Ron Millonario XO Reserva Especial – Review

 3 Responses »
Oct 192012
 
The lush voluptuousnes of Raphael, captured in a bottle with a bit of Peruvian sunshine

Soft. This rum is so soft. It is breezes in the warm tropical twilight, the lap of waves at low tide on a deserted Caribbean island, the first unsure, hesitant and oh-so-sweetly remembered kiss of your timid adolescence. It is your mother’s kitchen on a rainy day, fresh bread baking in the oven. It is a 40% Peruvian piece of magic, and if it costs a shade over a hundred bucks, I can only say that I believe it to be worth every penny. Want a slightly pricey introduction to sipping quality rum that seduces, not assaults? Here it stands.

I asked the question of the Ron Millonario 15 Solera whether that was the best solera in current commercial production, and had to say no, largely on the strength of this one – not because the XO is better: it’s simply as good in a different way. Note that both rums are made in the solera system from a Scottish column still distillate; the 15 is made from a four barrel solera, but the added richness of the XO makes me suspect (like my Edmontonian friend does) that either this is a five barrel system, or they aged it longer somehow. Details remain sparse. The two are almost twins with obscurely opposing characters, and while the 15 is cheaper and therefore better value-to-quality overall, I must concede that on a complete aesthetic, the XO probably has it.

Consider the appearance, which would probably make my departed Maritime friend the Bear weep with happiness: cheap black cardboard cutout that won’t add to the price, embracing a flattened squarish bottle that has handsomely gold etched lettering and a faux-golden tipped cork. It looks just classy enough to not be considered a cheap knockoff aspiring beyond its pedigree.

I should remark right at the outset that the XO is a rum deserving to be savoured, not swilled, because while the nose began just swimmingly – honey, a slight minty zest, mango and papaya and flowers – it only got better as it opened up, adding a delicate green and vegetal background, and subtle aromas of coriander and brown sugar. I tried this in tandem with the Millonario 15 solera and that one was excellent also, but it was eclipsed by the sheer complexity of this baby.

And the taste, nice. Again, gets more complex and interesting as time goes on: right off the bat I was enthused about its gentle, velvety smoothness (not altogether surprising for a 40% solera), and the arrival of white chocolate, buttery, creamy caramel. A shade heated without malice, spicy without bitchiness, which was a perfect offset for the sweet notes that coiled around it. That sounds straightforward enough but tek a chill and wait (as my brother back in Mudland would say). Just like with the nose, further flavours shyly emerge and when I tell you that I got a slight smokiness, old dusty leather, fresh fruit and white flowers all in tandem, you can understand why everyone I’ve ever shared this with sings its praises. I’ve already distributed a bottle or two in tasters over a mere few months (and that’s phenomenal given my hermitlike nature and how few friends I have who like rums). As for the exit, it is excellent, chocolate-like (of the milk kind), smooth, long and departing with a last mischievous fillip of those fruity notes.

In fine, unlike the 15 which began well but simply stayed at that level of excellence, the XO started slowly, built up a head of steam and then gently and powerfully released its character over time. For sure this is not a mixing agent, and it rewards the patient – it gets better as it opens up. I’m not sure a higher proof would improve this marvellously made Peruvian product, and I’m not asking for it to be made so (though I might not object either). It’s great as is…don’t mess with it, except perhaps to dial down the sweet a shade.

If you are a raw, uncompromising Caledonian or his Liquorature acolyte (did someone say “Hippie”?) who likes harsh briny sea salt in your beard and the wind in your face and peat in your cask-strength drink, then the softness and relative sweetness of this rum, harking as it does of sunlight and warmth instead of rocks and northern waves, is definitely not for you. The cask strength whiskies are savagely executed Goyas compared to Ron Millonario’s voluptuous females painted by Raphael and Titian, so it comes down to taste and character and preference. My own take is merely that the makers of Ron Millonario XO Especial, with this lovely rum, have pressed all the right buttons and made all the right incantations in producing a rum that raises the bar of rums in general, and soleras in particular. Yet again.

