Rum 66 Family Reserve 12 Year Old Barbados Rum – Review

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Dec 262016
 

When a rum makes you want to try its stronger brother, you are left asking whether it has failed or succeeded.

#330

It must be a preference thing.  My son the Little Caner (rapidly becoming the Big Caner) loves chocolate ice cream but detests the salted caramel Haagen-Dasz I scarf by the bucketload (before being noisily sick in the outhouse). My father (Grampy Caner) can’t get enough of El Dorado 15 year old yet I can’t get him to touch a full proof without shuddering. As for me, while I enjoy rums from around the Caribbean, have never been able to get a grip on Bajan rums as a whole – Mount Gay and FourSquare in particular – in spite of all the other critical plaudits that these companies garner from other corners of the rumiverse. 

With that in mind I picked up a bunch of Barbadian rums back in 2015 and put them through an exhaustive wringer then, and again in 2016, just to see whether the passage of time changed anything. To some extent, the experience dispelled a few preconceptions, while confirming others.  In fine, it’s a decent 40% sipping rum that breaks no new ground and could, I think, be pushed to higher strength without losing anything in the process.(And indeed, there is a recent series of 2016 releases of the 66FR which are both cask strength (50%) and slightly stronger than mine here (42%) as well as a new 6 year old, so for sure I’m not done trying Foursquare’s offerings any time soon.)

Foursquare Distillery was the last remaining family owned outfit in Barbados until St. Nicholas Abbey opened up for a business nearly a decade ago.  The “66” in the moniker refers to the Barbados Independence Act of 1966, when Little England severed its colonial ties with Britain, while the “Family Reserve” reflects its origins in that small part of the company’s production which had heretofore been reserved for the Seale family (or so the marketing materials suggest).  The rum is a blend of column and copper pot still distillate, with a 65% ABV spirit set to age in white oak barrels for twelve years when already married – in other words, the blend is not done after ageing, but before…the reverse of the process most other makers follow when producing blended rums.

Certainly the blending regimen and the age did their work reasonably well. The nose was very smooth and warm, with light, almost delicate notes of wax, brine and paint leading off, which  disappeared quickly. A solid blast of brown sugar took their place, plus slightly off tastes of overripe fruit, smoke and dusty cardboard. After some minutes, the final smells emerged – lilacs and other flowers, a very faint fruitiness, with nuts and more smoke at the back end. Reading this might make it sound like a cornucopia of olfactory bliss, but the fact is that it was all really really faint – it took ages to pick them out, and there’s simply not enough going on here to make it memorable in any meaningful way.

Still, the palate of this copper brown rum was decent.  A spicy lead-in presenting immediate flavours of vanilla, toffee, butter, and yes, that salted caramel ice cream I always liked, offering bitter, salt and sweet in equal proportion. Some peaches and whipped cream, nuts, more flowers and an interesting coconut undercurrent that emerged slowly, almost grudgingly after adding some water.  The oak was there, but well controlled and not overbearing. The best thing about the rum was the smooth creaminess of the otherwise rather thin profile, vaguely salty and estery at the same time, leading to a good finish for a 40%, medium long, with peanut butter and delicate flowery notes.  There was a sort of clean elegance to the whole thing, reminding me somewhat of a Glendronach, or a Speysider, and has much in common with the Cockspur 12 year old. But, in the main, for me, it lacked oomph and assertiveness which I preferred more.  That makes it better for those who don’t care for cask strength rums, I would suggest, or long drinks for those in the cocktail circuit.

Summing up the experience, then, I felt then (and now) that for a 12 year old, it presented as far too restrained, even somewhat underwhelming.  Just doesn’t seem to push any buttons, being content to stay in the middle of the road and not piss anyone off by going off the reservation.  It has an element of okay, of settling for the middle, of “let’s leave it there, then” that is surprising for a rum aged this long.  Part of it is the 40%, of course which the market preferred back in the day when it was first released, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a rum for those who like their sipping drinks easier, with less aggro, not for today’s more demanding or discerning drinkers who might want and prefer a more robust and aggressive cask strength Bajan bruiser.

In the past, as little as ten years ago, where nobody was talking about sugar or additives and producers across the board were dosing with enthusiasm and without declaration, the Jamaican and Barbadian distillers were forced by their countries’ laws to eschew additives of any kind.  This made many of their rums appeal to a minority who understood and appreciated purity, while the majority got their taste buds hacked and cultivated by adulterated products.  But that couldn’t last. The clamour for disclosure blew up in late 2014 – early 2015 when ALKOL, Johnny Drejer and others started posting their statistics and showed the Emperor was buck naked for all to see.  Suddenly those makers who had always been bound to make pure rums became the belles of the ball, and were lauded for their honesty and adherence to tradition.

That was all fine, but somewhere in all this brouhaha the whole issue of whether all of their products were good drinks got lost…in other words, the pendulum swung a little too far the other way, and to my mind, this rum and some others too often got a free pass. You’ll search long and hard to find a review – any review – of Bajan products that is in any way short of simpering adoration. But the fact is that there are better rums from the island out there and frankly, it’s the cask strength version of this rum that I think will be the new standard for Rum 66 in the years to come — it won’t be this exemplar of a pre-sugar, pre-fullproof time, no matter how bright it shines in the memories of those who remain wedded to that more innocent and less discerning era.

(80/100)

Other Notes

  • Just as some of my fellow reviewers make no secret of both their admiration and enjoyment of Bajan rums, I had to be clear about my personal ambivalence. So for those who want other opinions, here are two of them.

 

Rum Nation Small Batch Collection – Port Mourant 1995 21 Year Old – Review

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Dec 222016
 

 

***

A grand old PM. Best of the three Small Batch selections from 2016.

#329

It’s reasonable to wonder whether there isn’t some self-cannibalization going on here.  Since their inception back in 1999, Rum Nation’s flagship products were always the old-enough-to-vote Jamaicans and Demeraras, all issued at around 43-45%.  The old wooden box and jute packing gave way to sleeker, modernist boxes, but the ethos remained the same, and happily for the aficionados, there were always several thousand of these floating around, as Fabio Rossi never bottled just one cask, but several. (As an aside, something of the evolution of our world can be found in how long it took for anyone to even notice the original selections from the 1970s, which took years to sell…a situation which simply cannot occur today).

Fast forward to 2016, and the company sprang this surprise on us – in the same year that DDL pushed out its Rare Collection, RN raided its slumbering cask stash to produce three limited edition Demerara rums of their own, called the “Small Batch Rare Rums” (and I hear — in the muttered corners of the smoking area out back where the rum-hoodlums hang around — that others from Reunion and Hampden may be in the works).  Yet, because of their more limited outturn, these rums may be cutting into the sales of, or appreciation for, the top end rums that have won so much acclaim over the past decade or two, since what is made into a Small Batch cask-strength rum won’t be made into a twenty-something year old in the Supreme Lord or Demerara series.

Well, whatever.  We’re lucky to get these rums at all, I sometimes think.  And this one is right up there with the 45% Demeraras of made with such care in Rum Nation’s youth, perhaps even a smidgen better because of the extra oomph that was generously ladled out for us.

As usual, let’s get the known facts out of the way: Port Mourant distillate from the double wooden pot still in Guyana; the single cask was bought via a broker, and aged in Europe, first in the Bristol Spirits warehouse and in Italy after 2007.  The ageing was done from 1995 to 2005 in ex-bourbon barrels and transferred into a second-fill sherry cask in 2005 until final release in 2016 (Fabio told me he didn’t know whether it was first or second fill, but my own feeling after the tasting was that the sherry had an effect on the final product that was not strong enough after so many years to justify the first fill possibility, but that’s just my opinion).  The outturn was 170 bottles, bottled at that so-very-lekker strength of 57.7%, and I have bottle #002, which is almost as cool as having bottle #001.

Was it any good?  Oh yes.  Just opening it up and smelling straight out of the bottle hinted at olfactory impressions to come – some rubber, wax and floor polish, which swiftly dissipated, followed by licorice, bags of raisins and dried fruit, prunes, dates, cedar wood shavings, and a lovely aromatic tobacco and lemon peel smell behind all of those.  There were some well integrated caramel and vanilla notes, a sniff or two of red wine, but in the main, as was to be expected, it was the trio of anise, raisins and wood that were the core of the nose. It showcased all the markers of traditional excellence that I have always enjoyed about the Port Mourant distillate, all in balance and as harmonious as a zen garden.  

57.7% was also an almost perfect strength for it to be issued: over 60% it might have been too raw, under 50% and maybe too easy.  Not that it really mattered, because between the ageing and the sherry influence, the rum demonstrated a powerful but restrained mouthfeel which gave you the heat and the strength without ripping any part of your corpus to shreds. Sharp it was not…forceful might be a better appellation. And then the flavours came through, big and bold: licorice, oak, more of those aromatic cedar and cigarillos acting as the central core, upon which were hung the lesser tastes like apricots, more lemon peel, grapes, brown sugar, red wine and strong black tea, leading up to a masterful finish that lays it all out on the table so your senses get one last whiff before it all gradually dissipated.

The balance of the rum is exceptional – many of the elements are so flawlessly constructed and built into the profile that you want them simply continue, yet they create a sort of emotional, labial vortex drawing you into another sip, another glass…maybe that’s why half my bottle is already gone. What it really is, is a delivery system for ensuring you get every bit of nuance that can be squeezed out of a barrel. I felt that way about Rum Nation’s Jamaican Supreme Lord series, and the 57% white, and yes, about the Demeraras.  To make a series like that, of such consistent quality is something of a minor miracle.  To crank up the volts and issue a small batch version of the PM alone and have it be this good is surely another.

So, if you like Guyanese rums as a whole, cask strength rums generally and Port Mourant rums in particular, well, you really can’t go wrong here.  It’s ambitious, luscious, and delicious, providing a rum profile where drinker engagement and enjoyment is 100%.  As for the quotient of appreciation?  My friends, that may actually be off the chart.

(90/100)

Note:

This rum is the first release.  The 2nd Release, also from 2016, is a 17 year old bottled at 57.4% from two casks resulting in 816 bottles.  I tried that one at the 2016 Berlin Rumfest and can confirm it’s also quite good (though I liked this one more).

