Ron Añejo Pampero Deluxe Venezuelan Rum (1980s)

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May 152023
 

Rumaniacs Review R-148 | 0996

Pampero is a lesser known Venezuelan rum brand founded in 1938 by two friends, Alejandro Hernández and Luis Toro, who established their distillery in Caracas, and soon became one of the more popular brands in the country with their light, golden rums.  In keeping with the times they eschewed really serious long term ageing, and stuck with the mid range, producing various youngish rons like the Añejo “Extra”, “Dorado”, “White”, “Especial”, “Premium Gold” and so on. These various brands have gone through several name changes over the years and nowadays the line is made up of the Añejo Especial (also known as “Oro” for the yellow label), the Aniversario (well known for its bottle in a leather pouch – I actually have one in my mythical basement somewhere and have yet to open the thing), the Blanco and the Selección 1938 Ron Añejo.

The cowboy on the rearing horse logo is to some extent chanelling a misconception: Venezuelan prairies are referred to as llanos, not pampas, the latter and its gauchos being Argentinian terms, yet this is the image that gives the brand its name. In Venezuela I am led to understand the rum and its brand – still popular after all these years – is called Caballito Frenao (“Rearing Horse”), and sells briskly…even though the brand is no longer in local hands.

In 1991 when the company was sold lock stock and barrels (95% of it all, to be precise) to United Distillers, then a subsidiary of Guinness and which eventually became Diageo, Pampero claimed to be the bestselling golden rum in the world, a claim hardly likely to be either proveable or refutable, even then (you’ll forgive me if I doubt it). United Distillers evidently had some differing opinions on how to market their acquisition, for in the next year some of their stock was shipped to Europe for the indies to play with, which is why we have two Secret Treasures 1992 editions of the Pampero, as well as others from Duval et Cie and Moon Import, also from that year.  However, these days it’s all branded sales, most of which takes place in Europe (Spain and Italy) and inside Venezuela, with a smattering of sales to other countries like the US.

Modern production is molasses based, triple distillation on column stills to near absolute alcohol (96%) and subsequent ageing in white oak cask: they clearly adhere to the light Spanish style rons for that portion of their blend. However, it should be noted that according to their website, their triple distillation process “combines continuous column (light rum), kettle batch (semi-heavy rum) and pot still (heavy rum) to produce a high-quality alcohol,”  so it would seem they have more than just a bunch of heavy duty industrial sized columnar stills churning out bland nothingness.  However there are few if any references available to speak more to the subject, and even less that tells what the process was like pre-Diageo, to when this version was made.

The little bottle I found was made for the US market in the 1980s by a spirits importer called Laica, which disappeared from view by 1990; and since the US was still using ounces as a unit of measure on bottle labels until the late 1970s, I’m okay dating this to the decade of big hair, shoulder pads and breakdancing.

Strength – 40%

Colour – Gold

Nose – Nothing excessive or overly sharp.  Subtle dusty and cereal-y aromas start the ball rolling. Pleasant — though rather restrained — notes of honey, chocolate, nuts, almonds and molasses,  More piquant fruits enter the aromas after some minutes, mostly cherries, bananas and overripe soft apples. 

Palate – It’s too thin to make any kind of statement, really, and a lot of what was nosed just up and vanishes. Molasses, some brown sugar, red wine, vanilla, and just enough of a rum profile to stop it from being a throwaway

Finish – Weak, short, faint, is there and gone too quickly to make itself felt.  Disappointing.

Thoughts – By now I’ve had enough rums from South America, and from that era, to be unsurprised at how bland the experience is – their skillset is in light age and consummate blending, not fierce hogo or still-bestowed character. One can reasonably ask if back in the day they had added any of that heavier pot still juice to the blend, the way they do now – one suspects not, and unfortunately that leaves a rather anonymous rum behind, which starts decently enough but which ends with a whole lot of nothing to report. 

(72/100) ⭐⭐½

Plantation “Original Dark” Rum – Review

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May 122023
 

For all the bad press Plantation gets1, it is, as I remarked in the Rumcast interview back in 2021, in no danger of going out of business any time soon. Its stable of rums, whatever their provenance, is simply too wide ranging and useful — and often affordable — to ignore, and many of them have become reliable workhorses of backbars the world around. Not the high end stuff, of course, like the single cask bottlings  of the Extreme Series which are regarded with desire or despite in any representative rumdork population…but the modest and less ambitious rums of the line that we the proles drink.

If I had to pick the best known rums of the starter set — they call them the “Bar Classics” — it would have to be the OFTD, and Stiggins Fancy, with a bit more upscale name recognition from the “Signature Blends” going to Xaymaca and the Barbados XO.  The Three Stars white mixer is an interesting essay in the craft, and rounding out the bar is the Original Dark, the subject of today’s look-see. 

In brief, the Original Dark was one of the first bar mixers the company made — references to it predate 2010 — and at the inception was a rum using only Trinidad (Angostura) rums which were blended from stocks aged 3-5 years, added to with some eight year old, all of which was then aged for a further year and a half or so in ex-Cognac barrels in France, then bottled at 40%. By 2017, which is around the time Maison Ferrand (the parent company) acquired WIRD in Barbados and with it a ⅓ share in National Rums in Jamaica, its formulation was changed to include some Jamaica rum, and nowadays it’s all 1-3 year old Barbadian rum with some high-ester aged 10-15 YO Jamaican rum for kick, aged for about half a year in the usual Ferand style, in SW France. Oh, and of course, there is that 15g/L of sugar which is officially declared, but which I think is more 2.

So there we are. A sweetened, finished rum, a bartender’s mixing agent, retailing for a pretty affordable price point.  What does it sample like?  

Well, the smell is actually not too shabby, and packs a punch that is appreciably better than the 3-Star, the Barbados XO, the Grande Reserve and the Gran Anejo (though not the Xaymaca). Aged prunes, plums and dates, bitten into by the shaper fruitier notes of fresh pineapple and limes.  There’s some interesting (if rather vague) Demerara-like action here and there if you stick with it – licorice, caramel, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves – and overall the nose is an essay in light faintness that may simply be trying to do too much and mostly not quite making it.  Still it’s a nice nose, quite intriguing once you get accustomed to the rather anemic strength.

Alas, that sense of piquant and potential complexity flops over and pretends it’s dead by the time you get to the palate. I’m sorry, but it turns into a rather anonymous every-rum of the sort in vogue in the mixing era of the 1970s and 1980s (of which I’ve reviewed far too many for the Rumaniacs). It’s not bad per se…just not that interesting – it channels vanilla, brown sugar, cloves and cinnamon, a touch of licorice and sugar water, maybe some raisins and behind it all is the memory of pineapple but not the reality, fading into a finish that’s as soft and indifferent and wafts an even fainter set of those same notes at you…plus a marshmallow.

There’s a real promise when one smells it but it just doesn’t carry over into a drinking experience, and beyond dunking it into a mix, is there a purpose here that isn’t better served by, say, the OFTD, the Xaymaca or the 3-Star? It may be time to retire this old warhorse: it helped establish the company’s backbar staples a decade or more ago, but is now too long in the tooth to come up well against the new batch of more distinctive rums the company makes, let alone that of the competition.

Until overtaken by the OFTD – which is a completely separate and different rum – the Dark was one of Plantation’s most successful products, almost, but not quite, straddling the divide between sipper and mixer., and all the early reviews at the dawn of the internet gave it glowing encomiums. The same elevage and dosage and secondary ageing that is now sneeringly dismissed as gimmicky French nonsense was then lauded as innovative and distinctive and worthy of note. 

These days not many writers or bloggers bother with Plantation’s Original Dark – most save their digital ink for the OFTD, the Xaymaca or the Striggins; at best you’ll find a few sentences in a throwaway Facebook or Instagram post, or a brief reddit review, and there the reviews are pretty uniformly less than stellar. “Not a fan.” “Tastes like a spiced rum.” “Artificial”. “…couldn’t do anything with [it]. It even ruined Coke.” “Too sweet.” “Doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.”  These are more recent comments, contrasted against those at the beginning of its career when people were more effusive with their praise – yet they speak to a dissatisfaction with the rum which I share today.

Because in the end, it’s too bland, too quiet and too easy; it’s an un-aggravating, impersonal goodbye from a pretty date with whom I could not connect: who didn’t really like me but felt I should be treated politely for my trouble. And so I get a chaste kiss, a quick goodbye and no memories or experiences worth a damn I could reflect on later.  How sad that is, for something that starts so well.

(#995)(79/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Ironworks Distillery Amber Rum – Review

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Apr 282023
 

Returning to Canada and observing the rumscape that has developed over the last decade has not filled me with elation and confidence. Most of what I’ve found and tasted thus far is low level mixing hooch – which wouldn’t be so bad if the majority wasn’t just the kind of barely-aged, insipid, uninspiring, boring blah that Merchant Shipping Co. white rum so splendidly exemplified. They didn’t have to be — after all, I’ve tasted unaged and lightly aged rums from all over the map which exceeded their humble origins and became unexpectedly and quietly impressive products. But up until last week, I was beginning to wonder whether there were any really good ones North of 49.