(#127. 88/100)

Other Notes:

  • 2024 Video recap is here.
  • Like most solera rums, this one is sweeter than the average and that may be off-putting to drinkers who prefer a drier, sharper and more ascetic “rum-like” profile. Personal preferences therefore have to be taken into consideration when deciding whether to buy it or not.
  • In 2019 the Millonario Cincuenta (“50”), a 10th Anniversary companion to this rum, was issued.  It was also added to. I reviewed it in 2020 with a much more modest sub-80 point score.

Update August 2016

In the years since this review came out — I tried it in 2012 — I’ve taken a lot of flak for my positive assessment of the two Millonarios. Fellow reviewers and members of the general public have excoriated the rum for being loaded – destroyed – with so much sugar as to make it a “candied mess.” I acknowledge their perspective and opinions, but cannot change the review as written, as it truly expressed my thoughts at that time.  Moreover, the complexity I describe is there and cannot be wished away, and if the rum is too sweet for many purists, well, I’ve mentioned that.  About the most I can do at such a remove — short of shelling out for another bottle and trying it — is to suggest that if sweet isn’t your thing, deduct a few points and taste before you buy.

And a note for people now getting into rum: sweet is not a representative of all rums, least of all high end ones.  The practice of adding sugar in any form to rums, to smoothen them out and dampen bite (some say it is to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear), is a long-standing one, but gradually being decried by many who want and prefer a purer drinking experience (Plantation and Rum Nation are two companies which sometimes engage in the practice, which they term “dosing”).  It remains legal in many rum producing nations.  As with most aspects of life, sampling a variety will direct you to where your preferences lie.

Opthimus 25 Solera Whisky Cask Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Oct 042012
 

Smooth, soft, voluptuous Tomatin-cask-finished solera rum that expresses its admiration for your awesomeness without coyness or complexity, just unalloyed, warm affection. And a bit of a quirky side.

You are entirely within your rights to ask what the number actually means in the context of a solera’s given “age”. Generally accepted useage holds that it does not mean the oldest or youngest component of the blend, but the average of them all: which is no more than proper given that the solera process is based on a percentage of the rums in one level of barrels being progressively poured (and mixed) with barrels containing yet other percentages in another level over a period of many years. The Bicentenario out of Venezuela, for example, claims that rums as old as eighty years of age are components of the final product (hence the price)…but no solera maker I’ve ever researched makes any mention of how much of each age forms the final blend, though sometimes you are informed of how long that final blend is itself aged.

None of this would be more than an academic exercise unless it was for the fact that since we are never quite sure what percentage of what age is in our “average x years” solera, we therefore are never certain whether the price we pay is worth what we are getting (unless we get a taste first, in which case…). However, some general observations I’ve made is that soleras are sweeter and smoother than the average, get better the higher the number is, a bit pricier, and are much liked (look no further than the Ron Zacapa 23)….yet lack something in the way of real complexity, real depth…real oomph. I like them just fine, and they sip quite well, mind you, so let these remarks not dissuade you. When I meet persons who know they want to try one of my rums, but not which one, it’s almost inevitably a solera I trot out, ‘cause I know they’ll enjoy it.

One of the best I’ve ever tried is the Opthimus 25, originating in Dominican Republic, home of the Brugal, Bermudez and Barcelo (and Matusalem) and bottled by Oliver & Oliver, a company in existence since the mid 19th century and founded by the Cuban family of Juanillo Oliver, a Catalan/Mallorcan emigre. Abandoning Cuba in 1959, members of the family re-established the company in the early nineties in the DR after finding the supposed original recipe for their forebears’ rum. They also produce the Cubaney line, and the sub-par Opthimus 18 (at a jelly-kneed 38%) and the fully awesome Opthimus 15 (which may be the best of the lot simply because it is a shade younger and has therefore not been smoothened out so much as to eviscerate its more complex nature). The 25 I tasted was bottle 795 of 1350 the 2011 production run, and cost an eye-glazing €108 for the 500ml bottle pictured above.

Like most soleras I have tried, this 43% ABV version was warm and soft and billowy to the nose, with scents of caramel and burnt sugar being subtly upstaged by nutmeg, banana and cinnamon…and an odd kind of brininess hinted at, not driven home with a bludgeon to the schnozz. And the label makes it clear why: the rum was finished in Tomatin malt whisky casks in Scotland (no info is given as to how long, alas). That’s quite different from many other rums, which finish in wine casks of some sort (though Cadenhead, you’ll recall, does have the Laphroaig-finished Demerara rum). I shrugged and passed on – after all, the feinty wine notes of the Rum Nation products enhanced the overall profile, so who was to say this was bad?  Not I.