Rum Nation Small Batch Collection – Enmore 2002 14 Year Old – Review

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Dec 202016
 

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***

#328

It really is amazing how many different ways there are to express the outturn from a single Guyanese still, Enmore or Port Mourant or any of the others  We might have to approach them like James Bond movies (or Sherlock Holmes short stories)…enjoying the similarities while searching for points of variation, which gives us the rare rum equivalents of  masterpieces like Skyfall versus occasionally indifferent efforts like A View to a Kill.

Rum Nation’s first serious foray into multiple-edition small-batch cask strength rums probably deserve to be tried as a trio, the way, for example, DDL’s three amigos from 2007 are.  Each of the three is unique in its own way, each has points that the others don’t, and if one is weak, it’s made up for with strengths of another and they work best taken together.  Of course, that’ll cost you a bit, since rums made at full proof are not cheap, but to have rums like this at 40% is to do a disservice to those famous stills from which Demerara rums are wrung with such effort and sweat.  Even DDL finally came around to accepting that when they issued their own Rare Casks collection earlier in 2016.

Of the three Rum Nation rums I tried (in tandem with several others), there was no question in my mind that this one sat square in the middle, not just in the trio, but in the entire Enmore canon.  Personally I always find Enmores somewhat of hit or miss proposition – sometimes they exceed expectations and produce amazing profiles, and sometimes they disappoint, or at least fall short of expectations (like the Renegade Enmore 1990 16 year old did)….another property they share with Bond movies  However, it must also be said that they are very rarely boring. That wooden still profile gives them all a character that is worth trying…several times.  

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Take this one for example, an interesting medium-aged fourteen-year-old, almost lemon-yellow rum, with an outturn of 442 bottles from six casks (77-82).  It was distilled in 2002 and bottled this year, the first batch of Rum Nation’s cask strength series, with a mouth watering 56.8% ABV…now there’s a strength almost guaranteed to make an emphatic statement on your schnozz and your glottis.  And before those of you who prefer no adulteration ask — no, as far as I’m aware, it wasn’t messed with.

The nose demonstrated that the colour was no accident; it was sprightly, almost playful with clean notes of hay, planed-off wood shavings, lemony notes.  Not for this rum the pungent, almost dour Port Mourant depth – here it was crisper, cleaner. Gradually other aspects of the profile emerged – old, very ripe cherries, apples, cider, vanilla.  As if bored, it puffed out some mouldy cardboard and cherries that have gone off, before relenting and providing the final subtle anise note, but clearer, lighter, and nothing like the PM, more like a cavatino lightly wending its way through the main melody.

Certainly the nose was excellent – but the palate was something of a let down from the high bar that it set.  It was, to begin with, quite dry, feeling on the tongue like I was beating a carpet indoors.  It was less than full bodied, quite sharp and hot, with initial flavours of polish, sawdust and raisins, a flirt of honey; it was only with some water that other flavours were coaxed out — wax and turpentine, orange chocolates, dates, vanilla and Indian spices (in that sense it reminded me of the Bristol Spirits 1988 Enmore), and some eucalyptus, barely noticeable. It was the sawdust that I remember, though (not the citrus)…it reminded me of motes hanging motionless in a dark barn, speared by seams of light from the rising sun outside.  The finish was pleasant, reasonably long, repeating the main themes of the palate, without introducing anything new.

Overall, this is a rum that, while professionally executed and pleasant to drink (with a really good nose), breaks little new ground – it doesn’t take the Enmore profile to heights previously unscaled.  Yet I enjoyed it slightly more than the RN Diamond 2005 I looked at before.  Partly this is about the character of the whole experience, the way the various elements fused into a cohesive whole.  My friend Henrik, who also tried these three Small Batch Rare Rums together, was much more disapproving – he felt the Enmore was the weakest of the three, with light woods and citrus being all there was. My own opinion was that there was indeed less going on here than in other editions I’ve tried, but part of what I enjoyed was the way that what there was melded together in a way where little failed and much succeeded.  And if it did not come up to the level of other Enmores like the Compagnie des Indes 1988 27 year old (91 points), or the Velier 1988 19 year old (89 points), well, I felt it was still better than others I’ve tried, and by my yardstick, a damned good entry into the genre. Something like, oh, Thunderball or Goldeneye – not the very best, but far, far from the worst.

(87/100)

Other notes

  • To provide some balance for those who are curious,see the links to two other sets of reviews:
  • As with all expressions where there are differences in opinion, trying before buying is the way to go, especially if your personal tastes
  • I’m waiting on Fabio to tell me where the ageing took place – I have a feeling a good portion was in Europe.

Rum Nation Small Batch Collection – Diamond 2005 11 Year Old – Review

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Dec 182016
 

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#327

What a change just a few years have wrought. Back in 2009-2010, cask strength rums were hardly on the horizon, “full proof” drinks were primarily Renegade at 46% with a few dust-gatherers from independent bottlers like Secret Treasures, Cadenhead, Berry Bros., or Samaroli making exactly zero waves in North America, and Velier’s superlative rums issued almost a decade earlier known to few outside Italy.  Rum Nation took two years to sell a pair of 1974 and a 1975 25 year old Jamaican rums bottled at 45%….and they were around since 1999!

As 2016 comes to a close, observe the continental drift of the landscape: Velier is the mastodon of the full proofs, DDL released its Rares in February, Foursquare and Mount Gay are both issuing powerful and new versions of their old stalwarts, the Jamaicans are undergoing a rennaissance of old estate marques, and previously unremarked and unknown independent bottlers (some new, some not so new) are all clamouring for your attention.  Companies like Compagnie des Indes, Ekte, L’Espirit, Kill Devil and others are the vanguard, and more are coming.  Even the regular, tried-and-true makers whose names we grew up with, are amping up their rums to 42-43% more often.

rn-sbrr-diamond-2005-2In between all of these companies is Rum Nation, that Italian outfit run by Fabio Rossi, whose products I’ve been watching and writing about since 2011, when I bought almost their entire 2010 release line at once.  They’ve been making rums since the 1990s (like the two Jamaicans noted above), and over the past three years have attracted equal parts admiration and derision, depending on who’s doing the talking – it’s almost always the matter of additives to their rums; it should be observed that at the top end, it’s not usually the case, like with the 23-26 year old Jamaicans and Demeraras which remain among the best rums of their kind available.

The Small Batch Rare Rums Collection is Fabio’s last old stocks of Demerara rum, and has been on the drawing boards, so to speak, for quite some time – as DDL and Velier showed us with their own Rares, the decision to issue a rum can be made more than a year in advance of the actual first sales, what with all the bureaucratic hoops and logistics a bottler has to go through to bring the vision  to market. Anyway – the Diamond I’m writing about today, the youngest of the three, was from the 1st Batch and is RN’s own foray into the cask-strength market, issued at a rough and ready 58.6%, distilled in 2005 from the double column metal coffey still, and bottled in 2016…the outturn was/is 473 bottles, the presentation of which are the same RN style, but with cardboard tube enclosures, simpler and perhaps more informative labels to go along with them – and which, as always, have the postage stamp motif which has become almost a hallmark of Fabio’s (he used to be a collector in his youth, as I was). And no, no additives as far as I’m aware.

If you’ve been bored to tears by all this set-the-stage introductory material, your immediate and impatient question at the top was most likely, well, how good was the thing? .

All in all, it wasn’t bad – what set it lower on the podium than some others is probably the ageing, which I suspect was not fully tropical (Fabio still has to get back to me on that one but bearing in mind past products, it’s a good bet) and therefore not all the rougher edges had time to be fully integrated with and mellowed by the oak barrels in which it had been aged. It smelled light, with initial easy-to-spot caramel, white toblerone, vanilla and toffee, leavened with some watery fruit (green pears and watermelons), cloves, cumin, marzipan, before settling down to emit some odd background notes of black pepper, sawdust, grapes, raisins, fleshier stoned fruits, bubble gum and a soda pop…maybe pepsi, or 7-up.  Not entirely my thing – it was a bit sharp and raw, needed some snap and firmness to make the point more distinct, and the synthesis could have been better.

Diamond rums, of course, have been among my favourites for a while (comparisons with Velier are unavoidable) and what they lack in the fierce pungent originality of the rums from the wooden stills they regain in blending and ageing skill.  Some of that was evident when tasting the amber coloured rum – it started off hot, lunging out of the gate with first tastes of cocoa and light coffee, vanilla, some brine, some sweet (good balance there, not too much of either), and a muted explosion of fruits.  It was quite a bit lighter in mouthfeel than the PM and Enmore tasted right alongside, which some might mark down because it presents as thin, but to me there’s a world of difference between the two terms – the Doorley’s or an underproof 37.5% rum is thin; well made agricoles are light. So here I think that lightness has to be taken together with the crisp intensity of the tastes that come through, because no scrawny, spavined, rice-eating street cur of a rum could provide this much.  There were peaches, apricots, blackberries, cherries, bonbons and caramel sweets, and with water, all that plus some licorice under tight control, and a light woodsy backdrop melding somewhat uneasily with the whole…and a long, slow finish that provided closing notes of licorice, sweets, more fruits (nothing too citrusy or tart here) and, surprisingly enough, a coffee cake with loads of whipped cream.

All this taken into account, was the youngest rum the best of the three or not?

Well…no.  I found it somewhat austere, to be honest, a few clear notes coming together with the quiet, restrained sadness of a precise Chopin nocturne or a flute sonata by Debussy, and less of the passionate emotional fire of Beethoven, Verdi, Puccini or Berlioz that almost epitomizes the Guyanese rums when made at the peak of their potential.  It requires some more taming, I think, even dialling down — compared with its siblings and a bunch of other Demeraras I tried alongside it, it feels unfinished, like it needed some more ageing to come into its full glory.  Whatever.  It’s still a very tasty tot, and as long as you take what I said about lightness versus thinness alongside the strength and price and tasting notes together, I don’t think you’ll be too disappointed if you do end up spring for it.

(86/100)

Ryoma Japanese 7 Year Old Rum – Review

 2 Responses »
Dec 142016
 

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An essay in Oriental and Caribbean fusion

#326

Outside the cognoscenti, the rabid fanbase or deep-field researchers, few know (or care) much about rums from outside the Western hemisphere.  Yet rums from India and Thailand and Australia are massive sellers in the East, to say nothing of the emergent makers from Japan.  Nine Leaves is the newest outfit from the Land of the Rising Sun to garner major accolades in the larger rumiverse, but rum has been made from locally grown sugar for a very long time, and it’s no surprise that other companies have been quietly doing business in the spirit without many outside the region being the wiser.  Whisky might be the Japanese attention-getter du jour, but I don’t review those, so let’s turn a small spotlight on to the rums instead.