With white rums of any stripe, the answer so far is a clear “no.” With aged rums, on the other hand, it would seem that there are glimmers of hope. Last weekend the Big (formerly the Little) Caner volunteered to help me run past a series of rums from around the world – I imagine that was a sort of amused curiosity at the doings of his geriatric sire involved – and since his nose is actually quite astute after years of following me around, I gladly accepted his assistance and perspective.  We tried six rums blind together: 3 to my complete surprise, my top pick from the rather low-rent bunch (and his second choice) was the Ironworks Amber rum from Nova Scotia.

This was the same rum-making outfit from Nova Scotia behind the “Bluenose” rum we looked at a couple of weeks ago. I thought that one was an interesting if ultimately not-quite-there foray into aged rums, with a more or less okay taste profile and too little disclosure (this has not changed), yet it wasn’t good enough to crack the eighty-point barrier, beyond which we should start paying a bit more attention. The Amber rum my boy and I tasted and which we’re reviewing today is still a rum in its developmental infancy – it has yet to find its sea legs if it wants to compare with any of the rums from the Big Houses’ stables – but by no means was it a slouch.

Quick stats: 42% ABV, molasses-based (Crosby’s Fancy Grade from Guatemala), with the wash passed twice through a hybrid Muller still and then aged; the ageing is tricky – the website says it is “a combination of a first fill bourbon barrel, and a re-charred Blomidon wine barrel” but whether that means the distillate was aged first in one then another, or two separately aged batches were blended, is not mentioned.  Neither is the duration though I suspect it’s probably less than three years all told.

Yet from these unprepossessing beginnings the rum that comes out the other end is actually quite a nifty drink. “Sprightly!” I said to The Big Caner as we nosed it, and enjoyed the light effervescent quality is displayed when smelled. It evinced bright and lively fruits, young and crisp – green apples and grapes, offset by more sober ones like papaya and melons. Mixed in with the clear sweetness was a little smoke, a little rubber, not enough to take over…more like an accent. There were some hints of hand sanitizer, a medicinal or rubbing alcohol, and the whole thing eased up and settled down after a while, becoming almost creamy.

Tastewise the 42% also acquitted itself reasonably well. Here the subtle impression of a low rent agricole was hard to shake: fresh herbs, green grapes, unripe apples, and some citrus notes were the main players on the stage.  A few riper fruits emerged from hiding, along with toffee and vanilla (thankfully not much of either), bright honey and sugar water.  There was a nice background of brininess to it and it was subtly dry, leading to a short and easy finish of white chocolate, crushed almonds and some citrus, not much more.  At 42% I was really surprised to get as much as all that, to be honest.

Overall then, the Ironworks Amber was light, easy drinking; reasonably well balanced, well assembled and not a disappointment. The sweetness was never allowed to dominate, though it could always be sensed lurking in the background; and if the smoky, feinty notes were not as well tamed as they might have been, well, some more ageing would probably have settled that and there are other rums in the company’s lineup which hopefully alleviate this. What’s impressive is that even in the company of the starter-kit rums in which the Amber found itself, it was able to stand out and make a statement for itself, and – to me at any rate – rise to the top of the heap of six. Granted the competition wasn’t world class, but it was from around the world. And that’s no mean feat, to be in that company, then equal and trump them all.  It gives me hope for the Canadian rum distilling scene, though I hope it doesn’t take until the Big Caner reaches my age to get there.

(#992)(83/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other notes

  • For some contrasting perspective, see Rum Revelations’ notes on Canadian rums from late 2022: he was rather indifferent to other Ironworks products generally (though they were not the ones I’ve tried, and not this one).
  • The Bluenose rum review  has a more detailed company background at the bottom.

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

Plantation Barbados Grande Reserve Aged Rum – Review

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Apr 102023
 

At first I thought the Barbados Grande Reserve Aged Rum was a replacement for the five year old Barbados rum from Plantation which I had tried many years ago, but further investigation showed them to be quite separate.  Both, however, are part of the Signature blends which include the Barbados 5, the XO, Grand Anejo and Xaymaca — these are what one might infer are entry level rums for the curious (to call them ‘premium’ would be a stretch). They are neither bartenders’ mixing staples like the Three Star, OFTD or Original Dark, nor expensive limited editions like the upscale Extreme, Single Cask or Vintage series, and exist in a kind of everyman’s universe where “reasonableness” is the watchword.

That said, the production ethos of the company pervades even this introductory rum. It originates from the West Indies Rum Refinery in Barbados (we all know Ferrand, Plantation’s parent company, owns it) where it is blended from pot/column still molasses-derived rums aged from one to three years, before being shipped off to France and aged in Ferrand’s facilities there for another year.  It’s released at 40%, the sweetening is glossed over, and overall, like most rums of this kind from this house, it attracts equal parts dislike and appreciation depending on who’s doing the talking.

It’s not my intent to rehash the polarising nature and background of either the company or its production practises here, except insofar as to note there aren’t many reviews of this rum to be found4, and wonder if the vitriol surrounding the company may have an impact on any writers’ desire to get sucked in. Be that as it may, the rum has to be tried sooner or later, and for new rum drinkers who wet their beaks for the first time with it, there’s little to actively dislike: it’s as good a rum to start one’s journey with as any, and better than quite a few I’ve looked at of late.

So, let’s get started.  Nose: an introduction of crisp yet ripe fruit, like raspberries, red currants, pineapples, around which coils a waft of stinky sweet bubble gum in hot weather. Brown sugar and molasses and coconut shavings are discernible, plus some mushy bananas and tangerines that have seen better days. Nice enough nose, with enough going on not to be categorised as simply an entry-level molasses based product: it’s a bit better than that.

The palate now…not too shabby. No, seriously. A touch sharp going in at first sip, then it steadies: sweet and sour pork, hot black tea sweetened with condensed milk and cardamom (bush tea, we called it and I still make a mug a few times a month), light fruits plus a touch of unsweetened salt caramel, vanilla, cinnamon, honey, orange juice and even marzipan. The problem is it tastes a bit…flattened, even dull, like Emile’s sense of taste compared to Remy’s in Ratatouille. The music is there but the bass is too high and the top- and mid-range notes don’t come through clearly enough and this is also the case when considering the finish; which turns out to be nothing we haven’t seen before, and is even a bit boring — slightly briny, sweet, coconut shavings, vanilla, light citrus and some chocolate.  

It goes down easy without reaching and that may be the key observation. Overall, it’s a relatively simple rum compared to others I’ve had (including some from Plantation themselves), yet a rum one can, with care and lowered expectations, have neat without too many issues. To be honest, I thought the rum was better than it had a right to be considering the sweetening Plantation is known for (I tested it after the session, not before…so the level was unknown to me while trying it). 

The Grand Reserve stops short of being a cloying muddle, and is fortunately a ways from being a complete sugary mess — yet the additives/sugar do spoil it and make for a lesser experience, especially if one knows what one is looking for. For someone now getting into rum, it’s serviceable and they could use it as a stepping stone to get more into the field, though for getting into the Barbados style it’s useless, so forget that aspect. Those with more experience can use it as a bellwether for what to look for in Plantation’s successively more upscale (and expensive) offerings; and for those who’re really into rums, well, there’s not much to say to them, since they already know all there is to know.

(#987)(78/100)

Other notes

  • The Plantation website has no details on any of the Signature rum series at all (the “learn more” link does not work)
  • Most articles mention 15-16 g/L sweetening, or “dosage”. My hydrometer shows 36% ABV when measuring the rum, which works out to 15 g/L
  • Leaving the empty glass in the sink to evaporate overnight leaves a slightly sticky residue to be found the next morning.
  • The rum has been in production for a very long time, hence the various label changes.  The first reference I can find for it dates from 2008, and is on one of the first  rum review websites, Refined Vices, run by an old friend from Finland, Tatu Kaarlas (who now lives in Australia). That Grand Reserve Barbados rum had a label which stated it was from cane juice (felt by most at the time to be unlikely) not molasses…and came from Foursquare. Yeah, that’s not happening now, for sure.

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.

Dzama Rum Cuvée Blanche (Madgascar) – Review

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Mar 202023
 

Madagascar’s best known distillery’s rums have been the subject of three reviews in these pages, stretching from 2014 to 2021, yet even now it is unclear whether this has made anyone sit up and pay attention. For the most part the rum drinkers’ attention remained resolutely with the Caribbean nations, or the new ones emerging elsewhere – suggesting that while Madagascar was unusual, it was apparently not enough to make it a global seller.

With or without such widespread recognition, Dzama still exists, however, still releases rums (a lot – Rum-X lists 29 of them), and can still be found on shelves, and even has a prestige 15 Year Old out there.  So clearly it’s doing well.  The rum being looked at today is their so called “classic” white (as opposed to the two other “prestige” editions), and irrespective of developments elsewhere in the blanc world is a very slightly aged rum – two to four weeks, apparently, with no further details on how this was achieved, or with what. The rum is also molasses based, column still distilled, released at 40%, and it ended up in Canada somehow, which is where I picked it up.