The arrival was also a bit off the beaten track, with the brininess I had noted sticking around as if to see wh’appenin’ (as my West Indian squaddies would say); a bit sweet, a bit salty, like biscuits in a teriyaki sauce (I kid you not). There was a touch of iodine-like peat in there, but the rum itself was brown-sugar-sweet and smooth and strong enough not to be overwhelmed by it, and that sly touch of mischief appealed to me a lot, a fact aided by a lovely, warm finish with no hint of malice or bile in spite of the 43% strength, redolent of caramel and breakfast spice (and yup, that touch of brine again, sneaking in through the back door). Honestly, this reminded me nothing so much as of the lovely brown-skinned, dark-eyed Guyanese lasses I regularly fell in and out of love with in my teenage years…warm, friendly, smart, inviting, funny and with just a touch of the flirt to keep me at bay.

I’m going to go on record as saying this is a pretty good rum, it beats out the embarrassingly underproofed 18, and yup, it’s a bit pricey; still, for my money it is eclipsed by the cheaper 15, the same way some believe the El Dorado 15 is a better rum than the 21 or 25 (my father among them). I don’t often hold with such uninformed opinions from my supposed elders and purported betters, dogmatically held and long (and loudly) proclaimed. Yet in this case I have to concede that while the 25 is a really well put-together rum which presses all the right buttons (and loves me, unlike all the aforementioned lasses, who probably had better sense), it somehow, through a subtle loss of alchemy, fails to quite be the Prime it may have been meant to be. Note that there are other variations of the 25 out there, some weaker, some finished in different casks

Let that not stop you from trying it if you have a chance, though. You won’t be sorry. It’s a lovely rum.

(#124. 86/100)

Other notes

  • I sampled this in 2012, and going at it again in 2016 suggested how my preferences and perceptions charged.  There’s an undercurrent of sweetness to it I had not paid enough attention to before.  I have not done an in-depth check for additives but it’s likely (based on taste alone), so caveat emptor.

Ron Zacapa 23 Anos Solera – Review

 5 Responses »
Jul 182012
 

Image courtesy of wikipedia

First posted 18 July 2012 on Liquorature. 

The Zacapa 23 is some kind of touchstone for rum drinkers as a tribe. It consistently appears on Ministry members’ rum lists as a favourite, and garners high points across the spectrum of whole populations, has received unbelievable ratings from international panels and is a perennial reviewers’ favourite.  When I was over at the Arctic Wolf’s lair some months ago and he offered me a try from his collection, it was the Zacapa 23 I asked for.  Some see it as the benchmark by which all soleras are measured.  I’m not one of them, but you see?  The thing is a Marciano of rum, consistently punching above its weight.  For a solera that’s unusual.  For its price, that’s nothing short of amazing. What makes this one rum from Central America, from a company that makes almost nothing else of such note (unless it’s the 25) such a standout?

Well, let’s start there.  Ron Zacapa is made in Guatemala, in a small town appropriately named Zacapaneca, by the Industrias Licoreras Distillery. It has two points of difference that set it apart from more traditional Caribbean rums (although to consider Guatemala a “Caribbean” nation is to misunderstood a term which has more cultural than geographical implications) – one, it is not made from molasses but sugar cane juice (thickened by boiling to a honey-like consistency), and therefore has more in common with the agricoles of Martinque and Guadeloupe, and two, it is aged by the solera method used in sherries, a trait it shares with the Venezuelan Santa Teresa.  In this instance, literature available online advises me that the blend in the 23 is a mixture of rums aged 6 to 23 years, and is then further aged in white oak barrels.

Previously, the Zacapa had an age statement (23 anos) printed on the bottle, front and centre; however, since Diageo took over the distribution of the product, a more reasonable “23 Solera” has replaced this, and that makes more sense, otherwise confusion results (remember the Flor de Cana 21 which isn’t a 21 year old?). The bottle itself has a neat little palm leaf wrapping around it, and has a well seated cork: I’m a little ambivalent about corks these days – it’s the seal I’m after, as well as a lack of degradation of material – but I always have a soft spot for real old-school stuff, so this one worked just fine for me.  All in all, then, there is an aura of professionalism about the whole thing.