One such is this very interesting pale yellow product from the Kikusui distillery, located in the Niigata Prefecture on the north coast of Honshu — they also make, and are mostly known for, sake. The Kikusui brewery was formed in 1881 by Takasawa Suguro, when he received the right to make it from his uncle Takasawa Masanori and was approved to make it in his own right in 1896. It remains a family business (into its fifth generation), with sake remaining the mainstay of the company (one can only wonder who the rum loving guy in the family was, who broke with tradition by making it). In the first century of its existence, the company was not a large one, and weathered many storms like shortage of rice, the war years, sickness and premature death of family members, floods, earthquakes – in 1964 the brewery was damaged by earthquake and for two consecutive years floods destroyed what was left.  Somehow the family kept going and in 1969 a replacement brewery was completed. New equipment, modern production methods and management techniques were introduced in the 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s the company branched out into canned sake, food dishes and even stores of its own.  Sometime in the 2000s, as best as I can determine and perhaps as a result of western influences or lack of desire to go with whisky, it was decided to branch into rum.

The sugar cane from which it is made comes from the southern island of Shikoku, the smallest island in the chain, and the rum derives from freshly pressed cane, which would make it a Japanese agricole, as well as putting to the test my own theories about whether terroire really does have a major influence on the final product.  There is no information on whether the rum is pot still or column still derived; it’s aged for seven years in American oak barrels, and issued at 40%.  There you go.

It’s been a while since I tried a rum with an olfactory profile quite like this: it started out with a wet cardboard soggy mess (the cardboard that the aroma implied, that is, not the rum); and cereals, rye bread, coconut water, rotting fruit (it was gentle, for which I gave fervent thanks), which over time, developed into a very pleasant nose of apples and cider, oddly sharp and weak at the same time.  It was very light, faintly sweet, and could not for a moment compare to the clear voluptuousness of a Caribbean agricole, yet it presented an intriguing profile of its own that was almost Jamaican, and marked it out as singular – clearly, one had to be prepared to take a sharp left turn to enjoy it and not demand it adhere to a better known French island smell. I can’t say with conviction that I succeeded…but I was intrigued.

The palate was just as interesting, if equally bizarre.  To begin with, it was very different from the way it smelled – it was clear and crisp on the tongue as any cane-juice-derived rum ever made, extraordinarily light and clean for something supposedly aged for seven years, and tasted of light sweet grapes (those red ones from Turkey, or the green ones from Lebanon my wife buys for me), cucumbers, dill, and very light notes of vanilla, green apples, flowers, green tea ice cream, pears, some smoke, and a vague soya sauce background. In other words, the dreadlocks to a big step backwards. It was sprightly, light, crisp.  Too bad the finish decided to circle back to the beginning, and end things with more of those fruits that had gone off, and that wet cardboard, tied in a bow with olives and brine.  A little was okay, too much kinda soured on me.

So…I enjoyed the offbeat, original taste, liked the crispness of the mouthfeel, and was okay with the edges front and back, yet there was something uninspiring about the experience taken as a whole. It’s possible that both terroire and the company’s expertise with (or preference for) sake tilted their philosophy to something at odds with more familiar rummy profiles; and of course the 40% while allowing a wider audience to be catered to, does impose some limitations. Still, I’ll say this – it is emphatic for what it is, and as a rum it sure makes its own statement. There’s more than a bit of unaged pot still profile in here (hence my unconfirmed suspicion that this is what they are using to distil it), but for that to take a more commanding stance requires moving above the issued ABV and maybe playing with the barrel strategy some more. At end, therefore, it exhibits both strengths and weaknesses.

Why did I buy this?  Well, because I could, because I was interested, and because it’s informative and useful to write about more than just the regular crop of rums from the regions with which we are all familiar.  We should look to expand our horizons, and if the experience is not always an unadulterated positive, who can say what others might like, what the company’s ten year old is like, or where it moves in the future?  Happily, the Ryoma 7 year old rum exhibited more on the plus side of the ledger than minuses, was a sprightly, funky little rumlet, and is quite affordable for anyone who wants to take a flier on something off the beaten track.  

(80/100)

Other notes

The name “Ryoma” (or Ryōma) is that of one of the revolutionaries of the Meiji era who was prominent in the movement to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate (he was murdered in 1867).  That name in turn derives from a legend of a god with the head of a dragon and the body of a horse, which supposedly could run 1000 li in one day.

Compagnie des Indes Enmore 1988 27 Year Old Rum – Review

 2 Responses »
Dec 112016
 

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Single word summary – superlative.

#325

Compagnie des Indes burst in the scene in late 2014, which may be a rather melodramatic turn of phrase, but quite apt. The first of their line that I tried was the Cuban 1998 15 year old, which enthused me about the company immensely, and as the years moved on I’ve sampled up and down the range, from the less than stellar blends, to an Indonesian and a Fijian, and to more standard Jamaicans (with more coming). In all that time they have rarely made a bad rum, and if they eschew the tropical ageing regime and wild inventiveness that characterizes Velier’s Caribbean rums, that doesn’t mean they aren’t in their own way widening the path that Velier built and coming up with some amazing products of their own.

Nowhere is that more evident than in this magnificent 27 year old Guyanese rum, issued at a tonsil-wobbling 52.7%  – it is without a doubt the most Velier-like rum never issued by Velier, and given the difference in owner’s philosophy behind it, a stunning achievement by any standard, a wonderful rum, and one of the best from Enmore I’ve ever had.  One can only shed a tear and rend one’s beard and ask despairingly of the rum gods why the Danes were so clever and so fortunate as to have this 224-bottle outturn made especially for them, because that’s the only place you’re going to get one.

cdi-enmore-27-yo-2Right off the bat, I was impressed when I poured the copper-brown rum into the glass.  I mean, wow!  It was redolent from ten paces, deep and rich and dark and evincing all the hallmarks of a great Demerara rum: initial – and one could almost say boilerplate – aromas of cinnamon, vanilla, brown sugar, caramel and coffee started things off, boiling fiercely out of the glass and around the small room like it was practicing aromatherapy without a license. And then other flavours, firm and distinct and freely distributed as exclamation points in a Ludlum thriller, came out to back up the brass band – some licorice, petrol, wax, furniture polish, acetone, all well controlled (sometimes they get ahead of themselves in an aged Enmore or Port Mourant rum, but here they were in perfect harmony)

And the palate, man, just delicious. Not soft or gentle, not something tamed and easy-going for the unadventurous, but really hefty and strong, making its point with force but without ever crossing over the line into savage. When you drink this, you know you’re drinking a rum, y’know? because no attempt was made to dial things down. The waxy, car-engine notes subsided, allowing olives, brine and black pepper to begin the attack on the tongue, which displayed a medium body in texture.  More licorice and cinnamon followed, and yes, there was the vanilla, the toffee, plus more coffee, red grapes, peaches, a squeeze of lemon rind. And at the end there as some dry in there, a sly sherry influence, winey and sweet and salty at the same time, very nicely integrated into the proceedings. Even the finish didn’t disappoint, being just on the hot side, long lasting to a fault, presenting closing tastes of coffee, nougat, more fruits, and a last series of nutmeg and cinnamon and anise notes.

This is a really well made, enormously satisfying rum from Guyana and does credit to the Enmore estate. Luca might champion in-situ tropical ageing, Fabio a sort of amalgam of both tropical and European, while Florent goes the European-only-ageing route…but how can you argue with the results when after twenty seven years you get something like this?  It was the coolest thing to come out of wood since, I don’t know…a flute, a bar stool, a boat…stuff like that.

Anyway, closing up the shop, I have to admit that there’s just something about Florent and his rums I appreciate.  The other members of my pantheon (Luca, Fabio, Sylvano) are from other planes of existence. Fabio is a cheerful instrument of cosmic convergence, while Luca is a visitor to our plane from a superior universe that only exists in the imagination, with Sylvano being one of the benevolent old Star Trek Preservers that have moved on.  But Florent?  He’s a mortal straining for excellence with the tools he has…which he uses to sometimes achieve the extraordinary. Here, I think he made it.  He really did.

(91/100)

Other notes

  • Cask MEC27
  • The company bio makes mention of why the Danes got the cask strength rums and the rest of the world didn’t, but in the 2016 release season, CDI did start issuing cask strength rums for other than Denmark.
  • Aged November 1988 – April 2016
  • I tag it as an Enmore wooden coffey still but the truth is that in 1988 the Versailles single wooden pot still was in residence at the Enmore estate as well, and the name of the estate and the still often get mixed up if the barrel is not labelled right.  Here, the taste profile suggests it is indeed the Enmore column still.

Ron Aldea Tradición 22 Year Old Rum – Review

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Dec 062016
 

aldea-tradicion

A unassuming and ultimately flawed 22 year old rum

#324

As one goes through the line of the various Ron Aldeas, which are serviceable mid-tier rums, one notices that the clear agricole profile gets progressively more lost, which I attribute to primarily the strategy of using variously toasted barrels in varying proportions.  Depending on whether you want an agricole-style rum to taste like one, this may not be to your liking.  This rum does not hail from the French islands or subject to the AOC (its influences are more Spanish than anything else), and therefore what we are tasting is something from elsewhere – the Canary Islands in this instance. No doubt different taste and blending and ageing influences come to bear when makers from other parts of the world approach the same distillate.

As usual, some general information before we delve into the tasting notes. The Tradición is a cane-juice-derived,  column still product, bottled at 42% with a 3428-bottle outturn. The 1991 edition I tried came out in 2013, making it a 22 year old, and was matured in barrels of different kinds of oak, with differing levels of toast; for the final two years the rum is transferred to used barrels of red wine (not identified) to add finish. Therein lies a problem because while that finishing regime does add some complexity, it also adds sweetness; and when I read that Drejer measured 27 g/L (which is assumed to be sugar), I can understand why it was issued at a slightly higher proof point.

That level of sugar is not immediately apparent. Somewhat at a tangent, nosing the bronze rum makes one wonder immediately where the agricole notes went off and hid themselves, because as with the Ron Aldea Familia (and to a lesser extent the Superior), the clean grassy and herbal smells that characterize the profile are utterly absent.  Still, what was presented wasn’t bad – peaches in cream, toffee, nougat, white toblerone, almonds were immediately apparent, with fruitier raisins and dried fruits coming up from behind, probably courtesy of those wine barrels.  Not a very potent nose, just a soft and warm one.