There’s little else of note here, so we can dive right in. Nose is peculiar: fragrant citrus soap starts things off, something reminiscent of Irish Spring; lots of vanilla, which is sort of a signature with Dzama (see biography below); citrus peel and sugar water make an appearance but the aroma lacks the herbals greenness that marks out an agricole rhum (which in any case this isn’t).  I do like the distinct lemon meringue pie notes, which Mrs. Caner said reminded her of lemonade from Kyrgyz pears, which I mention because, y’know, I promised. These smells are not all that strong or distinct and can be best found in contradistinction to several other standard strength white blends (such as those I was trying that day).

Taste wise, the lemony and custard notes are more pronounced (so is the soap).  It has a decent body, warm, not too rough or sharp, and there are hints of unsweetened yoghurt, laban, milk and a pie crust fresh from the oven.  A touch more licorice and ginger and maybe some cinnamon, leading to a quiet and undemonstrative finish which is too short, too faint … and frustratingly just starts to show off a few fruity notes when it all vanishes without so much as a goodbye.

These comments might lead you to believe it’s something to walk away from, but not really: I’ve tasted worse of this kind.  It’s different, reasonably tasty — kind of an alcoholic 7-Up, which I think is undone by the vanilla, that weird soap vibe, a bit too much sweet and too few real taste chops. Too, the general lack of cohesion of everything else makes for a disappointing sipping experience, and even for something so relatively unaggressive, it’s surprising how little rum comes through in the final analysis — it more resembles a doctored ethanol rather than some sort of well made local drink which has potential to represent its land of origin. That’s a pity, yet the potential of the brand remains, as it always has, which is why I keep coming back to their products: so who knows, one day they might make a white unaged rum I can really get behind. For now, this Cuvée Blanche is interesting for the geography, but not so much for the experience of drinking it.

(#982)(76/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Background notes

Madagascar is that huge island off the south east coast of Africa; and the Dzama rums are made by Vidzar, formed in 1980 due to the efforts of Mr. Lucien Fohine, who noted that the small sugar factory on the tiny island of Nosy Be in the north produced a distillate that had distinctive flavours which persisted into the final distilled products…mostly low level rum for local consumption, to that point. He concluded it came from the ylang-ylang plant (also known as the macassar oil plant, or the perfume tree) whose roots intermingled with that of the cane.

[Now, the theory is that the oils and perfumes of the various botanicals to be found on Madagascar (vanilla, cloves, pepper are often cited) leach from their roots into the soil and are intermixed with the cane plants’ own root systems, into their stems, and thence to the ultimate distillate. I’m no chemist or botanist, but one could just as easily wonder why similar processes aren’t observed on the spice island (Grenada) for example, so I reserve judgement on that score. All the Dzama rums I’ve tried have that question lurking in the background anyway, as to whether something was added to or not. Dzama firmly maintains no synthetic or artificial additions, but this still leaves the door open for natural ones; and according to Rhum Attitude, the Cuvee Prestige white is apparently a kind of filtered infused rum here, so who is to say something similar isn’t happening here?]

But anyway, Mr. Fohine formed a company he called Vidzar (a contraction of Vieux Rhum de Dzamandzar), which initially concerned itself with whisky bottling. It was located close to the sugar cane fields of Nosy Be, near to a village called Dzamadzar, and a few years later, as their operations expanded, production was transferred to Antananarivo (the capital, in the centre of the island). The company, which now claims a majority of rum market share in Madagascar, makes a range of rums, including the Dzama Club, 3 YO and 6 YO, the Millésimé 1998 10 Year Old, Dzama 15 and 25 year old rums and a Cuvée Noire, as well as three blanche rums and a raft of infused and spiced versions. Most of these are untried by the vast majority of rum drinkers, and remain relatively unknown, though some have won prizes between 2010 and 2015, in Miami, Paris, Berlin and Madrid. It may just be a marketing thing, or the inability to get out there and run around the festival circuit.

 

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

 2 Responses »
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.

Bacardi Gran Reserva “Diez” 10 YO Rum – Review

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Mar 132023
 

The Bacardi “Diez” – or, to give the rum its full title, the Bacardi Gran Reserva ”Diez” 10 Year Old Extra Rare Gold Rum – is the top of the trio of the company’s mid-level “kind-of” premium range.  Below it are the old workhorses of the añejo, gold, blanco, black, superior and so on; in its playpen also reside the Cuatro and Ocho (and maybe the Reserva Limitada); and above it are the more exclusively minted bottles of the Facundo line – the Paraiso, Neo, Eximo and Exquisito (I am deliberately excluding the relatively new single barrel editions and the Single Cane series as they don’t neatly fall into consistent ranges).

Because of its reasonable (and subsidised) cost, and its decent profile, the Diez was a serious contender for the Key Rums tag which finally went to the Ocho; it didn’t only lose out because of availability, but because overall, I felt it just didn’t come to the table with everything a tropically aged ten year old should. Let’s go straight in and step it through its paces and I’ll try to explain.

The nose starts out reasonably warm, with baking spices (cinnamon, nutmeg), smoke, polished leather, some tannic bite and licorice blending nice. Some caramel ice cream, banana, coconut shavings, white chocolate a nice mix of tannic, bitter and sweet held together with the muskier (but faint)  notes of toffee and brown sugar.  It’s workmanlike, but nothing to excite. It’s like a better añejo, really, with some of the edges sanded off and better complexity (which would be the least of what we could expect).

Tastewise, nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing special. Just more of the same old thing, although admittedly quite well done. Vanilla and caramel and molasses lead the charge, with breakfast and baking spices hastening to bolster the centre.  Leather, smoke and some light crisp fruits gallop around the flanks and are moving too quickly – here one minute gone the next – for any kind of serious engagement…they exist to be noticed but not to grapple with. Raisins, plums, some faint apples define the back end and a short and warm finish, and that’s what a ten year old under fifty bucks will get you.

The tech stats weren’t provided earlier in this review because I honestly didn’t think it was necessary: it’s well known that Bacardi’s rums are column still, short fermentation, light rums, whose taste profile comes primarily from expert barrel selection and blend management by the company’s legendary maestros roneros.The rum is a blend of rums aged a minimum of ten years, is 40% and really, were we expecting more? It’s main selling point may just be that price.

Let’s try to sum up. What we have here is a completely fine Bacardi rum, competently made, nicely aged, a decent Latin-style hooch, light, easy drinking, with some taste chops to write home about – even the slightly added dosage doesn’t detract from that, though I think it’s unnecessary, really. Any surprise would be if it wasn’t all those things, and it is indeed a ways above the made-for-the-mixing-proletariat Superior and Gold and Anejo that sell by the tanker load and keep Bacardi’s sales numbers flying high. On top of that, the Diez is demonstrably better than the 4YO “Cuatro”, addressing many of that young premium’s weaknesses: it is more complex, has more going on and seems more suited for the sipper’s glass. 

What it doesn’t do is eclipse the solidity of the 8YO “Ocho” which also ticks many of the same boxes; moreover, the Diez seems content to go down the familiar path of “same but incrementally better,” and is hardly a serious upgrade from any of its junior brethren. The makers seem to have had no inclination to find new worlds to explore or new profiles to demonstrate,  that would show some innovation, a willingness to go off the reservation, if only a little. I find that disappointing. There are enough standard-strength, standard-profiled, standard-priced rums in Bacardi’s stable, and in anyone’s corner shop. If you’re one of the biggest kids on the block, with over a century of experience behind you, you can surely do better than repeat the same old shtick with a new number.

(#980)(80/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • There are few other reviews for balance out there (even reddit is sparse on the ground here), but no shortage of votes and evaluations. The Rum Howler gave it 90.5 points in 2019; Vinepair’s staff rated it 91 points; two Tastings.com reviewers apparently scored it 94 points apiece in 2022 but since no names are provided and we have no idea who they are, I can’t comment further except to suggest they might do well to broaden their horizons; ¾ of the ratings on RumRatings were 7 out of 10 or better; 77 voters on Flaviar rated it an average of 8.2; and 42 users of Rum-X rated it an average of 70/100 (ouch). Paul Senft, writing for GotRum magazine in August 2019 (the only other full length review I could find), gave it a cautious endorsement while commenting he expected more, and would stick with the Ocho “for a more versatile experience.”
  • It is recommended that you read the reviews of the Cuatro and Ocho for some background thoughts on this trio of Bacardi’s rums.
  • The “nutrition” label on the website says it has 0.5 grams of sugar per serving of 1.5 ozs, which works out to about 11.3 g/L
  • Rum tasted here was the 2009 edition.