Decanted, the rum displays surprising body in the glass for something so apparently light, and has slow and strong legs down the side of the glass. Yet the nose is soft, missing being delicate by a certain muscularity that reminds me of the grace and strength of a ballet dancer: it is smooth in character, with hints of cocoa, caramel and a dusting of cinnamon and vanilla.  Nuts, perhaps, and after a bit I could swear I smelled cherries. It lacks the pachyderm heaviness of the El Dorados, and it seems just about right that it be so – this is a rum where the colour and the nose match precisely.

And where the taste does not let one down, I should add.  This thing is smooth and very slightly dry. Sweet. Perhaps a little too light on the body, but like the sugar, it’s a personal thing (I like slightly darker, heavier rums, a tad sweeter than some, which in no way detracts from my enjoyment and appreciation of one like this). And on the palate, excellent…I mean, really, really good. Hints of that same cocoa-vanilla blend, honey, caramel and burnt sugar, the very faintest smidgen of something like citrus, all in some kind of harmonious balance, a coming together of all parts that made me understand why people have been drooling over it for years. To my surprise, there is almost no bite at all, no sting, no claw, no scratch.  It’s not on the level of smoothness of the heavier Pyrat’s 1623 or the El Dorado 25, but then, it’s not a liqueur like the former either, and not a seeming wannabe like the latter.  The 23 coats the tongue and lasts for seeming small cycles of the universe, before gently letting go and passing into a fade that makes you want to pour another shot immediately.

The fade is the third leg, and it keeps up.  It does not drop the ball – unlike the Mount Gay 1703, I would say, if pressed for an opinion – by having that last departing bat of the cat’s claw on the way out.  It simply wafts up fumes, strokes your throat in zephyr breezes on the way down, and you swallow and look at the glass and wonder where your two ounce shot just went and why the bottle is suddenly half empty.  My father in-law (him of the Russian rotgut preferences, remember him?) isn’t a rum dude, but he simply adored this one; for a guy who at 72 rarely takes more than one sip for face (honour and duty must be maintained when in my house, so refusing is considered rude – same way I am unable to decline the sheep’s eyeball when at his), he immediately asked for another…and then another.

Note the rums to which I compare this lovely product.  All of them are north of a hundred bucks, sometimes two.  All of them are marketed as ultra premiums.  All are aged blends with large age statements (except Mount Gay and the Pyrat’s).  Yet this Zacapa 23, blended from rums containing a range of rums the oldest of which is 23 years old, holds its own without ever seeming to try (much like the Juan Santos 21).  It cost me the equivalent of sixty bucks from a friend who brought it in from the UK as a favour.  Even the Juan Santos clocks in at around ninety in Alberta. Value for money?  Ron Zacapa may have hit the sweet spot here.

It’s instructive to compare the Zacapa 23 to the Pyrat’s Cask 1623 which I angrily skewered not too long ago. I mentioned my disappointment with its overwhelming citrus taste that at the premium level should have been moderated and better balanced and that it was a forty dollar rum in a hundred dollar package selling for two hundred.  Ron Zacapa is almost exactly the opposite: all elements come together like a swiss watch, no one flavor overcoming or dominating any other; and while it may not be a two hundred dollar rum or come in a hundred buck package, it sure as hell doesn’t cost either of those numbers either.  For what you are paying compared to what you are getting, I stand here in front of you and state it flatly: this rum has one of the best quality to price ratios of any kill-divil it has ever been my pleasure to sample, and sweet or no, it’s good.  If it ever comes to Alberta again, I’m getting me a some more. And looking out for the 25.

(#95) (Unscored)

Other Notes

  • Zaya, from its similar taste profile, maybe uses the same stock, though bottled in Trinidad and aged there)
  • This was a pre-Diageo bottling, not the current one marked “23 Solera”

 

Santa Teresa Bicentenario Rum – Review

 14 Responses »
Jun 022012
 

A good, and very pricey ultra-premium solera, the top of the food chain from Santa Teresa A.J. Vollmer in Venezuela.  I’m going to go on record as thinking it’s too much price for too little premium.