I noted above that the rum tested positive for sugar.  On the palate, that was unavoidable (my original handwritten notes, made before I knew of Drejer’s results, read “wht’s wth sweet?  ths all cmng from wine barrels?”).  It may be a comfort to those who don’t mind such things that enough flavours remained even after that inclusion to make for an interesting sip.  Initially there was the same vanilla, oak and leather, with a warm, smooth mouthfeel, and as it opened up the fruits came out and did their thing, presenting  green apples, raisins, some cider and red grapes…just not what they could have been. They felt dampened down and muffled, not as crisp and clear as they might have been.  It all led to a finish that was warm and hurriedly breathy as a strumpet’s fake gasps – and alas, like that seemingly spectacular activity, the experience was far too fleeting, without anything new to add to the profile as described.

Of the four Aldeas I tried in tandem, this is undoubtedly the best — a warm, fragrant, almost gently aged rum, lacking the fierce untrammelled power and purity of a stronger drink. The finishing in wine barrels also adds a little something to the overall experience (which the additives then frustratingly take away). In these characteristics lie something of the rum’s polarizing nature – those who want a beefier rum will think it’s too soft; those who see “cane juice origin” and want that kind of herbal taste and don’t get it, will be miffed; and those who want a clean rum experience will avoid it altogether. The rum is rather light, and the sweetness imparted by the finish and the additives work against the delicacy of the distillate, deadening what could have been a better drink, even with the extra two percentage points of proof over the standard.

But all that aside, it’s not entirely a bad rum; as with the Centenario 20, various Panamanians or soleras (which this is not, but the similarity is striking), one simply has to walk into it knowing one’s preferences ahead of time — then buy if it’s one’s thing, try if curious, avoid if turned off. Starting the sip with preconceived notion as to what one wants, what the rum is, or what the makers seek to achieve, might just be a recipe for disappointment.  And that would be unfair to what is, as noted in my one line summary, quite a pleasant and unassuming 20+ year old product. Strength aside, my only real beef with the thing is the utterly unnecessary adulteration – by doing so, Aldea, for all their skill in bringing this well-aged rum to the party, have left several additional points of easily attainable quality behind on the table and diminished my ability to provide an unqualified endorsement for a rum that should have been better.

(84/100)

Ron Aldea Familia 15 Year Old Rum – Review

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Dec 052016
 

aldea-familia-1

A decent fifteen year old faux-agricole trying to move away from its origins.

#323

Sorry, but “Chairman’s Select Hidden Treasure,” “Special Top Brass Only Reserve,” “Family Laid Away” casks, you know the kind of special rums to which I refer…stuff like this just makes me smile.  Largely because I see it as nothing more than a name applied so as to move product.  Of course, in the old days of landed estates run by the plantocracy, such special hooch really was made, exclusively for the caudillos and the nobility, for the chairman, business titans, princes, presidents, political hacks, Government apparatchiks, visiting tourists, the special invitees, Santa Claus, retiring veeps and senior managers (are we sure we speak only of the past here?).  

And now, through an enormous stroke of good fortune and generosity of the makers, us. One wonders how it is possible for something made for so exclusive a clientele, by any of the makers who issue them, to ever get into the grubby paws of the the great unwashed masses and the hordes of the illiterate rabble (you know, like me and you), but I suppose economics is economics and the producers of these apparent ambrosias wish to share their street cred just to, well, show they have it in the first place.

In any case, editorializing aside and whatever the source, let’s just call it what it is, a fifteen year old rum with a name meant to showcase its exclusivity, and move on…if I go along this line of thought I might let my snark off the leash, and nobody wants that.

Aside from such historical company details as are already in Cana Pura review, the background to this Canary-Island-made rum are fairly straightforward. This is a true fifteen year old rum limited to 6964 bottles, aged from 1998 to 2013 in French oak of different levels of toast (you could call this an “enhanced” recipe, I suppose), thereby following on from the Ron Aldea Superior’s barrel strategy. The Familia, like the Superior, is derived from cane juice not molasses, although in this instance one could be forgiven for wondering where the rhum went since the profile is so much more “traditional.”

That might be a rather controversial opinion, but observe the profile as we step through what it sampled like. The nose was gentle, subtle, easy, and too faint, really, which is a bitch I have about all 40% rums these days, some more than others – here it’s about par for the course, maybe a bit richer than normal for that strength. There were pleasant notes of vanilla, aromatic tobacco, cheerios with some cinnamon and nutmeg, toffee and caramel. But very little of the agricole content which we might have expected .  Pleasant yes, agricole no, and overall, too light for easy appreciation of the smells.

More of the same was on the taste, nice as the mouthfeel and texture was – vanilla, caramel, aromatic pipe tobacco, some winey notes.  It was a little sharp, no problem, light in the mouth overall, perhaps on the border of thin. Briny, an olive or two.  Fruits, I suppose, but they’re too indistinct and jumbled up in the mix to be easily separated and individually identified and so let’s call it a dampened-down fruit salad and move on. The finish was reasonable, ending things with a warm, medium long, and vaguely fruity close.  It’s the faintness and lack of firmness, that final exclamation point, that makes it fall down, and yes, that’s traceable to the 40%, which in honesty I felt should have been at least five points higher to make a statement worth noting.  Let’s be fair, however – for those who like the lighter Spanish style rons, this will go over well.  Just because I prefer hairier, stronger rums doesn’t mean you do, or will, or should.

So back to that opinion. The rum falls somewhat short of the quietly tasty Superior rum made by the same company.  There, the agricole background was more interestingly integrated into the flavour notes, and you couldn’t miss it.  Though both of these rums are from cane juice (and could therefore be termed agricoles if the term wasn’t restricted so let’s call it them “cane juice rums”), and while neither supposedly have additives***, the French island profile of the Familia has been kind of lost on me, and therefore it presents much more like a molasses-based British Caribbean rum (with some Spanish influences).  That makes it relate to a whole different crop of rums, and in that crowded field, it somehow lacks sufficient gravitas to command either attention or my unadulterated appreciation.  

(81/100)

*** The master rum sugar list shows this to have 20g/L of sugar, so the big question is where’s this coming from, and why isn’t it disclosed?

Ron Aldea Superior 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Dec 042016
 

aldea-superior-1

#322

With respect to companies which don’t want to make (or be seen to make) spiced or flavoured sugar bombs, it’s always instructive to observe the techniques that they use to avoid the dreaded “A” word. Some play with ageing or blends, some with finishing (the new El Dorado 15 year old series comes to mind), some with unorthodox schemes (like Lost Spirits or 7 Fathoms), some with toasting, but all are trying to do the same thing – impart an extra smidgen of taste to their rum, without actually adding anything to it, which I’m sure makes any rum nerd’s heart pitter-patter happily. Ron Aldea, a rum company from the Canary Islands, in the place of combined finishing and ageing regimes such as Gold of Mauritius and Mauritius Club utilize, prefer to experiment with their cask strategy – in this case they used brand new American oak barrels with heavy toasting levels, which I take to mean an inordinate level of char – but fortunately without any wine or port sloshing around inside. 1

For those who didn’t read about the Caña Pura White Rum (I felt it tried unsuccessfully to straddle some kind of middle ground between soft mixer and individualistic white), it’s worth mentioning that all Ron Alddea’s rums derive from cane juice distilled to 62% in a 150-year-old, wood-fire-fed double column copper still — made by the French firm Egrott — in the Canary Islands. For those interested in historical details of the company itself, the Caña Pura review has it at the bottom of the page.

aldea-superior-3This particular rum, renamed the Maestro for the 2016 release season, was the 2013 edition limited to 9258 bottles, and dialled way down to 40%. It was a darkish gold colour, and initially presented a nose that was quite lovely…breathy even (“Hi sailor-man…want a good time?…”) before thinning out and gasping for air, which is a characteristic all 40% rums share, unfortunately. Still, all was not lost – fresh peaches and apricots were there, weak but accessible, plus clearer, purer aromas – cucumbers, pears, sugar water, cut grass in rain, herbals, and a last rounding off of vanillas and a vague bitterness of oak. Char or no char, ten years in new oak was discernible, though well handled and not overbearing,

The agricole origin of the rum (perhaps I should call it rhum) develops from the hints given in the nose, and blossoms into something much more in the realm of such products: grassy, clear vegetals; more peaches and apricots and softer fruits, yet with some tartness, like unripe but yellow mangoes, under which coiled a creamier background of soft sweet white chocolate coffee and sugar…almost a cappuccino. The divergence from the norm came with an odd taste of ashy mineral-like notes that fortunately stayed well in the background, but were definitely noticeable. The finish was about standard for a 40% rum – short and heated, quite nice in its own way — not overly complex, just as comfortable and easy as an old chesterfield, with closing hints of chocolate and vanilla, and very little of the spicier, fruity notes. Perhaps that was to its detriment – the integration of these various tastes matters, and here it was impossible to pick apart individual notes – but I acknowledge that’s a matter of private opinion. And as a matter of record, I did enjoy the Superior quite a bit.

Overall, for its strength and age it’s a pretty good mid-tier rum (or rhum). It’s not as distinctive as the El Dorados, say, or the various Jamaicans, or even those from St Lucia or the French islands, but I’m not sure that’s the intent. Santiago Bronchales, who I’ve been watching and talking to since his involvement in the interesting if flawed Ocean’s rum, is more of an experimenter, not a copier or a follower-on of old traditional rum profiles, and likes to go in original directions. He takes what he can, does what he is allowed, and is trying to come up with his own version of the perfect profile at the strength he knows will sell. The Superior 10 year old he’s made here is another step on the road to discovery of his own personal truth, and is an interesting rum to try when you have the chance.

(83/100)

Mauritius Club Rum 2014 (Sherry Finish) – Review

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Dec 012016
 

mauritius-club-rum

Too young, too dressed up, when it didn’t need to be

#321

The Mauritius Club Rum 2014 (Sherry Finish) is an interesting essay in the craft, and for my money, slightly better than the Gold of Mauritius Dark rum I looked before. The sherry finishing makes its own statement and adds that extra fillip of flavour which elevates the whole experience in a way that drowning the Gold in port casks for a year did not.  Note that there’s a strange disconnect between what I was told in 2015 by the brand rep, who informed me it was aged three months in oak casks (not what type) and then finished for two weeks in sherry casks; and what I see online these days, where the buying public is informed it is aged for six to eight months in South African wine barrels before finishing in sherry casks.