Merchant Shipping Co. White Rum (Highwood Distillers) – Review

 1 Response »
Mar 102023
 

The last two reviews were of products from a Scottish rum maker called Sugar House, who bootstrapped a hybrid pot still, a batsh*t crazy production ethos and somehow came out with two unaged rums that should not have succeeded as well as they did…but did; and blew my socks off. This is what happens when a producer, no matter how small or how new, takes their rum seriously, really loves the subject, and isn’t averse to tinkering around a bit, dispenses with the training wheels, and simply blasts off. Juice like this is the high point of the reviewing game, where you see something original, something good, not terribly well known outside its place of origin, and aren’t afraid to champion it.

Consider then the polar opposite, the yin to Sugar House’s yang, a contrasting product which sports a faux-nautical title (we can be grateful that it omits any mentions or pictures of pirates), a strength of 40% and not a whole lot else.  Merchant Shipping Co.’s branded product is in fact, a third party rum — “imported Caribbean white rum” — put together by Highwood Distillery in Alberta (in Canada), which is probably better known for the surprisingly robust Potter’s (gained when they bought out that lonely distillery from BC in 2005) and the eminently forgettable Momento, which may be the single most unread post on this entire site.  Here they didn’t make the rum, but imported it, (the AGLC website suggests it’s probably from Guyana, which Highwood deals in for its own stable), and made it on contract for exclusive sale in Liquor Depot and Wine & Beyond stores in western Canada.

Let me spare you some reading: it’s barely worth sticking into a cocktail, and I wouldn’t stir it with the ferrule of my umbrella. Merchant Shipping white rum is a colourless spirit tucked into a cheap plastic bottle, sold for twenty five bucks, and somehow has the effrontery (please God, let it not be pride) to label itself as rum. I don’t really blame Highwood for this – it’s a contract rum after all – but I’m truly amazed that a liquor store as large and well stocked as Wine & Beyond could put their name behind abominable bottom feeder stuff like this.

Because it’s just so pointless. So completely unnecessary.  It smells on first opening and resting and nosing, like mothballs left too long in an overstuffed and rarely-opened clothes closet, where everything is old, long-disused, and shedding.  It smells like rubbing alcohol and faint gasoline, and my disbelieving notes right out of the gate ask “Wtf is this?? My grandmother’s arthritis cream?” It is a 40% spirit, but I swear to you there’s not much in here that says rum to anyone – it’s seems like denatured, filtered, diluted neutral spirit…that’s then dumbed down just in case somebody might mistake it for a real drink. 

The palate continues this disappointment (although I’m an optimist, and had hopes); it tastes thin and harsh, oily, medicinal, all of it faint and barely there – even for living room strength there’s little to write home about: a lingering unpleasant back-taste of sardines and olive oil, offset by a single overripe pear garnished with a sodden slice of watery melon and a squished banana, and if there is more I’d have to imagine it. Finish is gone so fast you’d think it was the road runner’s fumes, minus the comedy.

I can’t begin to tell you how this tasteless, useless, graceless, hopeless, classless, legless rum annoys me. Everything that could have given the spirit real character has been stripped away and left for dead. I said it was unnecessary and meant it: because you could pour the whole bottle down the drain and go to sleep knowing you’d  never missed a thing — yet it’s made, it’s on shelves, it sells, and a whole generation of young Canadians who can afford nothing else will go to their graves thinking this is what rum is and avoid it forever after. That’s what the implication of this thing is, and that’s the one thing it’s good at.

(#979)(65/100) ⭐½

Opinion

It gives me no pleasure to write reviews that slam a homegrown product — because homegrown products are what give a country or an island or a territory or an acreage its unique selling point, its mental and physical terroire. That’s what’s wrong with this faux, ersatz “Caribbean” rum, because there’s absolutely nothing that says Canada here at all (let alone rum, and certainly not the Caribbean) and as noted above, it’s an import (a near neutral spirit import at that, apparently).  

Yet, as I’ve tried to make clear, one of those areas where there is serious potential for putting one’s country on the map lies in rums that don’t go for the least common denominator, don’t go for the mass-market miscellaneous dronish supermarket shelves, and certainly don’t go for the profit-maximizing-at-all-costs uber-capitalist ethos of the provincial liquor monopolies who could give a damn about terroire or real taste chops. It’s the blinkered mentality of them and the stores who follow it that allows rum like this to be made, as if the French rhum makers, global cane juice distillers, and the UK New Wave haven’t shown us, time and again, that better could be done, has been done…and indeed, should be done.

Other notes

  • There’s no tech sheet to go with the rum and nothing on the label, but I think it’s fair to say no self-respecting pot still ever made a rum like this, so, column still.  Also, molassess based.  It is probably aged a bit and then filtered, and my guess is less than a year.
  • Five minute video summary is here

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.

Doorly’s Fine Old Barbados 14 Year Old Rum – Review

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Feb 172023
 

Last year Chris Seale and I were talking at Paris’s WhiskyLive and he mentioned that he had read some of my earlier work on the Doorly’s line of rums and thought I had been unnecessarily rough on the brand. I responded that this was very true — it’s hardly something I could pretend was not — but it faithfully reflected my feelings and opinions from more than a decade ago and of course, I’ve moved on to developing a real appreciation for Foursquare in the many years between then and now – especially the new Habitation Velier LFT and pot still editions,  and the ECS series, to say nothing of the Collaborations.  That said, I did remark I just found the Doorly’s brand as a whole too lackluster – most are public-facing and mass-market: the low-cost components of the house. They’re too weak, too easy, to everyman-pleasing; they are therefore not aimed at me but at those who are closer to starting their journey.

While completely acknowledging the house’s impact and importance, especially to the bourbon crossover crowd who I believe to be among the brand’s most fervent admirers (next to the Brits), I think it’s taken the Doorly’s 14 year old 48% pot-column blend (a part of the blend was aged in ex-Madeira, though specific details are lacking) released around 2019, to make me accept that finally there’s one of the line I can get serious about and introduce to my mommy.  It presses more buttons than all its siblings – it’s stronger, has a bit more pot-still oomph, more decisive tastes and is to me, at the perfect age for what it is. Close your eyes and you could be drinking any top flight indie bottling.

Consider how it opens: the nose begins with the attack of light skirmishers – varnish, glue and brine, quicky gone, not sharp or aggressive, just making themselves felt. Next comes the light cavalry on the flanks: green apples, grapes, papaya, watermelon, pears, a touch of soursop, and then the heavy infantry masses to take over, and here the more traditional aromas of caramel, vanilla, toffee, blancmange, molasses, supported by the spices of cumin, rosemary, and cinnamon.  

Once we start tasting the thing, the palate is where the battle is joined. Flavours vie for dominance – brine and olives and some nail polish duke it out with sweeter fruity notes of ripe red apples, pears and peaches in syrup, and very ripe dark cherries.  On the flanks the molasses, toasted coconut and musky port-infused tobacco are having their own separate argument with a miso soup and kimchi, but the key takeaway is that when all is considered together, the whole palate is well-balanced between sweet, salt and sour.  And the finish concludes this nicely by closing off the show with a spicy, long, dry, fruity and aromatic exhalation that somehow doesn’t give any side a win but shows off the best part of all of them.

This sounds like a lot, sure, but then, I tend to give Doorly’s more attention than most, precisely because thus far I’ve been less than impressed with the line. When the dust finally settles and the tally is made on the 14 YO, I consider this a very good sipping rum for us proles and the one Doorly’s I have no problem recommending to anyone, without resorting to a lazy and overworked references to bourbon or Pappy that just chases away those who have no interest in either. In fact, what this reminds me of quite closely is the ECS Criterion.

And yet, curiously, although my belief is that the rum is pretty damned fine not everyone agrees or goes that far. The rum garners positive reviews, yes, just not raves of the sort that more exclusive limited editions of the Collaborations or the ECS line get almost routinely (score aggregators cluster most user evaluations of the D14 at around the mid eighties with the others trending higher). Overall I think it’s a good rum, well made, well assembled, succeeding on every level without reaching for the moon, a sipper for every occasion for any income bracket, and frankly, I believe it’s an ECS edition in all but name. I call mine “Misnomer.”

(#973)(84/100)

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 5 aged for three years in ex-Bourbon casks, and some unaged WPE 6. 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

Key Rums of the World – Bacardi Reserva “Ocho” 8 YO Rum (Puerto Rico / Global)

 3 Responses »
Feb 012023
 

Bacardi hardly needs an introduction.  It’s a company of ancient vintage (in rum years), one of the first and remaining big guns of the entire sector, with a storied past from the 19th century, involving the rise of an immigrant family, ruthless business practises, revolution, heartbreak, loss, global expansion and emergence at the other end as one of the great spirits conglomerates in the world. In so doing it has carved a reputation for itself so enormous that one hardly needs to say rum after its name, it is so synonymous and clearly identified with that one single drink.

