be found here.

Opinion

While for most average rum drinkers or rum buyers the disclosure on production mentioned above is enough, for my money that’s not even basic information. Fermentation is not mentioned; abv off the still is not disclosed; no photo of the still is on the website; and the ageing program is never discussed, which is to say, is the rum treated a la Bacardi with one or two year’s ageing and then filtered to white, or is a true unrefined white such as are increasing in popularity and which actually taste like a rum, not alcoholic water?

None of this is considered important enough to either mention on their website, in any of their many press releases, or interviews in the media. To me, it says a lot for what the rum truly is: a commercially and indifferently distilled product with no pretensions to being anything more. I don’t hold any grudges on this account, but what’s the big deal about mentioning it? Own your sh*t ,and don’t dress it up like something it’s not.

Still, one can only admire their expansion. The company stated it was moving 15,000 cases a year in seven states by the time Stoli approached them at the tail end of 2015, which is an incredible feat to have accomplished in three years, when you think about what the market in the US is like — one can conclude either it’s because of their great product or their great distributor or great marketing.

But I am of the belief that no producer or distiller who is truly proud of the product they make, tells you so little about it while dressing up their bottle so smartly…or disposes of their interest so fast. The fact that they sold out less than five years after they began suggests that money was always the motive, not making a really good white rum that would put Bayou on any list of great American rum producers. And I think that’s something of a shame.

 

Key Rums of the World – Plantation OFTD Overproof Rum

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Nov 102023
 

In 2015 an up and coming small rum maker called Plantation wanted to make a bar mixer to go beyond its decently regarded and well-selling Original Dark, which back then was primarily Trinidad distillate. The company had already made a name for itself in the bartending circuit with its blends like the Three Star, and its initial attempts at becoming an indie bottler got some decent reviews (mine among them). People liked them. The secondary maturation abroad and dosage, had not yet become issues. Their rums were deemed pretty good.

To the end of filling a gap in the overproof dark rum segment of the mixing market, Alexandre Gabriele the owner, repeated the process he had used to make the Three Star – he consulted with people who were in the industry, and brought together six personages of the rum world whose experiences behind the bar and within the cocktail culture were such that their opinions held real weight: Jeff “Beachbum” Berry from Latitude 29, Martin Cate from Smuggler’s Cove, Paul McFadyen who was then at Trailer Happiness, Paul McGee from Lost Lake, Scotty Schuder from Dirty Dick, and Dave Wondrich, a cocktail historian. Based on lots of samples and lots of tastings (and probably lots of cheerfully inebriated arguments) they set to work to make a mixer that it was hoped would elevate tropical cocktails and Tiki drinks to the next level, take on Lemon Hart and Hamilton’s overproof rums, and carve its own niche in the world.

Products designed by committee rarely succeed, but here may be the exception that proves the rule: from that beginning so many years ago, the OFTD, first released in July 2016, has become one of the most popular mixing drinks ever made, perhaps not quite rivalling Bacardi in ubiquity, but so versatile and affordable and let’s face it, even drinkable, that it has become a commercial and private bar staple. Even as the groundswell of dislike for Plantation has grown into ever more poisonous online discourse, the Old Fashioned Traditional Dark, made from rums deriving from Barbados, Guyana, and Jamaica, has flourished. It eclipses every other rum in the company’s “Bar Classic” series of the line (Stiggins’ Fancy and Xaymaca are popular for other reasons); it is a step above and much more interesting than the overly sweet “Signature” blends and surely easier on the wallet than the Single Cask, Extreme or Vintage editions.

What makes it so popular and so well regarded? To some extent it really is how well the blend works; the strength certainly helps, and for sure so does the lack of any additives – it is one of the few rums Plantation makes which is not dosed. When one looks under the hood, it’s really quite a bit more complex than at first seems to be the case: back in 2018 The ‘Wonk said that the makeup was Guyana (Port Mourant distillate aged 1-2 Years in new and ex-Cognac French oak), Barbados (WIRD distillate, 4 years in new French oak and 2-4 Years in heavy toasted American white oak); and Jamaica (Clarendon MLC 1-2 Years in new French oak, Long Pond TECC 1-2 Years also in new French oak, Long Pond STCE 8½ years in ex-bourbon and ex-Cognac, and lastly some Long Pond TECA 19½ years in ex-bourbon and ex-Cognac). All blended and tied up in a bow at 69% ABV, and while perhaps by 2023 the blend has shifted somewhat, that’s not an inconsiderable amount of taste profiles to be balancing against one other — that anything drinkable comes out at the other end is some kind of minor miracle, because my experience is that blends trying to do so much with so many things, often crash and burn.

Not here, I don’t think. The nose is no slouch and gets going immediately: hot fierce and sharp as befitting the strength, and starting the party off with banana (at one point I got banana bread, at another flambeed), caramel, and brown sugar damp with molasses. Coffee grounds, unsweetened chocolate, anise and allspice are there, leavened with coconut shavings, a touch of anise, brine, and even a mild pinch of citrus. It’s initially quite sharp and alcoholic and it’s recommended to let the glass stand a bit to let that burn off, and once you get there, it’s a nose that sticks around for a long time.

The palate is where one has to make a decision regarding the strength because it is young and it is rough at the inception – many reviews and write ups suggest adding a bit of water to tame it. I don’t think that’s really necessary but then, I have had a lot of rums north of 70% so maybe I’m just used to it. Anyway, the initial palate is all ethanol until it burns off; some rubber and licorice and damp sawdust (that may be the PM talking), molasses and caramel, bitter coffee grounds and chocolate again with traces of ripe mangoes, grapes and even some pineapple (which may be the Jamaican tekkin’ front). There are some vanilla, bon-bons, citrus notes and black pepper here and there, and a finish that oddly reminded me of chocolate oranges mixing it up with salt caramel ice cream topped with a few strawberries…go figure, right?

Evaluating it after trying it maybe four or five times over a period of a year, I get why it’s popular: once you get past the initial burn, you can sip the thing. It is dark, strong, noses nicely and tastes a treat, and such burn and sharp stabs as it displays are, to me, just products of its relative youth (I doubt that there is a whole lot of the aged Longpond elements in there), and in fairness it is designed to be mixed, not sipped. It makes a cool rum and coke of course, and does yeoman’s work in both a daiquiri and a mai tai as well as any other libation a creative bartender can come up with. On top of all that, the damned rum is really affordable: I’ve heard that bars are incentivised with huge cash-back enticements, and that the bulk capacity of WIRD helps keep production costs down, but all that is behind the scenes – this is a rum that subjects itself to the Stewart Affordability Conjecture and takes it seriously.

And if the taste doesn’t sway you, consider the popular statistics. It is a fixture on just about every “with what do I start stocking my home cocktail bar?” recommendation list I’ve ever seen, and the reddit comment sections are filled with people remarking that it’s a rum worth having on any shelf. There is almost no negative review on any subreddit that I’ve looked at, and even those that are less than complimentary usually concede that some aspects of it are fine, or that it has its points here and there and that it’s a moral decision for them not to buy it or stock it. Of the 185 consumer ratings on Distiller from 2016 to 2023, 95% are three-star or higher; on Rum Ratings, nearly 90% out of 257 raters gauged it at 7/10 or better and on Rum-X it has an average of 7.5/10 from 194 people who left a score. These are representative of wide cross sections of the rum drinking public and cannot easily be discounted, whatever one might think of the parent company (and nowadays that is almost all negative). Paul Senft, The Fat Rum Pirate and Rum Shop Boy have all written about it and liked it.