Well, whatever. Whether three months or six, with or without the sherry ageing, the overall profile strikes me as doing too little and hoping for too much, which is a shame – with a few more years under its belt, this could have really turned heads and attracted attention. The things is, ageing can be either done right and for a decent interval (perhaps three years or more, with many believing the sweet spot is between eight and twelve), or dispensed with it altogether (as with the various unaged whites for which I confess a sneaking love).  But to stay in the middle ground, with less than a year? Plus a finish?…that may just be pushing one’s luck. It’s heading into spiced or flavoured rum territory.

The reason I make these remarks is because when I started nosing it, believing that 40% couldn’t seriously harm me, it lunged out in a schnozz-skewering intensity that caught me unprepared, the more so when had in a series with the far gentler and warmer and more easygoing muffled blanket of the Gold I’d just sampled before.  To be fair though, once it settled down, there were notes of red wine (no surprise), raisins, caramel, chocolate vanilla, and something vaguely sharper, like those chocolate After-Eight mint biscuits.

The palate was softer, smoother, warm rather than hot, after the initial heat burned away..  Again, lots of sweet wine, and the sherry makes itself felt.  Honey, some nuttiness (I was thinking breakfast cereals like cheerios) plus a little fruitiness, cherries, more vanilla, more chocolate and vanilla.  Truth is, too little going on here, and overall, somewhat uncoordinated and quite faint. A 40% strength can be perfectly fine, but it does make for a lesser experience and dampened-down tastes that a shooter wouldn’t capture and a mix would drown and a sipper would disdain.  The finish was okay for such a product, being short and easy, warm, redolent of nuts, more cheerios, honey and a very faint note of tannins. There was some character here, just not enough to suit my preferences.

I know it sounds like I’m dissing the rum, but not really – as noted above, I liked it better than the Gold of Mauritius Dark even though it was younger, which I attribute to a better handling of the blend, and the sherry influence.  Still, it must be said that the rum displayed something of schizoid character, too young and raw to be tamed with the port/sherry for the few months it aged, yet being promoted as being more than an unaged starter (that would lower expectations, which may have been the point).  Moreover, when any maker puts a moniker of a single year on the bottle — “2014” in this case — it creates an impression of something a little special, a “millesime” edition of a good year…and that’s certainly not the case, as it’s simply the year the rum was made.  And lastly, I argue — as was the case with the Gold — that by mixing it up with these external and rather dominating influences, the potential to experience a unique rum originating from a unique location with a very individual taste, was lost — to our detriment.

So after this experience, I resume my search for the definitive rum from the island, the big gun that will put Mauritius on the map and allow us to use it as a quasi-baseline. Something that isn’t mixed, adulterated, finished or otherwise tampered with.  I know it’s out there somewhere – I just have to find it. This one isn’t it.

(79/100)

Other notes

  • The rum was made by a company called Litchliquor on Mauritius.  They act as a blender and distributor under the command of master blender Frederic Bestel.  They source rums from distilleries around the island and blend. age and finish these in their own facilities.  The majority of their sales is on the island itself and in Europe where they have several partnerships with distributors, but also seem to be able to sell in Russia and the Far East, as well as Kenya, Canada and the UAE.
  • Because of the nature of the blend from multiple (unnamed) distilleries, there is no way to tell what kind of stills the rum came from, or whether it was from cane juice or molasses distillate.

Gold of Mauritius Dark Rum – Review

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Nov 302016
 

gold-of-mautitius-dark

Good with dessert.

#320

You’d think that with the various encomiums the rum has gotten that it’s some kind of diamond in the rough, an undiscovered masterpiece of the blender’s art. “Incredibly rich…mouth watering…a cracker,” enthused Drinks Enthusiast; and the comments of Master of Malt (which one should take with a pinch of salt), are almost all four- and five-star hosannas. Me, I think that although it has a nifty squared off bottle and a cool simple label, beyond that there’s not much to shout about, though admittedly it has its points of originality in simplicity that must be acknowledged.

Let’s get the facts out of the way first. The Gold of Mauritius is a 40% ABV darkish amber-red rum, aged around a year to fifteen months in South African port barrels which have residue of port still in them; and is a blend of rums from various small distilleries around Mauritius (the specific distillery or distilleries which comprise this one are never mentioned).  Caramel colouring is added to provide consistency of hue across batches. The guy who’s done the most research on this is Steve James of Rum Diaries (who also liked it more than I did), so for those who want more facts I’ll point you to his excellent write-up, and move on.

Overall, the nose was interesting at first, leading in spicy before chilling out to become softer and sweeter, with a ton of coffee and vanilla notes duelling it out with ripe cherries and apricots.  There was a dry hint in there, chocolate, salt caramel (it kinda nosed like a tequila for a while). It was surprisingly deep for a 40% rum, which I liked.

It’s on the palate that one got the true measure of what the rum was.  Here, the port influence was massive.  It was warm and sweet, with an initial dark mix of molasses, sugar and smoother vanilla.  It’s not particularly complex, (the dark likely refers to the taste profile rather than the colour or long ageing), and it reminded me somewhat of a dialled down Young’s Old Sam, perhaps less  molasses-dominant.  Some faint fruitiness here, a bit of tart citrus, but overall, the lasting impression was one of chocolate, coffee grounds, salted caramel ice cream, crushed almonds, molasses and vanilla: simple, straightforward, direct and not bad…but in no way unique either.  Even the finish added nothing new to the experience, being short, warm and faintly dry.

Let’s be honest. I thought it was rather forgettable, and felt its cousin the 3-month old 2014 Sherry Cask to be better, perhaps because the sherry there had somewhat less influence than a whole year of port.  Too, I don’t really see the point – the rum is not “finished” in the conventional sense of the term, but completely and fully aged with the port barrels, and that gives them an influence over the rum which masks the uniqueness of what Mauritius as a terroire should be able to showcase.  In other words, while I’m a firm believer in the whole concept of geographical regions imparting distinctive tastes to rums, there’s nothing here that says “Mauritius” because the port influence so dominates the flavour profile.

Overall, then it leaves me not getting a rum, but a flavoured version of a rum.  And that’s not to its advantage, though for those preferring simple, straightforward dessert rums, I suppose it would be right up their alley.

(77/100)

Other notes

  • As far as I was able to discover, the rum was made by a company called Litchliquor on Mauritius.  They act as a blender and distributor under the command of master blender Frederic Bestel.  They source rums from distilleries around the island and blend. age and finish these in their own facilities.  The majority of their sales is on the island itself and in Europe where they have several partnerships with distributors, but also seem to be able to sell in Russia and the Far East, as well as Kenya, Canada and the UAE.
  • Because of the nature of the blend from multiple (unnamed) distilleries, there is no way to tell what kind of stills the rum came from, or whether it was from cane juice or molasses distillate.

Berry Bros. & Rudd 1975 Demerara Rum

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Nov 272016
 

Rumaniacs Review 026 | 0426

While the 1975 30-year old rum issued by Berry Bros isn’t actually one of their “Exceptional Cask” series, it remains one in all but name and is one of the best of the Demeraras coming out of the 1970s, taking its place in my estimation somewhere in between the Norse Cask 1975 and the Cadenhead 1975, maybe a shade behind the Velier PM 1974 and the Bristol Spirits PM 1980.  It could have been even better, I think, if it had been a tad stronger, but that in no way makes it a lesser rum, because for its proof (46%) and its profile (Port Mourant), it’s quite a wonderful rum.

Colour – dark amber-red

Strength – 46%

Nose – Smooth, heavenly notes of licorice and wax, some well polished wooden furniture, molasses and burnt brown sugar. It gets deeper as it rests, more pungent and well rounded, adding some oak, leather, sawdust and deep dark fruitiness.  These then give way to cinnamon, nutmeg, cherries and coffee grounds in a lovely, well-integrated series of smell that makes re-sniffing almost mandatory.

Palate – 46% is not problem and makes it very approachable by anyone who doesn’t like cask strength rums (which may have been the point). Strong and heated attack, slightly sweet, more licorice, vanilla, breakfast spices, molasses-soaked brown sugar, tied together with sharper citrus and fruity notes…half-ripe mangoes or guavas, just tart enough to influence the taste without overwhelming it.  With water there’s some ripe sultanas and butterscotch to round things off.

Finish – reasonably long and spicy; those grapes are back, some white guavas, licorice and toffee, brown sugar, a flirt of vanilla.  Not the most complex endgame, just a very good one.

Thoughts – It’s a firm and very tasty rum of excellent balance and complexity – it doesn’t try for overkill.  What it does do is present a great series of flavours in serene majesty, one after the other, showcasing all the well-known elements of one of the most famous stills in the world.  Any maker would have been proud to put this out the door.

(89.5/100)

NB – other Rumaniacs’ reviews of this rum can be found here. Here’s my original review from 2013, for those who’re interested.

Velier Enmore 1987 13 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 222016
 

velier-enmore-1987-0

Among the first Velier Demerara rums, eclipsed by its better-made brothers in the years that followed

#319

It’s become almost a game to ferret out the initial issuings of rums made by companies whose names are made famous by the passing of time. Back in 2000, who had ever heard of Velier outside of Italy?  Yet even then, the company was forging into the future by issuing rums defiantly called full proof, although there could have been few who were entirely sure what the term meant. 40% ruled the roost, “cask strength” was for whiskies, and only the occasional Demerara rum from an independent bottler was to be seen anywhere, usually tucked away on a liquor shop’s dusty back shelves, almost with an air of embarrassment.

velier-enmore-1987-2The Velier-imported, Breitenstein-bottled Enmore 1987 full proof rum may have the distinction of being one of the very first of the Demerara rums Velier ever slapped its label on – certainly my master list in the company biography has few from Guyana issued prior to that.  That might account for how at odds this rum tastes from other more familiar Enmores, and how strange it feels in comparison.