And yet Bacardi as a whole has a curiously ambivalent relationship with the rum population of today, and the reputation it sports is not without its downside. Their rum is not seen as a stopping point but a start, something to leap beyond, quickly, as soon as one’s wallet can reasonably afford the extra increments that would allow one to buy a true “premium” (by whatever standard people use to define one). For this, to some extent, I blame Bacardi’s modus operandi of relentlessly pushing high-volume, low-quality mass-selling low-priced everyman rums like the Blanca, Gold or even the Superior, into every market possible without regard for improving them much or seeking to colonise a more elevated ethos of quality or premiumisation.

Even if they sell like crazy the flip side is that such ubiquitous cheap rums dilute brand appreciation and make more upscale offerings seem equally lacklustre. These days, rum writers barely acknowledge or review them any longer. And, as many of today’s expanding indies have found, while you certainly need low-priced blue-collar young rums to sell and make cash flow, you also really premium aged rums to seriously develop the brand ito a true quality seller with consumer recognition and appreciation – something Bacardi has singularly failed to do in spite of efforts like the Facundo line, the occasional ultra-expensive halo releases, or the Single Cane brand 7. 

Whatever our opinion of the Bat, however, we must always consider the groundwork laid by its famed blends from decades past — because among all the dross, we can indeed find the occasional surprise lying like a forgotten gem in the mud and dreck of carelessly made cheap supermarket hooch we see every day.  And one of these is the rebranded Bacardi 8 year old, now called the “Reserva Ocho Rare Gold Rum.”  To my mind it is among the best of the not-quite-upscale rums Bacardi makes, and Bacardi seems to have recognized it also, because they recently established (2021) the Ocho as an anchor of Bacardi’s Premium rums which began releasing variations with different finishes to buff and bolster the line.

The Bacardi Ocho / 8 in all its various guises remains quite affordable, has a solid age statement, has several components of the blend which are older than the youngest 8YO, and even if it’s issued at a lacklustre 40% (when will they move beyond that ridiculous self imposed standard, honestly? Is even 43% or 45% for major broad based releases too much to ask for?) it does have more in its trousers than is generally acknowledged. 

The nose, for example, shows that quality, if perhaps too subtly for some.  Even at that milquetoast strength, one can detect cinnamon, woodiness, leather, licorice, vanilla, and citrus. It’s reasonably complex for 40% – the sly and subtle fruity notes which dance and play and disappear just as soon as one comes to grips with them are a case in point – but after the off-kilter memory of the Exclusiva, it remains a somewhat less memorable dram.  It is, however, clearly and professionally made, a good step above the Gold, or the Cuatro.

The palate is a harder nut to crack. There are definitely tasting notes to be had for the diligent: it is relatively soft, warm, a touch spicy.  There are notes of masala, cumin and cinnamon, standing cheek by jowl with vanilla, a squeeze of lemon zest, mauby bark, strong tea, and a hint of sweetness developing at just the right time.  So you’re getting bitter and sweet, and a nice lick of the tannins from the barrel, offset to some extent by softer, more fruity notes.  I just wish there were more, and the low strength makes the short and light finish a rather pallid affair – it’s aromatic, woody, tannic, tobacco-infused, with some sweet to balance things off…there’s just not enough of it, I think.

For reasons surpassing my understanding, the whole rum gives this impression of trying hard to be less when it’s actually more, a perception that dogs the brand nowadays. Most reviewers don’t know what to do about the company’s wares, really, and in fact many new writers and commentators walk straight past the company and jump straight into favoured indie bottlers and expensive new craft rums (I envy them this ability, sometimes) without often stopping to wonder at the strange longevity and quality of what, at first sight, doesn’t seem to be much. It’s gotten to the point where any crowd pleasing column-still rum made by a massive conglomerate is not usually seen as a member of the Key Rums pantheon.

Yet I believe that there are reasons why a rum like this can not only be called key, but serious. It does, of course, tick all the boxes.  It is affordable, whatever one might say about the source of that low cost. It is available, a point to which my personal travels can attest – I’ve found the rum from the small speakeasies of Alaska and the Yukon to the bars of Central Asia, for illicit sale in the Middle East and just about everywhere in between.  The Bacardi Gold is even more easily gotten (and even cheaper) but when it comes to some decent sipping quality of rum, it’s either the 8 or the 10 and for my money, given its decades-long availability everywhere I looked (or didn’t), the 8 gets it because the ten just doesn’t cut the mustard for me in the same way.

Bacardi’s rums as they have been for ages, don’t rely overmuch on flavours developed by fermentation or prioritise the distillation apparatus the way new kids on the block do; their expertise is in wood management, careful barrel usage and selection, and then the subsequent blending. They are based on the skill of maestros roneros with oodles of experience and decades of background in the craft.  What comes out the other end can’t be denied, and when I consider the oft-unacknowledged chops of the Ocho as one of the premiere Spanish heritage style rums of the world, it is clear that it isn’t just a key rum for me, but a benchmark against which I rate many others of the style. And that’s no mean achievement for a brand often dismissed as yesterday’s leftovers.  As I’ve tried to make clear here, it really shouldn’t be,

(#969)(82/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other Notes

  • 2024 Video Recap available here.
  • The blend is tweaked slightly but remeins quite consistent.  Of the five different labels shown in the picture, only the green rye-finish edition is substantially and noticeably different.
  • Although made in Puerto Rico, I argue it is less a local Key Rum emblematic of the island, than a global one.

Engenhos do Norte Rum North “Barrica Nova” Rum Agricola da Madeira – Review

 2 Responses »
Dec 122022
 

Today we’ll continue with another rum from the island of Madeira and the company of Engenos do Norte, which, as its name suggests, is located in the north of Madeira Island.  The company was founded in 1928 by the merging of some fifty sugar factories at a time when it was simply not economical for individual small mills to operate. While they had been making rums on the island for centuries, it had a lesser importance to sugar, and most of the local rum was either consumed domestically or in Portugal (wine was actually much more popular and commonly made). In other words, though rum has a long pedigree on Madeira, the emergence of the rum (and local rum brands internationally) as an economic force and a serious revenue and tax generator, is very much a 21st century phenomenon.

Engenhos do Norte remains as the largest rum producer in Madeira, and has several different brands in the portfolio: Branca, North, 980, 970, Lido, Zarco and Tristao Vaz Texeira.  All are column still rums, all are cane juice based and as far as I am aware, all conform to the Madeira GI (Indicação Geográfica Protegida). The Lido is a single underproofed (38%) white for making ponchas, the local fruit cocktail. The “Tristao”, “North” and “Zarco” ranges are all series of unaged or lightly-aged blended agricolas (the exact difference among the brands is unclear, as the specs seem quite similar), the “Branca” rums are white unaged rums at several proof points, while the “970” and “980” are more aged variations and can be considered somewhat more upscale. 

The Rum North “Barrica Nova” is a golden rum, not marketed as anything particularly special. As with all the others mentioned above, it’s cane juice derived, distilled on a column still, aged for three months in new French Oak barrels (hence the “barrica nova” in the title), and released at 40%. It’s very much a living room rum or for the bartender’s backbar, made for cocktails and not neat sipping; nor does it appear to be anything exclusive or limited — and while it’s on sale in Europe, so far I haven’t seen anyone’s review of it out there.

The rum’s initial nose presents with bright golden notes of citrus, green grapes, ginnips and unripe papaya, nicely fresh and quite light – not much of the grassy herbals as characterise a French West Indian agricole, yet close enough to suggest the commonality of origin. There are notes of green peas, fanta, and an apple-flavoured creamy yoghurt. There’s a touch of cream cheese, fresh wonderbread toast (!!), with light lemony aspects, and lurking quietly in the background, the rather peculiar aroma of old leather suitcases pulled from musty cupboards after long disuse. All these aromas are rather faint and the citrus and fruit sodas are more dominant, with the others providing a vague and uneasy backdrop that takes effort to tease out.

After that rather decent nose the palate falls flat from exhaustion at trying to keep up. The rum tastes watery, thin and sharp as a harridan’s flaying tongue. Notes of light fruits, honey, sugar water and vanilla predominate, but this is a scrawny kind of gruel, and even a few last minute bits and pieces – aromatic tobacco, salt caramel, old carboard and nail polish – don’t really make this a sip worth seeking. The finish is even weaker: short, light, sweet, inoffensive, mostly very light fruitiness – watermelon, papaya, white guava –  and requires too much effort to locate.

This rum is not my thing. Like the 980 Beneficiado, there’s just not enough going on to provide a taste profile of any distinction, and while 40% may be the preferred strength locally or for maximal exports, the faintness of what the palate presents demonstrates why some rums should simply be stronger. It enforces a limitation on the producers – probably for tax, regulatory or other reasons – that should be pushed past for the benefit of consumers who buy it. It’s no accident that the best-scoring Madeira-made rums we’ve seen so far have all been from independents who go cask strength and combine that with some decent ageing.