Summing up, the Plantation Old Fashioned Traditional Dark is a deserved yet unusual — perhaps even controversial — entry to the Key Rums series. It is a multi-country blend, not something that showcases a certain country. Yes, it was deliberately created to do only one thing, and therefore its value as an all-round consumer drink is somewhat circumscribed; yes it’s really strong, and sure…in that segment it stays and plays. Yet as I have suggested here, it has qualities over and above all that. It supercedes the modest aims of its creators, to the point where it actually can stand by itself. It remains, nearly a decade after its introduction, one of the most reviewed, commented on and widespread rums around and if its shine is less now than it was when first introduced and now that it has stiffer competition, there is no reason to doubt either its many uses or availability. It remains, for all its parent company’s woes, an incredibly popular and in-use bar staple and drinking adjunct to this day. It demonstrates, if nothing else, how well the Caribbean distillates work with each other in a way that is not often seen. And that’s no mean accomplishment for any rum – especially one made by this outfit – to claim. One can only ask why more of the company’s rums don’t adhere to its philosophy.

(#1038)(84/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other Notes

  • In this essay, I have made a deliberate decision to focus on the rum: not to get into the conflict and bad press Plantation gets (or why they get it), not to express my personal opinion on the issues surrounding the company, and to simply mention that such issues exist. There are sufficient resources around — reddit has some good if heated discussions on the matter — for anyone with an interest to find out what the story is.
  • I am unsure if any part of the ageing takes place in Europe and was unable to confirm it one way or the other.

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 2 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

Woods Old Charlie Jamaica Rum 70° Proof (1970s)

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Sep 152023
 

Rumaniacs Review R-158 | #1025

Most people in the UK are familiar with the Woods brand and the rise of online auctions over the last years spread knowledge further, so it’s become reasonably common knowledge that Woods was founded in 1887 and bought by William Grant & Sons from Diageo in 2002 along with OVD and Vat 19. However, Diageo’s ownership seems to have been rather recent – they acquired the Woods brand from Seagram in 2000 when that company merged with Vivendi and divested some of its properties.

1955 Advertisement for Wood’s Old Charlie

Seagram’s acquisition of Woods was much earlier, though: there is a reference that in during the Second World War, Seagram “imported rum from Puerto Rico and Jamaica, which led to the purchase of distilleries in the Caribbean that produced Captain Morgan, Myers’s, Wood’s and Trelawny rums.” This is probably Longpond and Clarendon in Jamaica (the Puerto Rico operations are outside the scope of this article); and a 2009 paper by Graham Taylor notes that “Between 1952 and 1956, Sherriff & Co. of Jamaica, Wood & Co., Ltd., Robert Legge & Co., Ltd., and Myers Rum Co., Ltd., of Nassau were all added to the Seagram empire.”

Whoever owned it and whether a company favoured Jamaica or Guyana for the releases, Wood’s remains a successful brand on sale to this day – supposedly still using the original recipe for Navy rum (which is unlikely, but ok, that’s marketing for you). For the most part they have acted as merchant bottlers, blending and bottling rums from the British Caribbean, primarily Jamaica and Guyana – the current Old Navy Rum is all Guyana, for example while there is no sign of a Jamaica – and vacillated between 40% and 57% ABV over the decades, depending on what they were making.

Not much has changed since I first wrote about Woods 100 Navy Rum ten years ago – the site remains a receptacle of no-information. We have no sense of who the movers and shakers of the original company were, what other rums they made, how the labels changed over the years, the different bottlings, the heritage, the history, the 2002 sale, nothing. And to add insult to injury, there’s not even a mention of the Old Charlie rum, let alone who he was, and nowadays, this version is neither made nor listed on the website. Stuff like this makes me despair for the next generation of rum writers and researchers.

Colour – Amber

Strength – 70° Proof / 40% ABV

Nose – Solid aromas here…but initially quite peculiar. Peeling wallpaper, tatty paper, cardboard and old books in the bookshelves of back alley second hand bookstores where you might find a first edition of Rums of the Eastern Caribbean gathering dust. Chocolate, vanilla, coffee, brine, cream puffs, ginger bread cookies, lemon meringue pie…a sort of olfactory dessert table, accompanied by enough faux leather to outfit a bunch of wannabe hoods doing a doo-whop on the corner. Or maybe Adam West just flew by in new rubber threads, who knows – the rum is old, it could be anything

Palate – Not bad. Iodine, ethanol, acetone, all burning off fast. Some licorice (rather light), caramel, vanilla, toffee, all the usual that suggests something of a nascent Appleton from Ago but which remains hard to define precisely. Brine, hot black tea, fish oil, olives. It’s not very sweet, rather more like tart. Nuts and too-old, too-strong, too-bitter percolated coffee, yet for all that, I liked it.

Finish – Short. Nothing special here, a recap at best. Dry, some ripe fruits, raisins, chocolate, coffee.

Thoughts – It’s okay. A lot of muskiness, a sort of dry spiciness, not so much in the funk department. It’s hard to pinpoint the rums origin as Jamaican beyond doubt (although there’s no real reason to) because the crisp clarity of today’s funky island rums which we have learned to grade so well, is missing — and so to say which estate distillery made it, or even that it’s Jamaican at all, is harder than it appears. Still, the general profile of the rum remains consistent with others from the brand I’ve sampled over the years, and if auction sites come up with these older 1970s and 1960s and earlier Woods rums, I’d buy them on general principles, and not just for the history.

(82/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other Notes

  • My thanks and deep appreciation to Nicolai Wachmann who sent me the sample, knowing of my love and interest in older and almost forgotten rums.
  • The exact dating and bottling of the rum is unclear. Given the source, I think 1970s is a reasonable estimate – a bottle from the 1960s strikes me as being too rare on the secondary market and by the late 1970s the ° Proof symbol was replaced by % ABV.
  • Age is unknown, still unknown, estate/distillery is unconfirmed to be (possibly) Long Pond or Clarendon.

Bristol Spirits Guyana-Guadeloupe Overproof Rum – Review

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Sep 062023
 

Bristol Spirits – also known as Bristol Classic Rum — holds the distinction of being one of the earlier independent UK bottlers who was and remains specifically not a distillery or a whisky bottler, such as the ones which held sway in the 1980s and 1990s. While Gordon & MacPhail, A.D. Rattray, Cadenhead and a few other companies from Scotland occasionally amused themselves by issuing a rum, few took it seriously, and even the indie Italians like Samaroli and Moon Imports and Rum Nation took a while to get in on the act. Of course, the worm is turning and the situation is changing now with the rise of the New Brits, but that’s another story.

Bristol Spirits, unlike those old houses, focused on rum almost immediately as they were founded in 1993, and while their earlier bottlings are now the stuff of misty legend and tall tales, I can tell you of some releases which are now considered near-classics of the genre: the 1980 30YO Port Mourant, the 1974 34 YO Caroni, and the pair of Very Old Rums from 1974 (Jamaica, 30YO) and 1975 (Demerara, 35YO); plus, some would likely add the Rockley Still 26YO 1986 Sherry Finish. Gradually as the years wore on, John Barrett – who remains the managing director of the company and runs it personally with his son in law Simon Askey – branched off into barrel selection and ageing and does a brisk sideline in trading aged rums or laying down new stocks with other small indies or private clients, and occasionally dabbles in the blending game…more to assuage a creative itch and see what will happen, I sometimes think, than to make the final sale (Florent Beuchet of Compagnie des Indes has also gone down this path).

One of these blends which Bristol came up with is this interesting overproof bottled at 59% – unfortunately there’s very little I can tell you about the off-white product, since there is literally nothing online anywhere that speaks to it. The strength and that it comes from Guyana and Guadeloupe is all I know, though Simon tells me it was released around the late 1990s / 2000 (after which, in an interesting bit of trivia, JB soured on doing miniatures such as I had scored for this review) and the Guadeloupe component was likely Damoiseau (to be confirmed) – other than that, the still of the former, the distillery in the latter, the proportions, the ageing, the source material, the actual release date…all the usual stuff we now almost take for granted is missing from official records.