Consider: the nose opened with some brief petrol smells, which dissipated rapidly.  Then came pears and green apples, and creamed green peas, again gone in a flash. It was light and sweet in comparison to the other Enmores from Silver Seal and CDI I was sampling alongside it, and I dunno, it didn’t really work for me.  Later aromas of cake batter dusted with icing sugar, caramel and toffee, cinnamon and some faint bitter chocolate were about all I could take away from the experience, and I really had to reach for those.

The palate was also something of a let-down.  Sharp, salty, and somewhat thin, a surprise for the 56.6%, with such acidic tastes as existed being primarily lemon rind and camomile. With water some cinnamon buns grudgingly said hello. The rum as a whole was surprisingly demure and unassertive, with somewhat less than the nose promised coming through, even after an hour or so – vanilla and caramel of course, brown sugar, some light citrus peel, a melange of vague fruitiness that wasn’t cooperating, and that was pretty much it.  Even the finish was hardly a masterpiece of flair and originality, just a slow fade, with some more allspice and toffee and vanilla coming together in a sort of tired way. It was certainly not the lush, rich and firm tropical profile that Luca’s subsequent rums prepared us for.  I suspect that the rum was aged in Europe, not Guyana — the bottler, an old Dutch spirits-trading firm from the 1860s that morphed into DDL Europe in the later 2000s, was unlikely to have done more than provided Luca with a selection to chose from, aged in Holland. That might account for it, but I’m still chasing that one down since it’s my conjecture, not a stated fact.

Anyway, that’s what makes this something of a disappointment – one can’t help but compare it to the high bar set by rums that came later, because those are far more available and well-known…and better.  In this Enmore we saw the as-yet-unharnessed and unpolished potential that matured in rums like the Port Mourant series (1972, 1974, 1975), the legendary Skeldon 1973 and UF30E, and the 1980s and 1990-series Enmores, Diamonds, Uitvlugts and Blairmonts.  In 2000 Luca Gargano had a pedigree with wines and other occasional rums (like the Damoiseau 1980), and now in 2016 he is rightfully acknowledged as a master in his field.  But I feel that when this rum was bottled, he was still a cheerful, young, long-haired, piss-and-vinegar Apprentice mucking about with his rum-assembly kit in the basement, knowing he loved rums, not being afraid of failure, but not yet having the complete skillset he needed to wow the world.  How fortunate for us all that he stuck with it.

(82/100)

Other Notes

Thanks to Eddie K. who pointed out that there were in fact older Veliers issued in the 1990s by Thompson & Co. – so I changed the review (and the Makers rum listing) to reflect that this one is not the first.

*Breitenstein is a Holland-based trading company 100% owned by DDL, not a separate third party as I had initially thought.

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Marienburg White Overproof 90% Rum – Review

 6 Responses »
Nov 202016
 

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To the extent that a shot of this rum is all sound and fury signifying nothing, it achieves its objective. The history is perhaps more interesting than the rum.

#318

Regular readers of the meanderings of the ‘Caner in the rumiverse know something of the near obsessive (some say masochistic) search for the most powerful rums in the world that peppers these pages.  Back in the day, the 151s had my awe.  Then I tried the SMWS Longpond 9 year old 81.3% and thought appreciatively, “Dat ting wuz a proppah stink bukta.”  Lo and behold I spotted the Sunset Very Strong a year or three later, bought that, and was blown into next week by the 84.5%.  Every time I think I’ve gotten to the top of the ABV food chain, along comes another to upend my knowledge (if not my expectations).  So permit me to introduce the Marienburg 90% white rum, which crows about being (so far) the most powerful commercially available rum in the world, and who knows, maybe they are (unless Rivers Royale in Grenada wants to make a grab for the brass ring).

Who makes this alpha male of rums?  A titan of the industry with deeper pockets and more stills than common sense?  A small up-and-coming indie pushing a leaky creole still to the screaming limit?  The guy next door claiming to use his grandmother’s bathtub?  Actually, it’s made by none of these (though you can’t help but wonder what the three listed candidates might have done, right?) – a  DDL-like outfit in what was formerly Dutch Guiana has the honour of being first on the podium now.

marienburg-90-2The Marienburg 90% rum is issued by a company in Suriname called Suriname Alcoholic Beverages (SAB), formed in 1966 by several local distributors who pooled resources to consolidate the making and marketing of alcoholic beverages in the country.  However, the genesis of the underlying company is far older: the Marienburg sugar factory was established in 1882 by the Netherlands Trading Society, which bought the assets of the abandoned Marienburg plantation, itself founded way back in 1745 by Maria de la Jaille.  Bad luck seems to have dogged the enterprise, as it underwent several changes in ownership, even becoming a coffee plantation for a time before the Society bought it.  The Society felt it could buy sugar cane from all the surrounding smaller plantations and built a processing factory and 12 km of railway line, opening for business in 1882 and gradually buying up more and more of the smallholdings that once supplied it.

Poor business judgement, political issues and falling sugar prices led to the Marienburg factory being closed in 1986 and it’s now a tourist attraction of rusting machinery and overgrown train tracks.  Nowadays SAB does all of its processing in Paramaribo, where it’s offices also are located. Like DDL and other national companies, they produce a range of spirits for domestic consumption, as well as the Borgoes line of rums which can be found in Europe (they used to produce Black Cat and Malbrok rums the latter of which is no longer being made).  Their rums are Trinidad-molasses based, distilled on a column still, with the resultant spirit put to age in american oak barrels: note that they also have a pot still, but I’m unable to establish which rums are made with it.

That’s all there is to tell you. Let me save you the trouble of the rest of the review and simply state that the rum is falls rather flat.  Potent yes, strong yes, masochistic overkill, absolutely…but alas, it serves no useful purpose and contained none of the delicately fierce redeeming features of either the SMWS Longpond or the Sunset Very Strong, which at least coaxed some fascinating tastes out of their barrels to provide a surprising level of heft and interest that backed up the juggernaut of their power.  Still, if you want to make a killer cocktail, for sure this one is your candidate, so there’s that, I suppose.

This the way I felt when smelling the Marienburg, which presented its initial nose with all the grace and finesse of  a somnolent pachyderm. It’s got bulk, it’s got heft, and absolutely nothing happens with it after I passed through the initial scents of  glue, acetone and sugar water, with maybe olive oil, faint petrol, some light flowers barely peeking around the curtain of the stage…and that’s it. One could sense the power behind all that, yet frustratingly, most of it was kept under wraps.  I should also mention this: there was surprisingly little sting or real heat on the nose, none of the potency one is led to expect from something brewed to this level of badass.  

Still, say what you will about the smell (or lack thereof), on the palate the rum was rough enough to make a zombie fear the apocalypse.  Even a small shot, the tiniest sip was a searing oily mass of heat and power on which you could possibly grill a good steak, causing lips to blister, and the tongue to shrivel up, and if you coughed, a thousand flies would die on the spot. On that level, all was as expected…but heat and savagery aside, it was something of a let down – again, there was so very little there.  No real complexity, no real taste such as makes a 60% CdI or Velier rum so amazing, just scraping clear sandpaper and moonshine. Rubber, more acetone, sugar and salt water.  No sweet undercurrent of anything: paint thinner, interspersed with (get this!) the faintest hint of bubble gum.  Cherry flavoured gum at that.

Given that the power was there but not the taste, I was forced to conclude that this rum didn’t get issued and it didn’t get released…it escaped before it was properly ready, and even the finish, long and heated as it was, offered little additional anything to make it perhaps worth a third or fourth look. It was like the elephant never really woke up and stabbed around with the tusks, y’know?  I have a feeling that it was aged a few months and then filtered but there is no evidence for that aside from my own tasting.

So, my recommendation is simply to save it for any mixed drink or cocktail that you feel like making to show off your bartending skills (logically, since no sane person would ever drink it neat), and to embarrass your less-endowed rum friends who bugle loudly about how they can hold their hooch.  They may say that in front  of their girls all they want, but serve them this and it’ll put them down for the count faster than Mike Tyson on a bad hair day.  And maybe that’s all such a rum can be used for, in spite of the high hopes I had for something a little more interesting, that would put its weaker overproof cousins to shame.  But I guess the independent bottlers still have bragging rights for those.

(69/100)

Other Notes

This rum has pride of place in a list of “Strongest Rums in the World” list posted in 2020

Rhum Rhum Libération 2015 Vieux Agricole “Integrale” – Review

 3 Responses »
Nov 172016
 

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Not quite as good as the 2012…but damned close

#317

One of the genuine pleasures to be had in the field of rum reviews is the unstinting, generous assistance given by members of the subculture.  After I wrote about the Rhum Rhum Liberation 2010, Liberation 2012 and the amazing 2012 Integrale, a reader from Holland contacted me and offered to send along a sample of the 2015 Integrale, for no other reason than because he wanted to see how it stacked up against the others…and to my great good fortune, it arrived while I was still in Germany, and I was able to run all four past each other for a good comparative session.  So big hat tip and many thanks to Eddie K., and may his rum shelf never be empty of the good stuff.

Just to recap the basics for those who don’t want to wade through the other three reviews: all these Libération rhums stem from Bielle on Marie-Galante (Guadeloupe), and are part of a collaboration between Gianni Capovilla and Luca Gargano; cane juice derived, double distilled in small copper stills designed by Mr. Capovilla (built by Muller out of Germany), aged around six years in Sauternes white oak casks.  Need I say that there were no additives or filtrations of any kind here?  Probably not. Also – 2015 is the date of bottling, not the date of distillation (it was ‘liberated’ get it?)

rhum-rhum-liberation-integrale-2015Tasting such a delectable rhum in tandem with its brothers really allows the profile to be taken apart in a way a more casual tasting probably wouldn’t.  Certainly it reaffirmed my initially high opinion of the 2012 Integrale, but you know, this 2015 version bottled at 58.4% ABV wasn’t half bad either.  Consider first the nose, which playfully started the party with light grassy notes and some rubber, as quickly gone as a strumpet’s smile. Then tree sap, some sweet-and-sour teriyaki sauce, a bit of brine, and then the caramel, burnt sugar, cheesecake, bananas and cherries were given their moment to shine, in a smell that was clear and clean and very crisp, nicely leavened by a creaminess which provided a rounded nose I quite liked.