For the casual imbiber the weak-kneed profile doesn’t mean there is anything ostensibly, offensively wrong with the rum…and yet, for those who have a bit more experience, everything is. Even with the decent aroma, it’s too anonymous, too lacklustre and certainly does not bugle “Madeira!” from the rooftops – at best, it’s an exhausted squeak. It’s made too much for everyone, which really means for no-one, and you’ll forget about it five minutes after walking away. The ‘Barrica Nova’ is underwhelming, underachieving, underdelivering, and underperforming, and although I suppose that like a shotgun wedding’s reluctant groom it’ll grudgingly do what it’s meant to, in my book that doesn’t count as a compliment.

(#957)(75/100) ⭐⭐½

 

Cadenhead’s Green Label Demerara 10 Year Old Rum (Late 1990s)

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Dec 082022
 

Rumaniacs Review #142 | 0957

As noted before (and repeated below for the curious), Cadenhead has three different bottle ranges, each of which has progressively less information than the one before it: the Dated Distillations, the Green Labels and the Caribbean blends. 

The Green Label releases are always 46% and issued on no schedule; their labels and the company website provides so little information on past releases that one has to take some stuff on faith — in this case, my friend Sascha Junkert (the sample originator) noted it was a 10 YO bottled in 2000, although even the best resource on Cadenhead’s older bottlings, Marco Freyr, cannot verify the dates in his detailed post on the company and the accompanying bottle list, and Rum-X only mentions one distilled in 1998. There are only a handful of Green Label 10 YO rums from Guyana / Demerara at all, and the 2000 reported date doesn’t line up for any other published resource – when they bother, most mention 1998-2002 as distillation dates. So some caution is in order.

What’s particularly irritating about the label in this instance is that it lacks any information not only about the dates and the still(s), but also the casks – and so here one has to be careful, because there are two types of this 10YO Demerara: one “standard” release, and one matured in Laphroaig casks.  How to tell the difference?  The Laph aged version is much paler and has a strip taped vertically across the screw top like a tax strip.  Hardly the epitome of elegant and complete information provision now, is it.

The Laphroaig aged expression. Note the identifying strip at top.

Colour – Pale yellow

Strength – 46%

Nose – Dry, dusty, with notes of anise and rotting fruits: one can only wonder what still this came off of.  Salt butter, licorice, leather, tannins and smoke predominate, but there is little rich dark fruitiness in evidence.  Some pencil shavings, sawdust, glue and acetone, and the bite of unsweetened tea that’s too strong.

Palate – Continues the action of the sweet bubble gum, acetones, nail polish and glue, plus some plasticine – not unpleasant, just not very rum-like.  Also the pencil shavings, sawdust and varnish keep coming, and after a while, some green fruits: apples, soursop, grapes.  At the last, one can sense candied oranges, caramel bon bons, and more very strong and barely-sweetened black tea teetering on the edge of bitterness.

Finish – Reasonably long, reasonably flavourful, quite thin.  Mostly licorice, caramel, tannins and a touch of unidentifiable fruit.

Thoughts – It’s not often appreciated how much we pre-judge and line up our expectations for a rum based on what we are told about it, or what’s on the label.  Here it’s frustrating to get so little, but it does focus the attention and allow an unblinking, cold-eyed view to be expressed.  In fine, it’s an average product: quite drinkable, decent strength, enough flavours not to bore, too few to stand out in any way. It’s issued for the mid range, and there it resolutely stays, seeking not to rise above its station

(82/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other Notes

  • The three ranges of Cadenhead’s releases are:
    • The cask strength, single-barrel Dated Distillation series with a three- or four-letter identifier and lots of detail on source and age; I submit these are probably the best and rightly the most sought-after rums from the company (aside from a 1939-distilled Green Label from Ago).  The only question usually remaining when you get one, is what the letters stand for.
    • The Green Label series; these are usually single-country blends, sometimes from multiple distilleries (or stills, or both), mostly from around the Caribbean and Central/South America; a few other countries have been added in the 2020s.  Here you get less detail than the DDs, mostly just the country, the age and the strength, which is always 46% ABV. THey had puke yellow labels with green and red accents for a long time, but now they’re green for real, as they had been back in the beginning.
    • Classic Blended Rum; a blend of Caribbean rums, location never identified, age never stated (anywhere), usually bottled at around 50% ABV. You takes your chances with these, and just a single one ever crossed my path. 
    • Strictly speaking there is a fourth type sometimes referred to as a “Living Cask” which is a kind of personalized shop-by-shop infinity bottle.  I’ve only tried one of these, though several are supposedly in existence.
  • These older Cadenhead’s series with the puke yellow and green labels are a vanishing breed so I think the classification in the Rumaniacs is appropriate.
  • The pot-column still tagging / categorization is an assumption based on the way it tasted.  I think it’s an Enmore and Versailles blend, but again, no hard evidence aside from my senses.

 

Engenhos do Norte Rum Agrícola Beneficiado 980 Madeira – Review

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Dec 012022
 

Every year, especially as the Madeira rumfest comes around, there is a flurry of posts and interest about rums from the islands of that Portuguese Autonomous Region (it’s one of two such regions – the other is the Azores). The better known rums originating there are from the distilleries of O Reizinho, Engenho Novo (which makes William Hinton rums) and Engenhos do Norte, and these three rub shoulders with yet others like Abel Fernandes, Vinha Alta and Engenhos da Calheta. Not surprisingly, there are occasional independent releases as well, such as those from Rum Nation and That Boutique-y Rum Co.

One of the reasons Madeira excites interest at all is because they are one of the few countries covered by its own GI (the Madeiran Indicação Geográfica Protegida), and so can legally and properly – at least within the EU – use the term agricole when referring to their cane juice rums (which is practically all of them). Yet, paradoxically, they remain relatively niche products which have only recently – which is to say, within the last decade or so – started to make bigger waves in the rum world, and few writers have spent much time on their products: WhiskyFun has done the most, with eight and there’s a scattering of others from Single Cask Rum, Rum Barrel,  The Fat Rum Pirate and myself.

Today we’ll begin a few Madeiran reviews to raise that visibility a bit more, with some rums from what is perhaps the largest of the distilleries, Engenhos do Norte: although google translate will tell you that the Portuguese word engenho means “ingenuity” it really translates into “sugar mill”, which is what most of these companies started out as. Engenhos do Norte was formed by a merger of some fifty mills in either 1927 or 1928, depending on the source — they were forced to come together to remain economically viable (see “Other notes”, below). Their best known brands are the 970 series (introduced in 1970, which is not a coincidence), Branca and Larano, though of late they’ve added more. 

One of the more recent additions is the Rum Agrícola Beneficiado 980 — that “980” is an odd shorthand for the year it was introduced, which is to say, 1980 — which is a fresh cane juice rum, 40.5% ABV, column-still made and left to sleep: the final blended rum is from rums aged 3, 6 and 21 years, and although it is not mentioned what kind of barrels are used, I have one reference that it is French Oak and have sent an inquiry down to Engenhos to ask for more details. The proportions of the aged components are unstated, but attention should be paid to the word “beneficiado” (beneficiary) – what this means is that a little cane honey has been added round out the profile, which may be why a hydrometer test, or even straight tastings, tend to comment on a slight sweetness to the profile (it is this which the words on the back label “+ mel de cana e caramelo” mean).

This sweetness is not, however, immediately noticeable when nosing the rum; initially the scent is one of cardboard, brine, light olives and dates, combined with damp tea leaves and aromatic tobacco. Pralines and a caramel macchiato, cloves and milk – what an odd nose, the more so because it presents very little more commonly accepted agricole elements. There’s a bit of yoghurt mixed up with Dr. Pepper, ginger ale, a kind of sharp and bubbly soda pop, and behind it all, that sense of an overripe orange beginning to go off.

Similarly disconcerting notes appear when tasting it: it’s a bit rough, a bit dry, with rubber, acetones, and brine combining uneasily with honey, vanilla, caramel, toffee and badly made fudge. You can probably pick out additional hints of sweet vanilla ice cream, some tartness of guavas, a touch of citrus – not much more. The finish completes the tasting by being short, mild and inoffensive, presenting a few last caramel and molasses notes set off with Dr. Pepper, licorice, raisins and some oranges. It’s okay, but very different from any agricole you’ve likely tried before, which is both good and bad, depending on your preferences.

Overall, I think the Beneficiado’s weakness is that the freshness of a good grassy, herbal, fruity offset just isn’t there…and if it is, it’s too mild to make a dent. It’s like tasting flavoured fine sandpaper, really, and at just a hair over forty percent strength, it’s too thin to present with any serious assertiveness. Does it work on its own level, with what it actually is (as opposed to what I was expecting, or wished for)? To some extent, yes — it just doesn’t go far enough to capitalise on its few strengths, and therefore what we get is a stolid, rather dour rum, one that lacks those sparkling, light aspects that would balance it better, and make it an agricole worth seeking out.  