Well, that makes it a really blind tasting, so let’s get to it. Nose first, and it’s an odd one: charcoal, ashes and iodine, balanced by some brine, olives, figs and dates. The fruits take their time arriving, and when they do one can smell green apples and grapes, tart apricots, but little of the crisp grassiness of any kind of agricole influence. The Little Big Caner, who was lending his snoot, remarks on smells of old bubbling oil leaking from a hot engine block, a sort of black and treacly background which I interpret as thick blackstrap molasses, but more than that is hard to pin down, and there’s a kind of subtle bitterness permeating the nose which is a little disconcerting to say the least.

The taste is more forgiving and if it’s on the sharp and spicy side, at least there’s some flavour to go with it. Here there is a clean and briny texture, that channels some very ripe white fruits (pears, guavas, that kind of thing), with some lemon zest and green grapes hamming it up with watermelon and papaya and just a touch of peppermint. There some herbaceousness to the experience, yet all this dissipates to nothing at the close, which is briny, spicy, sweet and has sweet bell peppers as a closing note of grace.

In assessing what it all comes down to, I must start with my observation that so far I have not found an agricole-molasses British-French-island-style blend that seriously enthuses me (and I remember Ocean’s Atlantic). The styles are too disparate to mesh properly (for my palate, anyway, though admittedly your mileage and mine will vary on this one) and the warm tawny wooden muskiness of Guyanese rum doesn’t do the ragtime real well with the bright clean grassy profiles of the French island cane juice agricoles.

And that is the case here. There are individual bits and pieces that are interesting and tasty – it’s just that they don’t come together and cohere well enough to make a statement. At the end, while this makes for a really good mixing rum (try it in a daiquiri, it’s quite decent there), as a rum to be tried on its own, I think you’ll find that the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

(#1023)(79/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • The rum is a slightly pale yellow, almost white. The label blurb calls it a blend of white rums (on the left side) but below the logo of two intertwined Gs is a remark that they are “selected and bottled from the wood”, which implies at least some ageing. More cannot be said at this time.
  • It was confirmed that John Barrett blended this himself. As soon as I get more information on the sources, I’ll update the post. Many thanks to Simon, who helped out a lot on short notice.

ABC Gold Label Tropical Rum Superior (1970s/1980s)

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Aug 142023
 

Rumaniacs Review #R-156 | 1017

ABC Distillers is not a distillery of any kind, but a brand of rums still being made (with different labels), on behalf of the ABC Fine Wines and Spirits liquor chain in Florida, brought to life by Florida Distillers (no direct connection, just a commercial one), and in this case dating back to the seventies and eighties.

ABC is a chain founded in Orlando just after Prohibition ended, in 1936 — originally it was a series of bar-and-lounge establishments named after its founder (Jack Holloway) but seeing the opportunities and lesser risks of the retail trade, switched over to liquor retail shops, and renamed itself ABC so it would always be first in the yellow pages. Nowadays ABC has over a hundred stores around Florida and has expanded into all sorts of other businesses. This particular rum we’re looking at today was made by Florida Distillers’ facility in Auburndale, but whether modern variations continue this association is unknown.

Florida Distillers – one of the largest distilleries in Florida you probably never heard of – are the makers of the Ron Carlos brand and Florida Old Reserve Rum, as well as manufacturing the Noxx and Dunn 2-4-5 rum we’ve touched on before, and clearly have fully embraced the “more is better” philosophy of rum making, since nothing they produce is particularly interesting…but they sure make a lot of it, and not just for themselves. They have several distilleries churning out both industrial and commercial alcohol products and act as blenders for smaller companies who want to make use of their output and expertise.

Colour – Pale yellow

Strength – 40% ABV

Nose – Gentle, mild and floral, slightly sweet and in no hurry to get anywhere or do anything. It’s quite delicate, with some light peaches and apricots, pears and a bright line of red grapefruit and vanilla running through everything

Palate – Here it goes to earn its sobriquet of “Extra Light and Dry”…or tries to, for it’s astringent and blade-sharp, but lacking any kind of real dryness, and tastes more like a boosted cheap zinfandel. Slight brininess, a fruit or two, and overall it’s nothing really special. It’s too light to make a real statement, even in a mix.

Finish – Surprisingly long and ultimately bland. One can taste some faint and vague florals and white fruit, and that’s it.

Thoughts – By modern standard it falls down flat, of course. Even standard strength rums today have a profile that tries to be more than just a flavourless alcohol delivery system for a cocktail of some kind, as this one is. It’s something of a shame so many US brands even back then did nothing but try to copy that light Bacardi style instead of forging new paths, but that’s Bacardi’s legacy for you.

(73/100)

Bundaberg Overproof Extra Bold Australian Rum – Review

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Aug 102023
 

Bundaberg — or “Bundie” — may the most globally famous rum from Australia, the rum that (according to the local wags) coke, ginger beer and weekends were invented for. Even if you’ve never seen a bottle or tried it, you’ve likely heard the name. Aussies seem to love hating on it with a sort of gruff affection, but God help the gronk or the pom who disses the thing – then you get comments like Gunnar’s, which, I have to be honest, made me laugh harder than the closing sentences of the latest Plantation diss. Though they have something of a hammerlock on low end rum sales in Australia (especially Queensland), they don’t do that well outside Oz (many know the brand, though fewer have tried it), since they have not, to my knowledge, ever bothered to sell bulk abroad, cultivate a serious export market, or delve into specialised bottlings of their own until very recently – even with the deep pockets of Diageo, which bought the brand in 2000.

Yet Canada gets some, from time to time, and I’ve tried a couple. It’s been more than a decade since Keenan and I suffered the agonies of our tonsils being tied into pretzels by the original Bundaberg, but that merely exemplified what a deficient knowledge of Australian rums we possessed back then, because, well, what the hell did we know? I did try the Black labelled “Reserve” some time later; and thought it was better…still, I felt no particular urgency to take it further, acquire more, taste more widely, not even when my desire to highlight Australia became more pronounced a few years ago. It took Gunnar’s cheerfully bellowing and sneering comment on that first review the other week to reignite my curiosity: enough for me to run out, and buy the only other available Bundie in my local market,

The rum I bought was the Overproof. As far as I know it’s been in commercial production and distribution for most of this century, and though the website doesn’t say so and details are surprisingly thin on the ground, it’s a pot-column still blend of a rather indeterminate age, likely less than five years old. It’s also rather good, with a solid 57.7% strength that provides a wallop that really allows the flavours to pop.

Walk with me here. I can’t speak for you but I still recall the buttery tequila and rotten cashew fruit taste of the Original and to a great extent this is what people remember with such distaste now – it’s “rough as a badger’s arse” according to one redditor just a year ago. Little of that is in evidence on the nose of the Overproof. What you do get is overripe green grapes, hard and too-sweet bon-bons gone stale in a dusty room, salt and a slight agave note: nothing near as overpowering as before, just enough to recall the low end Bundies of yore. Also ginger snaps, a little rubber, light molasses, lemongrass and squishy bananas in hot weather. Not normal, no….not bad either, however.

The taste is where it all hangs in the balance, and here it falters. “Oh wow, this actually hurts going down,” said The Little Big Caner who was helping me do tasting notes, and had little experience with the care needed in testing stronger fare. This is not a rum he likes, apparently. Yet there’s pepsi, hot buttered scones and pastries, olive oil, overripe soft brown bananas, damp brown sugar and molasses. A slight sweetness, vanilla, caramel, some florals. The strength requires some care, and once one is acclimatised it comes across as reasonably smooth, distinctive and not completely unpleasant drink. The finish is long and aromatic – cola, ginger, some vanilla, anise and that faintly sickly sweet-salt-sour — thick — sense of a dosed tequila. That’s the DNA of this thing and allows it to be tied to all its forebears – if I didn’t know better (or knew more) I’d say this was the local terroire.