And I savoured the taste of this thing – it was good and solid, hot and punchy, in a good way, with gradually unfolding flavours of flowers and vanillas plus honey (what is it with the Guadeloupe agricoles and that light honey taste?  It’s great). After opening up and with some water, I tasted chocolate, coffee, spices like cinnamon and cardamon, maybe nutmeg.  There was some vague bitterness of oak to be sensed, a slight imbalance, fortunately brief and soon supplanted by the tartness of apples and cider and brine.  Overall, very well rounded and remarkably drinkable, which is one reason that sample is now gone.  As for the fade, it was long, crisp, briny — no vagueness of tastes, none of that inconclusive mashed-up-porridge of a lesser rhum, but bright and clear, with black tea, more honey, fudge and a sprig of mint and a lovely tart fruitiness that resisted my attempts to pin it down.

It was close to the 2012 Libération for sure, maybe even a bit better…and if, as noted above, it wasn’t quite up to the level of the 2012 Integrale, I didn’t feel cheated or let down, since I have a feeling that such remarkable rhums are occasional visitors to our planet rather than regular inhabitants.  And in any case, the 2015 Integrale is a damned fine rhum by any standard, with many strong points and a very few weak ones, which any lover of agricoles would be glad to have. It’s good to see that in an era of commercial sameness by far too many old houses, it’s still possible to find some that don’t let anything like restraint or commonsense stand in their way, and just go ahead and push all their skill and art into making something that’s really very, very good.  When they were done with this one, I can almost imagine them standing around holding their tasting glasses, and all of them with silly grins of appreciation on their faces.  Much like mine, now that I think about it.

(87/100)

Don Papa 10 Year Old Rum – Review

 2 Responses »
Nov 142016
 

Photo copyright (c) Henrik Kristoffersen of RumCorner.dk

Impossible to forget, traumatic to recall. 

#316

I don’t know why they bothered. This is three years’ additional ageing, pretty much wasted.  It’s Don Papa 7 version 2.0, and just about the whole experience is the same, except the raspberries from the younger variation, which are now dark grapes. Everything else – and I mean everything else, mouthfeel, taste, finish, smell, the works – remains the same, without even some additional oakiness or complexity to make the extra expense worth it.

All right, so by now it’s clear that I’m late to the party here and all the discussions and post mortems have been done on this industrial grade spiced Phillipine rum, which it doesn’t admit to being, but which I say it is. And while there was a firestorm of online vituperation which greeted the release of the rum, making you believe that the majority of the rumworld absolutely hates this thing, the truth is actually more prosaic. Reviewers hate the rum…but most casual imbibers at whom the Don Papa is aimed are actually quite tolerant of the rums they scarf down, and the amount of people in the world who truly want a more detailed sense what they’re drinking — or have access to and desire for what we term top class hooch —  is still a minimal part of the rumiverse in spite of all us bloggers’ doing our best to raise the bar.  But everyone agrees on one point: bad or good or in-between, the makers of the Don Papa should absolutely have disclosed its adulteration. Maybe they thought the age statement would allow them to skate around such petty concerns

If so, they were mistaken. Even bumping it up to 43% for some added bola ng bakal didn’t do much. It had the same nasal profile of sour cream, yogurt, some sweetish fruits, and over-generous helpings of vanilla, bubble gum and yes, there it was again, that distasteful excess of soda pop sprite and fanta and pepsi masquerading as “rumminess”. And no tart raspberries this time, but some dampened down dark grapes, overripe ones, plus a twist of licorice. Oh joy. My glass runneth over.

By now you should have few illusions left: the palate offered no redemption, leading any reasonable tippler to ask in genuine bewilderment, “What on earth was the rum doing for three additional years?” I mean sure, there was some bite and bitter in the mix (which initially gave me hope), just too little.  And the few aromas of peaches and cream were bludgeoned into insensibility in labba time by wave upon wave of more vanilla, soda pop, the syrup in canned peaches (minus the peaches), cola…it was all just too much, too sweet, too cloying, and with few discernible differences from its younger sibling, and a finish that was to all intents and purposes the best thing about it, because at least now the experience was drawing to a close.  

You know, if they had honestly called it a spiced or flavoured rum I would have nodded, smiled, passed it by and never bothered to write a thing. But they didn’t…and so I did. And my evaluation is simply that Don Papa 10 is a hollow rum. Age or no age, it’s column still industrial spirit that’s been tarted up, where no such embellishment was required if they took some time and care and blending mastery to the task.  It takes its place proudly with the Whaler’s, Kraken and Pyrat’s XO and the AH Riise Navy 57% on the bottom of any reviewer’s shelf, and with good reason — it’ll get you drunk no problem, and at a reasonable price, but if you wake up the next morning wondering what camel voided its bowels in your mouth and why you have a tattoo of “Don Papa” on your left buttock in hieroglyphs, don’t come crying saying I and all the others didn’t warn you.

(61/100)

Other notes

  • It gives me no pleasure to write reviews like this.  Oh the words flow easily, the rum really isn’t worth it and I can stand by the opinion. I just don’t understand why, in this day and age, I should have to. We’ve been hearing for years how rum is in its new golden age.  So why would anyone who loves rum enough to actually make one, create something that is so clearly not?  In my more generous moments, I say it’s because they want to make what sells to the tippling masses and will do better as their skills improve; in my blacker moods, I think it’s a full-proof money grab adulterated with the cloying additive of indifference.
  • Compliments to Henrik of RumCorner, who provided both a large sample and the photo.
  • For an enthusiastic and uncritical perspective by a “lifestyle writer” (I will not use the term “journalist” because that would be like saying Don Papa is a real rum) I direct you to this Forbes article from May 2017.  It’s just another in a spate of recent rum-themed articles that are written by people who seem to want to advertise that they really know nothing at all about the subject.
  • The Bleeding Heart Rum Company is the company behind the rum, and this link will answer most other questions about the product. BHRC is in turn a subsidiary of Kanlaon Limited a small single-director, 100-share company registered in a business village in Middlesex, listing Mr. Stephen Carroll as the man in charge, and he apparently worked for Remy Cointreau for some years before striking out on his own (he has other directorships in companies involved in film and video production).  Since I don’t trust much of anything the website says, I won’t rehash its blurbs here.

Matugga Gold Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Nov 092016
 

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A less than impressive Jamaican wannabe rum that’s actually from the UK by way of Africa

#315

In one of those coincidences that occasionally crop up, one of my Gallic colleagues texted me as I was putting together the write up for the Matugga, and asked me what I thought of it. “Mediocre,” was the terse response, given the comparators I had on hand that day against which I was rating it, and the almost finished review – but in retrospect that was perhaps too dismissive, since it’s not entirely a bad rum, and both the good and the bad should be acknowledged, in spite of the hyped marketing message.

In this case the selling and marketing point is the rum’s purported origin – East Africa, Uganda to be exact (see my opinion below tis review), and that sure works, because it’s entirely on that basis that I bought it (Zulu Impi is another).  This is a rum like, oh, Lost Spirits or Seven Fathoms – made by a small outfit led by one person with some drive and gumption. Considered objectively and dispassionately it’s a company that, like those other two, takes an unusual, original detail about the rum’s production, and tries to develop that into an entire marketing plan, without really finishing the job of making it a really good one, even a really good young one.

Anyway, the molasses is sourced from a small town in Uganda called Matugga – forget the blurb on the company website about the quality of cane or soil – and fermented in the UK for seven days (rather a long time) before being distilled in a copper pot still and then aged in English oak, though nowhere is it stated exactly how long.  For the record I suspect around 2-3 years max.

matugga-2That age is probably about right.  The nose of the 42% Matugga certainly gave no indication that decades of careful maturation were behind it.  In fact, my first reaction was a grimace and a “yeccch”.  Rank notes of rubber, cardboard, rotting vegetable were first, followed by others of musky and damp old houses with too many cats in it.  But fortunately these sensations were fleeting, and nose changed after opening up, moving to more dominant smells honey and acetone, richer fruits, banana and treacle, maybe half a crème brûlée.  Quite an about face, and after walking around with it, I thought it was like a young, untamed and rather rambunctious Jamaican rum, more than anything else — not nearly as well made, but not to be dismissed out of hand either.  

On the palate, the orange-gold  was not that stellar, though certainly interesting: thick and oily, almost cloying…and then a sharp skewer of black pepper and pimentos without the heat kicked in.  Again, just as with the nose, it did a ninety degree turn and became another rum altogether, more traditional.  The main players emerged on stage – caramel, vanilla, some sugar water (this and the vanilla became particularly pronounced after a while), papayas, pears and white guavas.  Underneath it all was a weird kind of bitterness of raw cocoa beans that accentuated what was already a rather jagged and inconsistent profile, one moment sweet, fruity and almost cloying, the next sharp, bitchy, peppery and out to get me.  And it finished quickly and without fanfare, giving up final hints of nuts, molasses, caramel and vanilla, standard stuff, no points here.

So no, some interesting notes and originality acknowledged, the rum doesn’t really gel.  It has potential, sure, but so far as the profile is concerned, it’s somewhat incoherent, more than a little unbalanced, not well integrated and perhaps not even sure what it wants to be — a Jamaican funk bomb, or an easier, soothing  rum made for mass consumption and to bolster sales before the really good aged stuff comes out the door. Plus those additives, whatever they are, are an annoying and pointless distraction. Why didn’t they just have the guts to take the subtle notes of an East African terroire, run with it and make a case for its uniqueness, for a rum having a profile of neither arrack or molasses or agricole but a new and untried melange of them all?  Their lack of courage in standing by the inherent qualities of their own product is a depressing commentary on both what the rum is, and what it might have been.

(79/100)

Other notes

  • When I started doing my research, I was unsurprised to discover 37g/L sugar on the hydrometer tests. In this case, I believe that less sugar and more ageing would do wonders for the rum. Evidently, the makers thought the opposite.

Opinion

I firmly believe that just because the molasses – and only the molasses – hails from Uganda, that does not make this either an African or Ugandan rum.  Sorry but if Barbados can import molasses from wherever and call itself Barbados rum, and Guyana do the same with molasses from Nicaragua (to note just two well known examples), then the principle of discounting the source of molasses as a terroire / national identifier has already been established.  Fermentation, distillation and ageing all take place in the UK, and so it is essentially a British rum. The Ron Maja rum which purported to come from El Salvador (and labelled itself as such) had similar issues of provenance, with which I strongly disagreed.  Sooner or later the rumworld is going to have to come to grips with how rums with diverse sources and processes can label themselves legally — and a combination of the AOC and the currenntly-disputed form of the Barbados GI is probably going to be the base of its formulation.

Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 2007 7 Year Old Rum (WP) – Review

 3 Responses »
Nov 062016
 

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A stunning fullproof Jamaican

#314

When a bunch of us were dissecting the 2016 Berlin RumFest, we all noted something interesting – the rums which seemed to be making the biggest splash and gaining some of the best accolades were the Jamaicans, as if they were charging out of the gate and making up for lost time. Certainly the visibility of the island has been increasing in the last year or two what with the issuance of new rums from previously marginal distilleries (Clarendon, Hampden, Innswood, Longpond, Worthy Park), and the appearance of new variations at various festivals.  And many of these rums are amazingly good – perhaps more than anything else they showed what we’ve been missing all this time. I can almost feel a twinge of sympathy for Appleton in the years to come.

If you doubt the rise of the New Jamaicans, look no further than the Worthy Park rum issued by Compagnie des Indes. The Hampden 58% was great and I scored it highly – this one is better still.  I haven’t seen anyone take it apart yet, and it hasn’t made much of a splash, but this thing is superlative, if limited (to 271 bottles). The rest of the Jamaican loving rumworld would go ape for this rum if it was more available, and I swear, if Velier issued the thing, we’d see a mass stampede that would make the online issue of the Foursquare 2006 look like a teutonic model of orderly and restrained sales efficiency.

cdi-jamaica-wp-7-yo-53-3Bottled at a stern and uncompromising 53%, which is still quite reasonable even for those too timorous to buy real brute-force sledgehammers like the >65% rums, the bare details are simple: a seven year old rum from a single cask, bottled in July 2015, aged in American oak, entirely in Europe.  And yes, from Worthy Park: if you are interested in such things, the Cocktail Wonk took the time and trouble to visit and wrote a detailed article on the subject which is worth checking out, since it would be an insult to abridge into a few sentences here.

At first blush it seems odd to say that honey, cream cheese and crackers were the initial aromas; and was that cucumbers, smoked salmon and parsley on rough peasant bread?…surely not…but yes it was, plus dill – it was all very faint and more hint than bludgeon, but very much there. I literally stared, bemused, at my glass, for a few minutes, before attending to business again.  After the amazingly off-base beginning, much more traditional smells started to assert their dominance – citrus peel, nuts, bananas, soft white guavas, some vanilla and cinnamon, nothing really tart or acidic…the rum was not so much soft and easy as firm and quite crisp, almost prissily precise.

It was on the palate that its quality moved out of yummy into awesome.  There were cherries in syrup on a cheesecake, quite delicate; ripe but still tart slices of Indian mangoes.  Yes it was hot, maybe even sharp, yet it was as clear and precise as a Chopin nocturne, and the palate delivered on what the nose had promised, adding caramel, brininess, an olive or three, banana skins, overripe apples, and cider.  It was, in its way, like a really good Riesling, with a sparkling red grapefruit background striking a delicate balance between sleaze and titillation, between sweet and salt, dunder and “rumminess” – it’s an amazing achievement, a wonderful rum, one of Florent’s best, and it finishes with some emphatic final notes of vanilla, cinnamon, very light sweetness of those cherries, salted caramel, and a last twist of lemon. I tried it three times over six hours, and still thought it was great the final time.

Every few years, our world seems to be dominated by rums of a different style.  For a while it was the Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Venezuelans and Guyanese, then Velier exploded on the scene with its full proof Demeraras, followed by the Trini Caronis. The Bajans have come on strong of late (mostly FourSquare and St. Nick’s), and there are the agricoles, as ever, quietly and determinedly chugging beneath them all. Now it may be the turn of the Jamaicans to produce the most exciting work for a while. If just on a random sampling, something this good and this young appears out of nowhere, we may all be in for a cornucopia of wonderful rums from the island, of which this is just one.  

(90/100)

Rum Nation Jamaica 1990 23 Year Old Supreme Lord VII (Hampden) – Review

 No Responses »
Nov 032016
 

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We should be grateful that some makers still have sufficient stocks to permit the issuance of rums old enough to vote – we sure won’t see many of them much longer.  This one does fans of the Jamaican rums no dishonour – it’s great.

#313

With the recent 2016 release of the 1991 Jamaica SL VIII, which really is just about as good as they say and maybe even better than this one, I rummaged around my bag of tasting notes and remembered I had a bottle from that island from a year or two back knocking about and gathering dust (would you believe I actually forgot about it?) … so I brought it upstairs, re-tasted, updated the notes, and decided to jump it to the front of the queue. ‘Cause those Supreme Lords man, they’re pretty amazing, and we don’t see many rums this old from the indie bottlers all that often.

By now, after recommending them for many years, there is nothing new I can really add to Rum Nation’s company bio that isn’t already there. They’re not innovative – or “limited edition” – in the same sense that CDI or Velier or even EKTE is, but they are very consistent in their own way and according to their own philosophy, and I’ve liked them enormously since 2011 when I first ran across their products and bought just about the entire 2010 release line at once.  Almost always good, always adding a little bit here and a little bit there to tweak things a bit (like the Panama being changed to an 18 year solera, the new bottle design from 2014), and incrementally improving every year (moving slowly to higher proof points, the Jamaican 57% white and those amazing twenty-plus-year-old Demerara and Jamaica rums). They catch a lot of heat for their practise of adding sugar (sometimes it’s actually caramel but never mind) to their lower- and mid-level rums (the Millonario XO in particular comes in for serious hate mail).  However this Jamaican SL VII has no such inclusions and is pretty much unmessed with, so rest easy ye puritans, and on we go.

Some details: this is a pot still rum, from Hampden estate, which is rapidly turning into one of my favourite Jamaican estates, like PM is for the Demeraras.  It was distilled in 1990 and poured into 822 bottles in 2013 at a not-quite-so-spectacular 45%, after slumbering for almost twelve years in Jamaica (in ex-bourbon American oak barrels), before finishing the ageing regime in the UK.

rn-j-1990-2It’s always a toss-up for me whether I’m in a Jamaican or Guyana mood, and this orangey-amber rum showed why – deep rich licorice and honey started the nose off, billowing strongly out of the glass; the funk took its place, oak joined in, to which was added easier notes of mead, grasses (grasses? I wondered, but yeah, there it was), and some orange zest. Deeper, muskier and earthier tones took their turn, before fading off into fruity hints (unripe peaches and a half ripe mango or two). I was impressed as all get out to note a hint of fresh honeycomb (complete with waxy notes) with a clear, light floral undercurrent that all combined really well.

There was no divergence on the taste, as I’ve sometimes noted with Jamaicans, and the palate followed smoothly on from what was smelled. Smooth and warm – yes, 45% could be improved on, but I can find little fault with what has been accomplished here.  Quite fruity, acetone-like and estery, but also competing briny notes were in the mix.  Citrus, sherry, the glue of an UHU stick, then cherries and very ripe apples on the verge of going bad.  It tasted remarkably clear and crisp, with the funk being held at bay while never entirely disappearing.  That might actually be to its detriment, because we look for a Jamaican profile, and it’s there, just not as in-your-face as we are led to expect by other independent bottlers who have no time for subtlety and smack you in the head with it. Finish is warm, remarkably long for that strength, with closing aromas of glue, sweet soya, a sort of mash-up of fleshy fruits, all leavened with a sly, crisp citrusy note that brings it all to a lovely close.  Overall, it’s a lovely and approachable rum that many, beginners and aficionados alike, will savour, I think.

Rum Nation’s marketing is quite canny.  Unlike the smaller independent bottlers, they don’t just do a single barrel – for them that’s too limiting.  They do two and three and four or more at a time, which permits correspondingly greater volumes (usually in the low thousands of bottles, sometimes more, sometimes less).  And they issue their high-end rums — of which this is assuredly one — at an ABV that’s more than the 40% which is practically a North American standard, but less than some raging full proof number that alienates (scares off?) all but the hard core.  What that leaves us with is a relatively affordable, very accessible 23 year old rum of just under a thousand bottles, issued at a decent strength, and quality not to be sneezed at. For ensuring that sales and availability and appreciation go hand in hand, that four-way combo is a tough one to beat. This is a rum worth getting, and the great thing is, you still can..

88.5/100

Other notes

Bottle provided by Fabio Rossi – every time we meet we argue over the cheque, whether it’s for a dinner we share or a bottle he’s provided. Sometimes I win, sometimes he does. I still owe him for this one, which I’ve had since early 2015.

The wooden box with its jute sacking which I so loved has been discontinued, but postage stamp pictures blessedly remain as part of the overall presentation.

Black Joe Jamaican Rum (1980s)

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Oct 302016
 

blackjoeRumaniacs Review 025 | 0425

In spite of the recent (2015-2016) resurgent charge of Jamaicans on the world rum scene, an older rum like this reminds us that for a long time they were actually rather quiescent, and exported a lot for rebottling overseas – to Italy in this case, where a small outfit named Illva Saronno produced the Black Joe in the 1980s. The company, founded in 1922, primarily produces Amaretto, bitters and Sicilian wines (“Illva” is an acronym which stands for Industria Lombarda Liquori Vini e Affini – they are located just north of Genoa).  I imagine that they were into “fantasy rums” such as were popular in Italy before rum exploded as a spirit in its own right, and bottles dating from the 1950s through to the 1980s are available online, after which the trail ceases – I could not begin to tell you which estate the rum hails from.

Colour – Light Gold

Strength – 40%

Nose – Yep, very Jamaican, redolent of musty earth, funk, rotting bananas, pineapples in syrup, brine and olives, morphing into cardboard and cereal notes. Plus plastic and turpentine, just a bit.

Palate – Did I just pass a roadworking crew with bubbling tar in it? Fortunately, I pass it quick. It’s a bit soft (at 40%, no surprise), briny, grape-y, with phenols and more sweet – but watery – syrup, and star anise.  It’s all very quiet, in spite of the clarity of the tastes

Finish – Sharp and short, with light honey and cereals, some vague fruits. Modern stuff is better, fiercer.

Thoughts – It’s recognizably Jamaican, but unspectacular in any fashion. The 1957 edition sells for nearly a thousand euros online, this one for substantially less.  Not much point to getting it, as it appeals more to collectors and hunters of rarities than someone who actually might want to drink it. If nothing else, it shows us something of the evolution of Jamaican style rums, though.  And I still wish I knew which estate produced it.

(80/100)

NB – Other Rumaniacs reviews of this rum can be found here.

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