The  $315 Santa Teresa Bicentenario solera rum is made by the privately owned Venezuelan outfit A. J. Vollmer, who also produce the 1796 rum (also a solera, and about which I was unenthused at the time…it may be due for a revisit).  It’s a rum I have avoided for over two years in spite of its premium cachet, and because of its price.  Every time I’ve tried it (four times to date) it reminds me somewhat of a fellow I once met on my sojourns, who dressed sharply, was educated at an Ivy League university, and was, alas, a bit of a bore. Pricily dressed and well put together…just not that interesting.

The bottle I had was labelled #5820 and given that only about a thousand liters a year are made, and since the product (according to the Spanish edition of Wikipedia and other sources) was introduced in 1996 as part of the company’s bicentennial, you could be forgiven for assuming this one was issued around 2002…but personally I find that doubtful.  KWM only got this batch about two years ago, and I don’t think it’s been mouldering around for eight years prior somewhere else (it remains an unanswered question).  Still, the bottle, however startling (some might say ugly), is distinctive, and while I didn’t have the box it should have come in, pictures I’ve seen suggest it is pretty cool.

Santa Teresa Bicentenario is a solera, and therefore has a whole range of column- and pot-still, aged rum components in it — 80 year old product was noted without any indication of the average age, and the whole blend is aged some fifteen years in oak barrels; as the premium product of its line, it had all the hallmarks of care and love given to it: for the price, could it be otherwise? It was, for all that ageing, still somewhat light in the glass, a darkish golden colour with thin legs running down the sides.  On the nose it presented itself with a light aroma containing citrus, light and white woods, white flowers, pineapple and a slight hint of dark berries in cream, caressing as a baby’s breath on your cheek.


The overall quality on the palate led on from there: soft and gentle, without a hint of the astringency of a stepmother’s ire. It was put together well enough that separating out individual tastes was as tough as analyzing the Juan Santos 21: about the most I was able to discern was vanilla, faint breezes of brown sugar, and a certain overall creaminess. Perhaps blackberries, and that’s reaching. To me it was just a bit too light and delicate (while nowhere near the effeminate nature of the Doorly’s).  And this continued on to the fade, which was long and billowy and lasting, yet so soft that one barely knew it was there at all.

Rating this baby is a bitch. I can tell the work that went into smoothening out the intermarried solera components, and the fifteen years of ageing that blend was well done, because the smoothness is there, as it should be for any premium product.  Yet the Bicentenario failed somehow, perhaps in the flavours being so light and commingled that I had little idea what it was I was tasting beyond the obvious.  In short, I felt the rum had too little character, balles, cojones, or whatever Venezuelans call badassery.

So the question arises, for what are you paying this kind of money?  The storage costs of rums aged to eighty years?  Its purported exclusivity and relative rarity? Bragging rights? Probably. But three big ones (I’ve seen it go for about €150 on European webstores) just strikes me as too much.   No me gusta, amigo. I’d rather get three El Dorado 21s, or maybe a few bottles of the feisty Pusser’s 15.

Let me put it this way. I raged about the Pyrat’s Cask 23 and wrote a overlong, scathing indictment of the divergence between quality and price.  Santa Teresa is not quite in that league, because overall, it has elements to it that many appreciate and froth over, even if I don’t. It’s a decent rum, no question. The Bicentenario — pitted against premium choices like the Rum Nation’s Panama 21 (one third the price), St. Nicholas Abbey 10 year old and English Harbour 1981 25 year old — carries on its founders’ traditions of taste, clarity and lightness, good blend quality and decent value. Everything more or less works, everything fits. What’s not to like?

Please take a left turn here, because the real issue is, what’s to love? The rums we care about display characteristics which say something about ourselves that we wish trumpeted to the masses. I’m fun and unconventional (Koloa Gold). I’m big on Bay Street (Appleton 50 year old or maybe the G&M Jamaican Longpond 1941). Ask me about my retirement (Pusser’s, El Dorado 15).  I am staid and prefer to mix and just get hammered…and like meself just so (Screech).  I’m a bit nutso (Rum Nation Jamaican 25)…and so on. What does the Bicentenario say? The trust fund is ticking over? I use a discount brokerage house? I have a summer abode, a nice catamaran and drive a Volvo? By that standard, I have to stick with my assessment: good rum, overly ambitious, lacking attitude, a shade boring…and, alas, overpriced.