So…what to make of it? Well, I believe that the Bundaberg Overproof is a kind of exceptional low grade Rummus Maximus, the sort of in-your-face, colourful, fiery, vegemite-munching experience you really can only appreciate to the fullest after having been bludgeoned into catatonia by its low-rent everyschmuck predecessors. It’s difficult to convey the scope of the (minor) achievement the rum provides because most of us lack a good frame of reference: we have all tasted dozens of Barbadian, French-island, Fijian, Venezuelan, Cuban, Guyanese or Jamaican rums (to name just a few), but Bundies? … not so many.

Comparisons with other Bundies aside, however, I consider the Bundie Overproof “Extra Bold” to be a strong, vulgar, distinctive and uncouth rum…and still a fine and interesting rum to try at least once. And if it retains the vestigial taste profile that so many Aussies claim to detest, I at least can assure you it’s not excessive and you won’t soon forget its unique brand of crazy. It may not have been “suckled straight from a breast of the finest proportions,” as Gunnar rhapsodized, but I see no reason to doubt his claim that many a night of vile debauchery and shenanigan fun has been fuelled by this beverage. In fact, I think my bottle will accompany me to the very next party I attend…just to check.

(#1015)(83/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Historical Background

Bundaberg Distillery was founded in 1888 by seven Queensland sugar mill owners of the time, at the dawn of the sugar industry there. Within a couple of years it was being sold around the country; and shortly after went belly-up in one of the many disasters to befall the place. Bought out of receivership by three of the original investors in 1894, it again went under for seven years in 1907 (a bad fire), and would you believe it, once again in 1936 (after yet another fire which ruptured the storage area so badly that the Burnett River nearby ran overproof for months).

Yet already by that time it had become a peculiarly Australian and hugely popular libation. In 1899 Bundie accompanied the Aussie soldiers to the Boer War. The distillery was rebuilt in 1914 in time for the Royal Australian Navy and the British Royal Navy to commandeer their entire output and yes, it was there wherever Australians were in WW2 as well.

With the economic downturn of the post-war years, Bundaberg struggled with drought, higher taxes and lessening sales. Yet they continued to produce rum, selling it for the most part as an overproof to local agents who bottled it themselves and it was only in 1974 that they began producing rum under their own branding, using the now-famous square bottle, three-piece label and the polar bear iconography (meant to imply that a Bundie could ward off the deepest cold) which had been introduced in 1961.

Diageo bought the brand in 2000 and moved the entire operation to Sidney in 2014, while spending millions in an expansion plan to meet an increasing global demand. The standard Original flagship was thereafter joined by several different Bundies – Red, Black, Extra Smooth, Black, Reserve, and even a limited edition 18 year old. Say what you will about the pernicious effects of cold hearted cost-cutting accountants rationalising distilleries by closing them, Diageo has both grown Bundaberg’s sales and expanded the lineup of rums the company produces. To this day, however, the majority of sales remain regional, with Queensland still being the biggest single consumer. It remains to be seen if they can ever grow a worldwide audience.

Original Hana Bay Premium White Rum (1980s)

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Jul 032023
 

Rumaniacs Review R-155 | 1010

By now we’ve looked at Hana Bay and its other incarnations like Whaler’s and Spirit of Hawaii from Hawaiian Distillers a few times (here, here, here, and here) and there’s nothing new to say abut it. It is no longer being made and the company bio is brief.

Hawaiian Distillers made Hana Bay rum from around the 1980s forwards and in 2002 it switched to being made in Kentucky by the brand owners at the time, Heaven Hill, who had acquired the brand from the Levecke Corporation in that year…though they may have just tossed it on the scrap heap, since I can’t find much that says it was made into the new century by them.

However, Hana and Whaler’s returned to Hawaii…Maui specifically, where Hali’imaile was founded in 2010 by a branch of the Levecke family and has its premises…I’ve heard they began making rum again in around 2014. Although the sugar industry, family connections and tropical climate would suggest it, rum is not actually their focus there – whisky, vodka and gin are, which is probably why their distillery makes rums of zero distinction. Hali’imaile’s claim to fame is to have worked to develop Sammy Hager’s Beach Bar rum, but that’s hardly an endorsement of the other rums they make and it’s been suggested that the Hana Bay wasn’t even made on Maui anymore. They don’t bother saying much about any rum on their website which may be an implicit statement about it, or simple embarrassment.

This rum is different from the Original Hana Premium (R-144) in that it is a white, with all that meant before (slight ageing then ruthlessly filtered to colourless blandness). So it lacks that pale hay colour of the Original, and the label is also not gold-edged but-silver edged, a sort of subliminal messaging as to what it is, if one is colour blind or too drunk to pay attention.

Strength – 40%

Colour – White

Label Notes – Silver edging (not gold), different medals from “Premium Rum”

Nose – Weak, wispy and thin. Acetones, pears, sugar water, yet mostly the sense one gets is of bitterly astringent alcohol. Some nail polish and the smell of plastic film stretched over new furniture.

Palate – It’s a rum with some bite. White fruits, sugar water, vanilla, coconut shavings. There’s an odd touch of brine here and there, but mostly one strains to find much beyond alcohol

Finish – Neutral spirit burn. One could as easily be tasting vodka with some added elements that remain difficult to identify

Thoughts – You can probably get more out of the nose and the taste if you have it first thing in the morning (as I did, to taste it for this review without anything getting in the way). That said, who would want to? There’s too little even with that, to make a sip worthwhile. Best to dunk it into a personal (or indifferent) cocktail experiment where you don’t want to waste a good (or even a real) rum.

(70/100)⭐⭐

 

Bacardi Superior “Silver Label” White Rum (Puerto Rico)(Early 1970s)

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Jun 052023
 

Rumaniacs Review #149 | 1001

This series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’ll be looking at over the next week or two, is a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades, and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw.

This Bacardi Superior noted as being “Silver Label” is the doddering uncle of the set. The label refers to an 80 proof 1/10 pint white rum, which suggests the pre-1980 dating after which ABV and a metric system common (in the USA) – the rum of that title continued to be made until the 1980s after which it just became Ron Bacardi Superior. Puerto Rico is where the facilities of the company are headquartered, of course, so there’s little to be gathered here. It’s entirely possible that it goes back even to the 1960s – something about the label just suggests that dating and I’ve seen a similar one from 1963 – but for now let’s stick with a more conservative estimate.

It’s not a stretch to infer some fairly basic facts about the Silver Label Superior: it’s probably (but very likely) lightly aged, say a year or two; column still; and filtered. Beyond that we’re guessing. Still, even from those minimal data points, a pretty decent rum was constructed so let’s go and find out what it samples like.

Strength – 40%

Colour – White

Label Notes – “Silver Label”, Made in Puerto Rico

Nose – Weak and thin, mostly just alcohol fumes, sweet light and reeking faintly of bananas, Some slight saltiness, acetones, bitter black tea and a few ripe cherries. There’s a clean sort of lightness to it, like laundry powder.

Palate – Interesting: briny and with olives right at the start; also some very delicate and yet distinct aromas of flowers. Some fanta, 7-up and tart yoghurt, the vague sourness of gooseberries and unripe soursop, papaya and green mangoes.

Finish – Again, interesting, i that it lasts a fair bit. Nothing new really – some light fruits, pears and watermelons, a dusting of acetones and brine. Overall, it’s thin gruel and slim pickings.

Thoughts – Although most of these early Bacardi’s (especially the blancas) don’t usually do much for me, I have to admit being surprised with the overall worth of this older one. There are some characterful notes which if left untamed could be unpleasant: here the easy sweetness carries it past any serious problems and it comes out as quite a decent rum in its own right. Original and groundbreaking it’s not, and certainly not a standout – but it is nice.