(#955)(79/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Historical Notes

  • It’s long been known that sugar cane migrated from Indonesia to India to the Mediterranean, and was being cultivated on Madeira by the first half of the 15th century.  From there it jumped to the New World, but sugar remained a profitable cash crop in Madeira (the main island, which gave its name to the group) and the primary engine of the island’s economy for two hundred years. 
  • For centuries, aside from their famed fortified wines, white rum was all Madeira was known for, and just about all of it was made from small family-owned sugar cane plots, consumed locally as ponchas, and as often considered to be moonshine as a legitimate product. Because of the small size of the island a landed aristocracy based on the system of large plantations never took off there. 
  • That said, for all its profitability and importance, the sugar industry has been on the edge of a crisis for most of its history: competition from Brazil in the 16th century, sugar cane disease in the 17th, leading to alternative (and competitor) crops like grapes (which led to a much more profitable wine industry) in the 17th and 18th centuries, a resurgence of fungal disease in the late 19th century; the restriction of available land for cane farming in the 20th century (especially in the 1920s and 1930s) … all these made it difficult to have a commercial sugar industry there – no wonder the mills tried to band together.  By the 1980s sugar cane farming was almost eliminated as a commercial cash crop, yet even though sugar continued to decline in prices on the world markets — due to cheaper sources of supply in India, Brazil and elsewhere, as well as the growing health consciousness of first world consumers —  it stubbornly refused to die.  It was kept alive on Madeira partially due to the ongoing production of rum, which in the 21st century started to become a much more important revenue generator than sugar had been, and led to the resurgence of the island as a quality rum producer in its own right.
  • In the early 2010s, the Portuguese government started to incentivize the production of aged rum on Madeira.  Several producers started laying down barrels to age, one of which was Engenhos do Norte – however the lack of an export market made them sell occasional barrels, or bottle for third parties.  That’s how, for example, we got the Boutique-y Madeira rum from 2019.
  • The distillery is located in the north of Madeira in the small town of Porto da Cruz, and considered part of Portugal (even though geographically it’s closer to Africa). 
  • The rum is derived from juice deriving from fresh cane run through a crusher powered by a steam engine, fermented for about 4-5 days, passed through a columnar barbet still and then left to age in French oak barrels. 

Tuthilltown Distillery Roggen’s Rum (2012)

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Nov 232022
 

Rumaniacs Review #141 | 0953

For a distillery whose founder had a not inconsiderable impact on craft distilling in the state of New York, it’s a shame they stuck with a product that has no end of local competition and is at best reviewed with occasional praise, mostly indifference and sometimes outright disdain: whiskey.  And yet they produced a rum or two at one time; and one of them, this rum, while no great shakes, suggested that they had potential and to spare had they stuck with it.  Maybe.

This is a pot still, blackstrap molasses based rum (for what it’s worth, blackstrap molasses is the kind that has the most sugar already removed from it and is characterized by an almost bitter taste and thick consistency; it’s also the cheapest). The age is unknown but I think it’s around 2-3 years old, and my perhaps unfounded supposition is that after William Grant injected some capital into the company in 2010 (see historical details below), they wanted to add to the portfolio, and made this 1,000-bottle rum in 2012 to commemorate the Roggen brothers who were Huegenot dry-goods merchants and spirits dealers in the area back in the day. There was also a Hudson River Rum at 46% made at around the same time, and these two products are the only rums I think the company ever made.

Colour – Amber

Strength – 40% ABV

Nose – You can still taste some molasses, brown sugar and licorice here, also some sweet fruit which remains, faint, dull and relatively unadventurous. Cherries, orange peel, caramel, some vanilla. It’s paint by the numbers time. Not bad…just not exciting.

Palate – Vanilla, some apples and raisins, a little licorice and bitterness, and a twang of brine. Brown sugar, caramel, molasses, unsweetened chocolate, and that’s stretching. Essentially, there’s not much going on here.  It’s not precisely rough or uninviting, yet the sharpness and youth makes it a drink to have with some care.

Finish – Hardly anything to report on. Vanilla, some very light fruit, toffee, licorice. That’s about it.

Thoughts – Roggen’s, for all its positive marketing and enthusiastic blurbs on various online stores where it remains to be found (which by itself should tell you something since it was made in 2012), is a rum stuck in time, the sort popular ten years or more ago: punchy if you have it first thing in the morning, but hardly new and or different. It’s a drowsy sort of everyman’s hooch that you could care less about while drinking it, and forget a half hour after it’s done: not because it’s vile, or even poorly made — I have to acknowledge the competency of the distillery in not making an unmitigated disaster — but simply that while the rum is not entirely boring, it’s neither more nor less than just a lot of nothing much in particular.  

(76/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Other Notes

  • My thanks to Jazz and Indy Anand of Skylark Spirits, at whose house in London I pilfered the bottle and did the review notes earlier this year.  This is not a brand in their distribution portfolio, but something I think Jazz picked up on one of his trips to the States.
  • The historical society of New Paltz was involved in making the rum, which I think is some kind of commemorative or promotional bottling, hence the limited outturn of 1,000 bottles.

Historical background

So, the company story, then, if this intrigues you. Tuthilltown Distillery was founded in the upstate-NY township colloquially known by that name (after a Mr. Tuthill who founded a grist mill there in 1788), but is formally called Gardiner. It was itself established by fleeing Huguenots who settled in the area in the mid-1600s and also established a small town slightly to the north called New Paltz.  It was a thriving town by the mid-1700s, and it is useful to know that a pair of Swiss brothers – Francoise Pierre Roggen and Johann Jacob Roggen – emigrated there in 1749 and became merchants of some note.

In the current century, Ralph Erenzo, a retired professional rock climber, acquired a property of 36 acres there in 2001, intending to build a B&B, but this never came to fruition because locals kept denying the construction permits. However, Ralph discovered an obscure 2000 law on the books that allowed local micro-distilling at a greatly reduced licensing rate ($1,500, from a previous sum of $65,000) — so long as production was less than 35,000 gallons a year. And so in 2003, with an engineer called Brian Lee (who had come to him looking to use his facilities to make artisanal flour) he shifted to booze, and founded Tuthilltown Spirits by converting one of the mill granaries to a micro-distillery. It was the first new distillery built in New York since Prohibition. Two and a half years later, they produced their first batches of vodka from scraps collected at a local apple slicing plant, and had plans for whiskies. 8

As all good Americans micros do, the distillery went all-in on any distillable booze they could: eau de vie, brandy, absinthe, infusions, vodka, rye, bourbon, gin, and, of course, rum, you know the drill.  But it was whiskey that commanded their attention and much like Amrut did, knowing the quality of their product, they did small bar tastings in Paris (yes, Paris) and got a distribution deal with la Maison du Whiskey,  aside from whatever small sales they had in-state. This in turn brought them to the attention of William Grant & Sons out of Scotland, who bought the brand (but not the product) in 2010 and injected some much-appreciated capital into the company to improve infrastructure, marketing and distribution; in 2017 they bought the entire thing.  At this point they dispensed with all the other spirits and switched entirely to the branded Hudson Whiskey and its variations. And this is why the website for Tuthilltown is dead, while Hudson Whiskey’s is alive and well and why no reference on the latter site will even mention that they once were a smorgasbord of all things intoxicating, including rums.

Opinion

The fact that it’s topical newsmagazines that provide the background to the distillery, the name, the history and the rum’s titling — I searched through quite a few archival documents and websites to find the details used above —  explains something of my frustration with distilleries who have no sense of their own history or respect for what they have done in years gone by. Granted Tuthilltown is not rum focused, but surely a listing all the products they have made in their existence should be easily available somewhere. This indifference to their product development and past roster, even if discontinued is simply bewildering.  I mean, they made it, they labelled it, they sold it, it’s part of who they are…why pretend it doesn’t exist? 

I hasten to add that this is not an exclusively American phenomenon – God knows there are examples galore across the geographical spectrum, like that Cadenhead VSG I almost thought was a ghost last year. Still, in contrast, take this counter-example: the Danish indie Rom Deluxe has a webpage devoted to their current releases, but they also have an archival section on their website where they list all their various older expressions made in years gone by.  Labels, tech sheets, the lot. Given I can still find stuff from their earliest years knocking about on store shelves or collector’s basements, such material is a godsend when asking the inevitable question “what is this thing?” Quite a different mindset than so many others.

I’ve made a point of bringing up the issue of loss of current records (or having no records at all) for years and it’s the sort of subtle thing nobody really worries about, or notices…until they ask a question and realize that nobody ever wrote anything down, or recorded it and the info so readily available before, now only resides in derelict and near-inaccessible company archives, or on old web pages no longer “live”, or on some long-forgotten FB post. Rum databases like Rum Ratings and Rum-X help, for sure, but I think if companies themselves took some ownership of their releases and made sure the details were always available, then that would just help everyone out when they see an obscure bottle on a dusty shelf somewhere. Because without it, we’ll be floundering around ten years down the road — even more than we are at present — if steps are not taken now.

 

Captain Morgan Black Label Blended Rum (Early 1980s)

 1 Response »
Nov 212022
 

Rumaniacs Review #140 | 0952

Captain Morgan, of course, requires no introduction, yet its history presented us with some interestingly convoluted pathways (R-139); it showed that although in its modern 2020s iteration it’s a throwaway piece of cheap spiced dreck, made with indifference and sold wholesale with what I can only conclude is contempt for its core audience, the fact is that once, not too far back, it had aspirations to being something quite a bit more interesting.  More genuine. Almost a real rum.