(#112. 84/100)

Other Notes

  • My thanks go to the Scotchguy from Kensington Wine Market, who gave me his last heel for nothing, so that I could write this review and take the photographs, without incurring the ire of my parsimonious better half.
  • Here is a good write up on the company’s history, too detailed for me to abridge.

 

Santa Teresa Antiguo de Solera 1796 – Review

 6 Responses »
May 102010
 

 

First posted 10th May 2010 on Liquorature.

I remember being somewhat unenthused with this rum from Venezuela when Scott trotted it out last year.  Venezuelan rums seem to be a bit drier, with less body and not quite as sweet as those made in the Caribbean proper (I note that several online reviews have precisely the opposite opinion), and to my mind, that makes them best for mixers, not sippers.  Still, I had never made good notes on this baby since I tried it for the first time, so, when both Keenan and Scott coincidentally came up with the same bottle two weeks in a row, I had the opportunity to dip my schnozz and see if my deteriorating memories of the first sip were on target.

Some history first: the Santa Teresa distillery is located in Venezuela (north part of South America for the geographically challenged) about an hour east of the capital, Caracas, on land given by the King of Spain to a favoured count in – you guessed it – 1796. Political vagaries being the way they are in South American banana republics, the estate ended up in the hands of a Gustavo Vollmer Rivas, who began making rum from sugar produced on nearby estates – owned by other Vollmerses –  in the late 1800s.  The Santa Teresa 1796 was produced in 1996 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the estate land grant, and, like the Ron Matusalem reviewed elsewhere on this site, is produced by the solera method.

In the solera process, a succession of barrels is filled with rum over a series of equal aging intervals (usually a year). One container is filled for each interval. At the end of the interval after the last container is filled, the oldest container in the solera is tapped for part of its content (say, half), which is bottled. Then that container is refilled from the next oldest container, and that one in succession from the second-oldest, down to the youngest container, which is refilled with new product. This procedure is repeated at the end of each aging interval. The transferred product mixes with the older product in the next barrel.

No container is ever drained, so some of the earlier product always remains in each container. This remnant diminishes to a tiny level, but there can be significant traces of product much older than the average, depending on the transfer fraction. In theory traces of the very first product placed in the solera may be present even after 50 or 100 cycles. In the Santa Teresa, there are four levels of ageing. And the final solera is topped up with “Madre” spirit, which is a young blend deriving from both columnar and pot stills.  Seems a bit complicated to me, but sherry makers have been doing it for centuries in Spain, so why not for rum? The downside is, of course, that there’s no way of saying how old it is since it is such a blend of older and younger rums (Appleton does this as well with some of their stock, and I can’t say I was impressed with their offering).

The resultant is a dark brown, medium-bodied honey-gold rum with a backbone of an older, dry blend.  It’s difficult to describe the exact feeling I had when I tasted it, but it’s like a very pure, medium strong unsweetened hot tea carving its way down your throat. Assertive, yet not unpleasant. And not very sweet, as I’ve said – it’s almost like a good sherry.  The nose is lovely: honey, vanilla, some faint hints of fruit (banana and cherries?), caramel and toffee. The taste and texture on the palate is not as smooth as I would like, and the finish is medium long, redolent of light oak and caramel. A pleasant nose, a good sip, a nice finish, a decent taste. A solid rum, medium tier.

I didn’t care for it neat, but on ice it’s a very competent sipper – without going so far as to make me really want to go nuts over it. In other words, not an English Harbour by any stretch of the imagination.  I would use it as a mixer without hesitation, but I’m not sure if that isn’t just a bit of sacrilege there: after all, the whole point of making something this special is to savour the richness, isn’t it? I guess it flew over my head.

It may be too early to say, but thus far, based on this and the Ron Matusalem, I have to say I’m less than impressed with the solera method of blending. I’m perfectly willing to accept that there must be superior examples of the solera blender’s art out there, and will search the remaining 1450+ varieties of rum until I find one, but I fear that either such and example will be found after I curl up my toes, or be out of the range of my rather slender purse.