(76/100)

Pitterson “Dry Rum” Rhum Blanc – Review

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Apr 242023
 

It’s almost a foregone conclusion that 99% of the readers of this article won’t know a thing about this rhum and its brand, and until I started researching the bottle, I didn’t either. That’s an increasingly rare thing these days, considering that the writings of so many stellar bloggers over the last decade, combined with Rum Ratings and Rum-X, make it almost impossible for any brand to escape notice. Yet here we are, sipping at a peculiar bottle of white rum I bought completely on a whim (mostly because I can’t resist not knowing more about it).

The company that released it was once an independent French bottler in Bordeaux called William Pitters who mostly specialised in cognac, and occasionally rums as well – a couple of years ago Oliver Scars procured a 1970 HSE they had released, for example. They appear to have mostly issued rhums from Martinique as well as some punches and whiskies (Sir Pitterson whisky was a thing even if we don’t know who he was either) and on top of that, been something of a distributor too – but the source of their rhum was never disclosed. The date of formation of the company looks to be 2001, from a coming together of many tiny brands, and nowadays a much larger conglomerate called Marie Brizard Wine & Spirits is the owner3. This is more tangential to the review, though, so I provide their history below.

Exactly what we have in the glass is unclear – for one thing, I’m not entirely sure the brand exists or is being made any longer. The source distillery is a mystery – as noted, Pitterson did issue a rhum from HSE before, and Marie Brizard, the subsequent owner, had a distribution relationship with La Mauny – so we don’t know source or still or (maybe) age. Yet, although no review or online store is to be found carrying this rhum, I suspect it’s still around, and if it’s been discontinued then it was in all likelihood fairly recently; the bottle and label design is too sleek and modern, the price paid was too low, and several small restaurants, bars and cafes in France mention on their menus that they have it.

Leaving aside the murkiness of the rhum’s origin, I can see why they would. It may “only” be a standard strength white rhum, it has a lovely opening nose of white chocolate, praline, almonds and nougat – in other words, a bar of white toblerone (of the kind Grandma Caner reliably sends me every year at least once). It’s creamy and delicate, hardly seemingly dry at all; there is a light herbal aroma, grassy notes and sugar water that characterises an agricole, but here it’s mixed in with Danish butter cookies, chocolate cake batter like your mother allowed you to lick off the spoon after she was done; and unsweetened yoghurt.

The way it goes down is nice as well – nothing too bombastic, nothing too aggressive, just an easy sip, tasting of vaguely salty butter cookies, sugar water, vanilla and blancmange, plus a little toasted wonderbread and cheerios cereal (go figure). The herbal aspects of the aroma don’t really carry over here, and there are few if any citrus or acidic notes – what one gets is mostly ‘neutral’ fleshy fruit like sapodilla, melon, dates, papaya, and the finish is mostly without distinction, being short, easy and mild, giving a last dash of cereal and sugar water fruits, with perhaps a bit of watermelon thrown in.

Overall it’s a rum that plants its flag firmly in the midrange. It appears made to be a mixing rum and is just good and easy enough to sip on (though this would not really be my recommendation). It may only be 40% ABV, but feels somehow heavier, firmer, a tad stronger and even if you’re used to more powerful cask strength fare, it can’t be denied that the rhum tries its best, gives a good account for itself, and is a decent price for what it does deliver. As I say, it’s not clear whether it remains a commercially manufactured product, but if you see a bottle for sale someplace on your rumshop excursions, it’s no loss if you get one.

(#991)(82/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other notes

  • The rum does not claim to be an agricole – it implies such by the use of the “rhum blanc” on the label. Yet, given it supposedly hails from Martinique, the wording and spelling is not unjustified. Overall, based on taste, I’d say that it is indeed an agricole.
  • My bottle has a Portuguese tax stamp; I bought it with a batch of Madeira rhums so it may have simply ended up there. The lack of production and geographical information is unfortunate.

Historical notes – Marie Brizard

The firm of Marie Brizard was founded way back in 1755 by (you guessed it) Marie Brizard whose anisette was hit among the members of the ancien régime and who soon branched out into citrus liqueurs. The company stayed privately held by her descendants, and moved into sales all over the American continents over the following century; they started their own modern advertising in the late 1800s and were even exhibited in several World’s Fairs. Expanding the portfolio to include other spirits (as well as fruit juices and cordials) were good business decisions for the company, and by the post-WW2 years, due to canny product placement in French films of the time, the brands became near-iconic. William Grant bought in with a minority stake in the 1980s as a consequence of their distributorship arrangement for whisky dating back to the 1950s, but were so excluded from any decision-making that in 1994 they relinquished their association.

This situation of familial ownership, control and decision making continued until 2013, when a severe downturn in the market and mounting losses forced Marie Brizard to convert debt to shares…which were then snapped up by an American investment firm Oaktree Capital Management, who held nearly 20% of the voting rights. Continuing cash flow problems opened the doors for capital injections and share purchases by Compagnie Européenne de Prize de Participation (COFEPP, holding company which heads the La Martiniquaise Bardinet group), which as of 2019 held a majority shareholding of 51% while aiming for more, and can therefore be said to own the company…and so also the Pitterson brand.

Whaler’s The Original Dark Rum (Rare Reserve)(Green Label)(1970s / 1980s)

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Apr 212023
 

Rumaniacs Review R-147 | 0990

After an hours-long tasting session of old rums from the seventies and eighties that were straining to reach the pinnacle of their mediocrity (and mostly failing), there were few surprises left when I came to the another one of the Hawaiian Distillers’ rums called Whalers.

For those who are curious there is some background in the other “Original Dark” review, the Hana Bay entry, as well as that of the Spirit of Hawaii: all of these brands were made by the same company, and although Hawaiian Distillers no longer exists, the brand of Whalers does and is nowadays made (with the same enthusiastically uninspiring indifference as before) by Hali’imaile Distilling Company. As to the term Whaler’s, it supposedly hearkens back to New England sailors who hung around Hawaii when whaling was a thing in the 1800s, which is about as romantic a story as that of pirates in the Caribbean and their cutlasses, grog and yo-ho-hos.

The rum is so similar to its red labelled cousin that it may actually be the same – separated only by a different year of make, a tweaked blend, or a different market in which it was sold. It’s hard to tell these days since records are scant. But it’s the same strength, practically the same colour, and equally hard to date – I think the late 1970s / early 1980s remains a good estimate, though the actual ageing is a complete unknown. If any full sized bottles remain in existence, they can only be in collections like Luca Gargano’s, Mr. Remsburg’s, the Burrs, or in some forgotten attic somewhere in the US waiting for someone to inherit it.

Strength – 40%

Colour – Dark brown-red

Nose – Thin but there’s stuff there: cranberries, red grapefruit, brown sugar, molasses, cherries in syrup. Also that same wet-earth loamy sense of woodland moss and forest glades after a rain that I had with the red label variant. And, finally, the marching armies of vanilla. A lot of it. One is merely surprised — if grateful — that so much stuff came through before it got taken over. It does, as a matter of interest, take some effort to tease out notes of this kind because it comes from a time when light blends were the thing, not stronger, heavier, pot still signatures.

Palate – The vanilla is there from the get-go, if less intensely. Really faint notes of licorice, caramel, molasses, coconut shavings, a touch of brine. Honestly, the rum is really not quite a fail, largely because there is no untoward blast of sugar to dampen the few sensations that do make it through to be sensed and noted but the effort it takes to get coherent tastes out of this thing almost defeats the purpose of drinking it.