We can date this one more accurately because the 70º on the label had been replaced with 40% ABV which went into effect in 1980, and since 1984 the “Original Spiced” came on the market so the blends were gradually (if not instantly) discontinued. This may be one of the last of the true multi-country blends, and in this case it looks like they were drawing down from all the casks they had in storage from Barbados, Jamaica, and Guyana.

Colour – Dark amber

Strength – 40%

Nose – Sweet stewed plums, cherries in syrup,  Licorice, salt caramel, molasses, wood, pencils, tree bark and sap.  A few fleshy fruits roaming around in the background, bananas, very ripe oranges, but too faint to make much of an impression.

Palate – Thick, sweet caramel and brown sugar dominate, with molasses, and a strong latte.  Some apples, raisins, syrup and a few spices like cinnamon and nutmeg.  It’s interesting and a far cry from the sort of thin pickings today’s spiced rums have become. 

Finish – Short, to be expected. Mostly caramel, coffee, chocolate, licorice and some sawdust, with the slightest citrus hint cutting through.

Thoughts – This is why I like these old rums, and, even more, old rums that are the progenitors of today’s editions. No matter what the economic reasons that the rums of yesteryear were made the way they were, it’s obvious that even at the low strength at which they were issued back then, they were worlds apart, and better, than the modern variants with their crude sweetening and spicing: in comparison, the new “rums” are just ersatz products, pale imitations, and, in fine, dirty deeds done dirt cheap. 

(78/100)

Other notes

  • The label states that it’s made by an outfit called Captain Morgan Rum Distillers in London (Dacre Street SW1H 0DR), which, as far as I can ascertain, is the distribution arm in the UK at that time, never mind that they didn’t have a distillery there. The street address is long closed and has been redeveloped into flats, a small hotel, and office space.
  • Seagram’s and Vivendi merged in June 2000, with the key point being the joining of their media empires…the spirits business was secondary and Edgar Bronfman noted at the time it would be sold off anyway. A year later the wine and spirits division of Seagram’s was on the block and three conglomerates were in the running to take over the lucrative brand portfolio: an alliance of Brown-Forman and Bacardi, the latter of which at the time was having cash flow issues and was heavily in debt; Allied Domecq; and a partnership of Pernod-Ricard and Diageo. Diageo-PR won the tussle, split the portfolio and Diageo walked away with (among other brands) Captain Morgan, though they had to give up Malibu brand on anti-competitive grounds to do so. 
  • Distillation — aside from that derived from Long Pond, and other countries’ stocks — was primarily from Puerto Rico. Around 2011, Captain Morgan was induced by massive tax breaks and financial concessions, to build a distillery and make its rums in the US Virgin Islands. Nowadays this is where Captain Morgan brands are made.
  • Originally, as noted, Captain Morgan was a blend from Jamaica and other islands. Hugh Barty-King and Anton Massel, in their 1983 book “Rum Yesterday and Today” (p.190), wrote that  “There were always 65,000 forty-gallon barrels of rum at the Seagram UK processing plant at Speke, Liverpool, and the storage centre at Huyton. Their supplies came mainly from Guyana and Jamaica, but also in small amounts from Barbados, Hawaii, Mexico and Puerto Rico. The rum was diluted and made up into various blends, put into bottles on which labels were put with such names as ‘Captain Morgan’ (the most in demand), ‘Woods’, ‘Myers’, ‘Old Charlie’ and ‘Tropicana’.”

 

Velier Saint James 2006 15 YO Rum “Magnum No.1 – Elliot Erwitt” Series – Review

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Nov 172022
 

Whatever my personal opinions on the need for the four Magnum rums to exist as a separate collection as opposed to being folding into other series, they are there, they’re a fact of life and we move on. In any case, we’ve learnt a bit about the legendary photo agency (even if we’re not into current history) and read up about the style and importance of Elliot Erwitt (even if we’re not photographers or understand the connection), and have tasted four new rums from old and proud houses, so it’s by no means a waste.

Moreover, for all their variations in quality, the fact is the rums really are kind of good, and this is a way to make them shine and gain (even more) popular acclaim. “Good” did I say? Well…yes, though perhaps I understate matters. The Foursquare, for all my relative lack of enthusiasm was quite decent (many disagreed and thought it was much better), and the Hampden and the Mount Gay rums were, I thought, excellent in their own right.  But when it comes ot the Saint James, the lowest proofed of the lot, “good” or “excellent” just doesn’t cut it.  Because this is a rum that’s exceptional.

Part of that may have been the completely approachable strength (45%) and part was surely the impact of fifteen years ageing in Martinique: we rarely see agricole rhums that old, so by itself that’s a selling point; plus, this may be the first indie bottling Saint James have ever allowed (like Appleton’s pot still collection, another Velier coup from a couple of years back). The real takeaway is that this rum combines an agricole sensibility with a long-term barrel-ageing philosophy (much as the Bally 18 YO did) and while of course I can’t speak for your experience or to your preferences, when I tried it, it was love at first sip.

The first notes of the rum opened with a complex symphony so rich I slugged the shot down, then poured a second glass immediately, just to make sure somebody wasn’t messing with me. There was a complex fruit symphony of tart gooseberries, miso, very ripe gooseberries and mangoes, and a smorgasbord of all the sour funkiness I would normally have associated with Jamaica. Pineapples, cherries, sprite, lemon rind, honey, and that was before a panoply of cane sap and herbals made themselves known: fennel, rosemary, cloves, jasmine.  The balance was superb and each delicate aromatic chip  was clear, bright, and neither dominating nor dominated by, any other.

It was a great experience tasting it, as well.  It felt just right on the tongue, silky, velvety, rich, and the tastes just went on from there. A lot of the bright and effervescent character remained, sweet, sour, tart, clean and voluptuous: pineapple slices and light yellow Thai mangoes, plus 7Up, honey, with additional threads of vanilla, cinnamon, rosemary and cardamom, plus just enough coffee grounds, chocolate and woodsmoke to present an intriguing and welcome counterpoint. The prevalence of dried fruits – thankfully not oversweet – brought to mind aged armagnacs or cognacs, especially when combined with a hint of aromatic damp tobacco. And it led to a really nice finish, surprisingly long, presenting a finale of delicious, sweetly gentle florals, bananas, honey, fruits and anise. 

Like Stuart Pearce of the underrated review site Secret Rum Bar, I have tended to view much-reduced aged agricole rhums with some hesitation, some reluctance, even occasional suspicion; and in his own review he noted that he felt the palate became somewhat flat, hence his lower score. I thought otherwise myself, though: it  dialled down from the impact the nose had made, to be sure, yet I didn’t think any quality was truly lost. 

Frankly, my opinion was (and remains, after sneaking a second round in at the Paris Whisky Live later in the year) that it is hard to see how it could have been improved upon. It’s one of the best aged agricoles I’ve ever tried, and to my mind, is some kind of wonderful. It dares to take a chance, to not so much go off the beaten track as delicately careen along the skirting to show possibilities, hinting, not bludgeoning.  It marries a solid age not often seen in agricole rhums, with a lower strength that allows all the complexities of the barrels and the gradual transmutation of the rhum, to be presented in their full flower. To bring this up to cask strength but make it younger would not have worked as well, and to simply age it without addressing the balance of tastes and intensity would have invited failure. Saint James drew upon all the skills they had – and that’s a lot – and ended up providing Velier, and us, with one of those miraculous rhums that achieves its immediate goals of being just damned good…and then continues climbing towards an even higher sensibility.

(#951)(91/100) ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ 

Other notes

  • Once again it seems like I have a minority opinion. Secret Rum Bar rated it 84 points, WhiskyFun gave it 88, while Rum-X has an average of 84 points off of 12 ratings.
  • As with the other rums in this quartet, the outturn is 600 magnums and 1200 bottles.
  • The photograph on the label is from 2005 and depicts a scene from the wedding of a friend of Erwitt’s in Rome. The woman shown in silhouette is the bride.
  • The rums in the Magnum Series Volume 1 are:
  • From the Mount Gay “Magnum EE” Review: The Magnum series of rums capitalises on the same literary concept as the seven founders of the famed photo agency wanted for their own organisation when they created and titled it in 1947, namely the multiple meanings and connotations of the word — greatness in Latin, toughness in the association with the gun, and celebration in its champagne mode (it’s just a happy coincidence that when discussing the matter they always drank magnums of champagne). Since Luca Gargano is a photo buff himself, I’m sure the references resonated with him. Four photographs made by Elliot Erwitt — an American photographer who was asked by Robert Capa to join the agency in 1954 — grace the four (black) bottles of the first release, but they have no direct relationships with the contents of the bottles in any way, and were likely chosen simply because they were appreciated as works of art.
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