(#018)(Unscored)

Update

Ron Matusalem Gran Reserva 15 Year Solera Rum – Review

 3 Responses »
Feb 272010
 

17141

First posted 27th February, 2010 on Liquorature.

Having friends who will trot out cherished stocks of the good stuff for me to taste and comment on is always a plus.  Having those who share my interests in rum, and pick up obscure bottles from odd distilleries in faraway places is even better.  Granted every now and then one runs across paint thinner or liquified rat turds masquerading as rum, but in the main, the odds work in my favour. Still, though, I’ve had to take a leaf out of the Last Hippie’s book and always have a notebook on hand.  I may be fairly clever, but I’m somewhat prone to losing a few IQ points when having my sixth or seventh…or shev’nt’nth shot of…whu’ever. And that impacts on my note-taking, so I have to watch it.

Anyway it was with real delight that I saw this intriguing 15 year old rum from the Dominican Republic  joining its cousins the English Harbour 5, the Bundie, the El Dorado 21 and the Angostura Royal Oak on the table.  Now some might shake their heads and question my liver, my sanity or my ability to have so many competing rums swirling around my palate and still maintain my sobriety or sense of taste (which would be much degraded by the Bundie), but I exist to rise to challenges such as these, and sacrifice my finer feelings for the good of The Club.

A Super-Premium rum (whatever that might mean), this french-oak-barrel matured rum is the top of the line for the Ron Matusalem distillery which originated in Cuba in the 1800s, and which captured a fair share of the market right up to the point where some upstart johnny-come-lately called Fiddle…Fidelity…Fido…whatever (he had a beard and dressed in fatigues) took over from the US-backed dictatorship in 1959. The company was re-established in the USA and removed to the Dominican Republic in 2002 after one of the descendants of the founders gained full control of the company (the family branches had been feuding, leading to the brand’s decline). Interestingly, Matusalem’s master blenders are all descendants of the original founders as well, and are supposedly masters in the technique of solera blending originally developed for sherry and brandy, where barrels of rums from different stages in the maturation process are blended to produce the desired, unique blend. And while my bottle never noted it, this is a solera, which means the “15” on the label does not mean the youngest in the blend, but the average.

The Gran Reserva is a deep gold colour, though not quite dark; it looks like burnt honey. Not light either in body or colour or density. The nose contains strong indications of oak which, to my mind, drown out the subtler vanillas and toffee that linger better on the taste buds; and it is not as sweet as other offerings…they may have stinted on the sugar or caramel.  In my opinion, then, it does not impress when drunk neat or on ice – it is too much like a whiskey, in smell and body and taste (this may be a deliberate attempt to distinguish the product from other rums of equal vintage), and it burns going down, with a short and smoky finish, the way no good 15 year old should.  If I wanted whiskey I’d cross to the dark side and genuflect to the Scots, so on that level it fails.  However, I liked the taste and feel on the palate – the slightly higher density and long maturation period helps give it a really good, silky feel – I just don’t appreciate the taste that much.

That said, as a mixer with coke, whatever screams of outrage from purists, the thing is stellar. It has no such explosion of flavour as the EH5 did, but it develops a very solid, multi-layered and robust taste where the coke provides exactly the level of sugar that enhances the taste of the rum, to produce an excellent butterscotch taste that the silky texture of the rum goes with beautifully.

And that makes me conflicted, not least because I generally like soleras.  It seems that an aged sipping rum like this should not have to be mixed to enhance it to the level I rate so highly. I concede that this may partly be my sweet tooth and love of vanilla and caramel and butterscotch (that’s not butter made in Scotland, Curt, just in case you wondered), and partly my own preconceived notion of what a good sipping rum should be like.

Be that as it may, I believe a whiskey connoisseur, or someone with a different palate from mine, will love this rum.  As a mixer, I think it’s great — but why pay more for this when so many able, younger, cheaper mixers exist? The test of a good aged rum is whether it can stand on its own without adornment or enhancement. On that level, much as I like what comes out of this baby when coke is added to it, I must sadly state that it doesn’t measure up to its hype or pedigree when taken neat.

(#102)(Unscored)

Other Notes

  • My sources for the solera comment are the company’s own website, and additional references here and here.
  • Matusalem does not own a distillery and is therefore a third party rum made, as noted, in the Dominican Republic. In 2015 they established their own new distillery there.
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