Finish – Longish, soft, easy. Molasses, caramel, brown sugar. Thin, weak,

Thoughts – I wasn’t expecting a whole lot and was rewarded for that with a bit less. It’s nothing special, breathy, light, easy hot-weather drinking. It’s pointless to have the Whalers neat, so any simple island mix is just fine and even there you would hardly taste the rum itself. I tried the samples first thing in the morning when the palate was still fresh – which is how I picked apart as much as I did – and on that level it’s okay. But just as it is made with what seems like careless indifference, it excites no more than that in its turn. Name aside, history aside, it’s about as forgettable a brand as those local rums I see in Canadian supermarket annexes nowadays.

(73/100) ⭐⭐½

Co-Op Spirits Caribbean White Rum (Minhas Distillery) – Review

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Mar 272023
 

What we are trying today is the Co-Op Caribbean White Rum, which at around C$30 or less is comfortably within the reach of anyone’s purse if perhaps not their purpose. The rum is supplied to the Co-Op supermarket chain by a very interesting Calgary-based company called Minhas Distillery, which until recently didn’t have a distillery in the city, just a brewery, and whatever spirits they produced came from a distillery down in Wisconsin…which is all less than helpful in tracing the product since rum is really not in their portfolio.

What Co-op sells is a white rum in a sleek glass bottle, 40%, without any statement of origin beyond the “Minhas Distillery”. It is supposedly a Caribbean rum, yet no origin distillery is mentioned (let alone a country), and there’s no age, no still, no source material…in this day and age of full disclosure you almost have to admire the courage it takes to foist something so meaningless on the public and pretend it’s worth their coin. Admittedly though, none of this is necessarily a disqualification, because it could be a beast in disguise, a Hampden in hiding — for all we know, a few barrels could have been sourced under the table, or there could be a mad geeky rum nerd distiller lurking in the bowels of Minhas wielding dunder and lightning, ready to bring out the next Caribbean rum killing Canadian hooch.

Alas, sampling it dispels any such romantic notions in labba time. This so-called Caribbean rum is just shy of a one-note wonder. It is not fierce, given its living room strength, and does actually smell of something (which immediately marks it as better than the Merchant Shipping Co. White) – vanilla essence, and mothballs, coconut shavings, and lemon meringue pie. It smells rather sweet, there are some nice light floral hints here and there; and it has some crushed almond nuts smells floating around, yet there’s also a sort of odd papery dusty aroma surrounding it, almost but not quite like old clothes on a rack at a charity sale, and which reminds me of Johnson’s Baby Powder more than anything else (no, I’m not kidding).

The palate is where the ultimate falsity of all that preceded it snaps more clearly into focus. Flowers, lemon, even mothballs, all gone. The baby powder and old clothes have vanished. Like a siren luring you overboard and then showing its true face, the rum turns thin, harsh and medicinal when tasted, rough and sandpapery, mere alcohol is loosed upon the world and all you get is a faint taste of vanilla to make it all go down. Off and on for over an hour I kept coming back, but nothing further ever emerged, and the short, dusty, dry and sweet vanilla finish was the only other experience worthy of note here.

So. As a sipping rum, then it’s best left on the shelf. No real surprise here. As a mixer, I’m less sure, because it’s not a complete fail, but I do honestly wonder what it could be used for since there is so much better out there – even the Bacardi Superior, because at least that one has been made for so long that all the rough edges have been sanded off and it has a little bit of character that’s so sadly lacking and so sorely needed here.

There’s more than enough blame to go around with respect to this white rum, from Minhas on down to those bright shining lights in Co-Op’s purchasing and marketing departments (or, heaven help us, those directing the corporate strategy of what anonymous spirits to rebrand as company products), none of whom apparently have much of a clue what they’re doing when it comes to rum. It’s not enough that they don’t know what they’re making (or are too ashamed to actually tell us), but they haven’t even gone halfway to making something of even reasonable quality. It’s a cynical push of a substandard product to the masses – the idea of making a true premium product is apparently not part of the program.

In a way then, it’s probably best we don’t know what country or island or distillery or still this comes from: and I sure hope it’s some nameless, faceless corporate-run industrial multi-column factory complex somewhere. Because if Co-Op’s Caribbean white rum descends from stock sourced from any the great distilleries of the French islands, Barbados, Trinidad, St. Lucia, Guyana, Venezuela, Jamaica or Cuba (et al), and has been turned into this – whether through ignorance, inaction or intent– then all hope is lost, the battle is over, and we should all pack our bags and move to Europe.

(#984)(74/100) ⭐⭐½

Background Notes

Minhas is a medium-sized liquor conglomerate based on Calgary, and was founded in 1999 by Manjit Minhas and her brother Ravinder. She was 19 at the time, trained in the oil and gas industry as an engineer and had to sell her car to raise finance to buy the brewery, as they were turned down by traditional sources of capital (apparently their father, who since 1993 had run a chain of liquor stores across Alberta, would not or could not provide financing).

The initial purchase was the distillery and brewery in Wisconsin, and the company was first called Mountain Crest Liquors Inc. Its stated mission was to “create recipes and market high quality premium liquor and sell them at a discounted price in Alberta.” This enterprise proved so successful that a brewery in Calgary was bought in 2002 and currently the company consists of the Minhas Micro Brewery in the city (it now has distillation apparatus as well), and the brewery, distillery and winery in Wisconsin.

What is key about the company is that they are a full service provider. They have some ninety different brands of beers, spirits, liqueurs and wines, and the company produces brands such as Boxer’s beers, Punjabi rye whiskey, Polo Club Gin, and also does tequila, cider, hard lemonades. More importantly for this review, Minhas acts as a producer of private labels for Canadian and US chains as diverse as “Costco, Trader Joe’s, Walgreens, Aldi’s, Tesco/Fresh & Easy, Kum & Go, Superstore/Loblaws, Liquor Depot/Liquor Barn” (from their website). As a bespoke maker of liquors for third parties, Minhas caters to the middle and low end of the spirits market, and beer remains one of their top sellers, with sales across Canada, most of the USA, and around the world. So far, they have yet to break into the premium market for rums.

Other Notes

  • I did contact them directly via social media and their site, and was directed via messenger to an email address that never responded to my queries on sourcing. However, after this post went up, Richard Seale of Foursquare got on to me via FB and left a comment that the distillate possibly came from WIRD (he himself had refused as the price they wanted was too low). The general claim on Minhas’s website is that their products are made with Alberta ingredients.
  • It’s my supposition that there is some light ageing (a year or two), that it’s molasses based and column still distilled. It remains educated guesswork, however, not verified facts.
  • Ms. Minhas’s father, having sold the liquor shops many years ago, has recently opened a large distillery in Saskatchewan with the same business model, but that is outside the scope of this article and so I have elected not to go into detail, and only include it here for completeness.

Whaler’s The Original Dark Rum (Rare Reserve)(Red Label)(1970s / 1980s)

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Mar 162023
 

Rumaniacs Review No.145 | 0981

Whaler’s as a rum brand is still being made after more than half a century, and apparently undeterred by its complete lack of anything resembling real quality, has not only kept the Original Dark Rum recipe – the vanilla-bomb that I reviewed way back in 2010 – but actually expanded the supermarket line of their rums to include a vanilla rum, a white rum, a “topping rum” (whatever that is) and other flavoured variations that comfortably cater to the bottom shelf and are almost guaranteed to make another generation of Americans swear off rum forever.

It is no longer made in Hawaii, if it ever was – at best one could say it may have been a recipe from there; and guesses as to its true origin vary as widely as the USVI, Phillipines, or California (I think it’s just some nameless industrial facility churning out neutral alcohol on contract). The producer, if you recall, is the same outfit that also makes the Hana Bay rum, which has much of the same fanciful background and origin stories and lack of proveable provenance. Still, it does happen occasionally that rums which suck today suck a little less in the old days when they had some people with shine in their eyes and not quite so much cynicism on the factory floor (Captain Morgan is one such) making the rum. So it’s worth trying to see if it was different back in the day when Hawaiian Distilled Products from California was behind the brand.

Colour – dark red-brown

Strength – 40%

Nose – It giveth hope. First, red grapefruit and some rancid olive oil, and then all the simple aromas deemed “rum-like” back in the last century come marching in like Christian soldiers. Brown sugar, molasses (just a bit), vanilla (just a lot). It’s not entirely bad though, and also has cherries, damp dark earth, dust and a little plastic.

Palate – The taste taketh hope away. It’s almost all vanilla, alcohol, brown sugar, caramel, licorice. Simple and uncomplicated and at least it goes down easy (that may be whatever sweetening or smoothening agents they added). But there’s not a whole lot beyond that going on.

Finish – Warm and firm, it must be conceded. Caramel, anise, coconut shavings, even more vanilla. It’s possible a few citrus notes were there, just too faint to make any kind of statement.

Thoughts – The rum is the ancestor to simple, dark, uninteresting, ten-buck rums you can find anywhere, often in cheap plastic bottles, and whose only purpose is to deliver a shot of alcohol today that you’ll regret tomorrow. There’s nothing to distinguish it at all, except that there seems to be rather less vanilla in this one than in the one from 2010 (which I tried again just to see). There’s also nothing to mark it as different from another Original Dark Rum from this period, put into a bottle with a greenish label. But I’ll save that “review” for another day.

(73/100) ⭐⭐½

Historical background

Back in the eighties, Whaler’s and Hana Bay were made by Hawaiian Distillers, a Hawaiian corporation that was in business since the 1970s, and was a subsidiary of Hawaiian Distilled Products Co out of Tustin California (and this is what is on the label). Before 1980 it was mainly manufacturing tourist items, including ceramics and specialty Polynesian Liqueurs – it’s defunct now and all traces of it have vanished: only head cases like me actively seek out their rums from yesteryear any longer, and the question as to where exactly the rum was distilled remains unanswered.

In the early 2010s when I first looked at Whaler’s, it was being made in Kentucky by the brand owners at the time, Heaven Hill, who had acquired the brand from the Levecke Corporation in 2002. Some time in the last ten years, Hana and Whaler’s returned to Hawaii…Maui specifically, where Hali’imaile was founded in 2010 by a branch of the Levecke family and has its premises. Surprisingly, given the sugar industry, family connections and tropical climate, rum is not actually their focus – whisky, vodka and gin are, with the distillery also making rums of zero distinction.

As of 2023, Hali’imaile Distilling Company is the distillery of the company’s products, yet their site doesn’t mention Whaler’s, Hana Bay or Mahina rums at all (these are the other brands they own and supposedly make). It may be a contract rum, but nobody really cares enough to find out, including, apparently, not even those who sell it. I’m not surprised.

Original Hana Bay Premium Rum (USA, 1980s)

 2 Responses »
Feb 272023
 

Rumaniacs Review No. 144 | 0976

In 2023, if you were to google “who makes Hana Bay rum?” you’d get a response that Hali’imaile Distilling Company is the distillery of origin; except if you went to their site, there would be no mention of Hana Bay at all (or Whaler’s and Mahina, the other brands they own and supposedly make). Digging further and you’d see that Hawaiian Distillers out of Honolulu made Hana Bay rum from around the 1980s forwards and in the early 2010s when I first looked at Whaler’s, it was being made in Kentucky by the brand owners at the time, Heaven Hill, who had acquired the brand from the Levecke Corporation in 2002.

Some time in the last ten years, it would seem that the Hana and Whaler’s returned to Hawaii…Maui specifically, where Hali’imaile was founded in 2010 by a branch of the Levecke family and has its premises…I’ve heard they began making arum around 2014. Surprisingly, given the sugar industry, family connections and tropical climate, rum is not actually their focus – whisky, vodka and gin are, with the distillery also making rums of zero distinction. One of their claims to fame is to have worked to develop Sammy Hager’s Beach Bar rum, but that’s hardly an endorsement of the other rums they make and a 2019 article suggested (without attribution) that the rum itself wasn’t even made on Maui anymore, but in the USVI, and then bottled in California; rumours even suggested it was a Philippines rum. Go figure. If that’s true, no wonder they didn’t bother mentioning the product on their website.

But to go back to this bottle and its provenance: back in the eighties, Hana Bay was made by Hawaiian Distillers, a Hawaiian corporation that was in business since the 1970s, and was a subsidiary of Hawaiian Distilled Products Co out of Tustin California. Before 1980 it was mainly manufacturing tourist items, including ceramics and specialty Polynesian Liqueurs and you can still find many of its small bottles and knick knacks on various eBay or other auction sites: the value of their products lies in these ceramics, not its rums – it’s defunct now and all traces of it have vanished: only head cases like me actively seek out their rums from yesteryear any longer, and the question as to where exactly the rum was distilled remains unanswered.

Colour – Pale yellow

Strength – 40%

Nose – Rather nice, with a crisp aroma of light green grapes, apples, some red grapefruit. Some lemon and pine-sol, quite nice, until the whole thing is taken over by the thin acid reek of a disinfectant covering the tiled floors of a sterile, cold hospital corridor.

Palate – Okay it’s 40%, but not entirely nad; there’s no obvious adulteration here. Slightly creamy, buttery, with emergent sweet light fruits. Rather dry, briny and with latrger non-sweet notes of dates, olives and a stale peach or two.

Finish – Nothing special here, but noting bad either; acetones, light pears, a bit ot hot tea. It’s nice for what it is

Thoughts – As far away from the adulterated mess of Whaler’s or the Spirit of Hawaii as could be imagined. This one is actually not an entirely bad rum, and makes one wonder why they didn’t bother sticking with it. Instead they just climbed to the top of a low hill, and charged downhill from there with everything that came after. We’ll be looking at some of those soon.

(76/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • A relatively young age can be assumed, as is the likelihood of it being a column still rum.

Worthy Park “109” Jamaican Rum – Review

 4 Responses »
Feb 062023
 

Worthy Park’s “109” is a recent addition to the Jamaican distillery’s brand portfolio, with a storied history from its first announcement in 2020. The Jamaican distillery wanted fill out its low-to-midrange line with a darker, slightly aged and higher proof rum to complement the Rum Bar White Overproof, Silver and Gold, and while they maintained that the objective was not to go up against Smith & Cross, it’s hard to look at the specs and not conclude that at least some market-share jealousy and subtle dick-measuring was going on.

Initially the rum was called “Gunpowder Proof” – a play on the old navy strength of 54.5% – and as you can imagine, it excited strong interest, even if the stated purpose of the rum was to attend the bartending and cocktail circuit. Labels were all set to go until, in an echo of Banks DIH’s problems with “Demerara rum” a decade earlier, Pusser’s objected and issued a cease-and-desist-you-varlets order, claiming the name as their own trademarked title. WP shrugged, airily and dismissively said “we don’t bank the success of our rum on a name” and changed it to “109” which I hope requires no further explanation.

Like Alex Sandu of the Rum Barrel who reviewed the rum last year, I also believe that the specs suggest a rum meant to bridge the bartender-cocktail circuit rums of the Rum Bar line with the more upscale and defined sipping rums of the Worthy Park range. The core stats for the 109 support this assertion: it comes from molasses, comprising two pot still distillates – WPL 4 aged for three years in ex-Bourbon casks, and some unaged WPE 5. There are no additions except caramel to make it darker, and we are not informed as to the ratios of the two components.

It’s an intriguing production profile, and what comes out the other end is surprisingly simple, with a few clear and distinct notes: firstly caramel, toffee and blancmange set off with molasses and brown sugar; then some light, tart sweet fruits like cherries, strawberries, bananas, papaya and pineapple, plus a mango or two. Thirdly, one can sense cucumbers and red pimentos soaked in light vinegar, a sort of sour note, and lastly there’s some unsweetened, almost bitter salted chocolate and coca cola. That’s not bad at all for something so young.

The palate follows these four notes without substantial deviation. Of course, the taste in the tongue is sharp – that’s a function of both youth and proof point – and the whole thing is salty and crisp, bordering on the acidic. The whole thing is a mix of chocolate, licorice, caramel, toffee and gooseberries (plus some pineapple and unripe green mangoes), with just enough musky-sweet deriving from the molasses and brown sugar to make it an interesting rum to try by itself. It’s a bit rough and tumble, which is nice, and the finish channels some Trenchtown badass with nuts, molasses, coffee grounds, salt and pepper.

Overall, the melange of solid primary tastes and occasional jagged edges makes the 109 borderline as a sipper – I would not drink it regularly that way myself – but I think it’s excellent for what it was meant to be, and would handily wake up any cocktail you care to dump it into. I’m a simple guy with no real mixing experience, so you’ll forgive me for sticking with that old standby of the rum ‘n’ coke, at which this thing absolutely shines (and look forward to a flurry of notes from various bartenders who want to suggest alternatives and school me better).

So, then: is it gold or pyrite? I can hear you ask. Honestly, I believe the WP 109 is neither: it’s simply an unpretentious, firm, tasty rum that doesn’t forget its backdam antecedents, and yes, it’s definitely not important what they call it — it would be similarly good if they called it The Son of Kong. A little older, a touch less bite, and it would be almost the perfect midrange rum, and given what it costs it’s great value for money to boot. You can’t go too far wrong picking up one of these for the home bar.

(#970)(82/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Fortress Canadian Rum – Review

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Jan 092023
 

The rum we are looking at today is named simply “Fortress rum”, after the Fortress of Louisburg on Île Royale, now Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia, where the barrels of rum were aged. 6. The back label says the rum is made in Canada from domestic and imported ingredients (no further qualification), the website talks about “select Caribbean rums” (no further elaboration) aged in “oak barrels” (no further info on what kind) and the company of origin is Authentic Seacoast Distilling Co. Ltd which has its fingers in all sorts of pies: beer, vodka, coffee, rumcake, hand sanitizers and soaps and for good measure has associations with small inns and hotels in the area in a kind of one-stop hospitality enterprise.

What little the website and photos and my own background reading provide is as follows: the rum is a blend of Caribbean imports of unknown provenance, probably mixed in with a small quantity of locally distilled rum made on the single column still seen in the site photo archive (which may be why the label mentions domestic ingredients, although….). The ageing takes place on the island, but no information is provided in what kind of oak barrels or for how long. Previous comments on social media (especially reddit) are unanimous that it’s a decent Canadian rum, a kind of ok sipper, compares well against Ironworks’ rums, available mostly in the Maritimes and Ontario, and the web page is at pains to mention many medals it won every year between 2015 and 2018 at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

I have my own opinion on any spirits competitions’ usefulness, and as far as I’m concerned this is another case where the abominably restricted rum selection available to Canadians — caused by provincial monopolies dating back to Prohibition times — has so limited their ability to taste world class rum, that even a subpar product like this one can tout medals which mean very little as some kind of evidence of success, and never be corrected by locals. Because frankly, it’s not that great a rum at all.

Let’s take it apart so I can explain my chain of reasoning. Since I knew nothing about the rum aside from the strength (45%), I went in completely blind. The nose was decent enough – fruity, tart, with some yoghurt, vanilla, strawberries and light citrus notes. Some bubble gum and cherries, more vanilla and a touch of leather and bitterness of tannins that had not been sanded down very much. Oh, and more vanilla. There was really too much vanilla – initially it was rather laid back and inobtrusive, but gradually it really took over and dominated the entire nose.

45% is a good strength for an unpretentious rum, which this turned out to be when tasted. Some mellow fruitiness started the party going, mostly ripe apples, red cherries, and cranberries. This was backed up by vanilla, acetones, furniture polish and varnish, to which was added a little salt, caramel, the minerality of charcoal and — bloody hell! — more vanilla. What little tannins and leather were in the aroma vanished here, and the finish gave little hint of more: some light and easy fruit, cinnamon, vanilla (again!) and green tea, before vanishing with a whisper.

The Fortress rum to some extent suffers from that issue that I’ve remarked on before, that of sharing its production with too many other spirits so nobody has time to do one thing right. As a rum, it also fails on all sorts of levels – the lack of information provision not the least among them. It’s indeterminate in taste, and its solid proof is undone by an excess of vanilla past the point of being reasonably provided by barrel ageing. This is why my notes have a big question mark on the page asking “V. Added?” And the more I think about it, that’s what they did. The vanilla is nice…but only up to a point. Less is really more in a case like this, and like excess sugar in other rums, it masks and hides taste elements that could be more assertive – even interesting – if allowed to get out there and shine.

But we’re not allowed to judge that. Somebody went out there and decided for us that the natural profile — of this unknown distillate off an unknown still and unknown source location, as changed by unknown barrels for an unknown period of time — needed boosting. They chose to call what they did “authentic”, rather than provide data on what the rum is actually made of, where it’s from and how it’s made up (in other words, really authentic information). The upshot is that they ended up with a distilled sow’s ear while pretending they had somehow succeeded in making a silk purse.

(#964)(73/100) ⭐⭐½

Other notes

  • Originally released in 2015 as a result of research with Parks Canada to release something authentic to the 18th century period. The ageing of the barrels in or near to the Fortress itself strikes me as a nice marketing gimmick, but no more.
  • For a rum issued in 2015, minimal or nonexistent disclosure was something that could be glossed over. In the 2020s, it’s unacceptable for even the company website to make no mention of anything useful, let alone the label.
  • I get the sense from watching an enthusiastic video review from Booze on the Rocks that his bottle was numbered, but no such notation was on the one I poured from.
  • Reddit /r/rum had some more positive evaluations from here and here, and half of the 24 evaluations on Rum Ratings rated it 8/10 or better; the average of two raters on Rum-X gave it 67/100. Nobody else seems to have done a full review.
  • I am aware of and deplore that as a Canadian-produced rum, its visibility and distribution is hampered by arcane and complex provincial distribution rules that cater to government monopolies’ interests, not consumers. This does not excuse any of the weaknesses it displays, but it does create a feedback issue for the company since too few people get to opine on its quality, and wider distribution is hardly worth the effort of complying with those regulations.

Historical background

Canada – especially the eastern islands and provinces – has a long history of and involvement with rum. The infamous triangular trade (Europe to Africa to the West Indies, or America to Africa to the Caribbean) included trading with Canada’s eastern seaboard, and the French in Quebec and the islands had long established trading posts and a mercantile presence there. Alcohol was an early and common trading item, especially wine and beer which were made locally since the 1600s — rum, however, was an import from the beginning and came from the French West Indies. In the centuries that passed, rum has in fact become a tipple of choice for Maritimers (while whisky predominates out west, and wine and beer are of course popular everywhere).

Rums were initially bought in bulk from the Caribbean and then blended, a practice that continues to this day: standard Canadian rums brands like Potters, Lamb’s, Screech, Cabot Tower and Young’s Old Sam (among many others) are the result, and it will come as no surprise to know that Guyana and Jamaica tend to be the most common acknowledged sources and profiles. More recently, mirroring developments in the US, rum was also distilled from shipped-in molasses by small distilleries, which often have whiskies as their prime focus – Smuggler’s Cove and Momento and Ironworks are examples of that trend, though so far results have been mixed and none have made any serious local, regional or international splash. As remarked above in “other notes”, this has a lot to do with restrictions laid on Canadian producers by the state and its provincial monopolies.

 

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