1423 S.B.S. Antigua 2015 7 YO High Congener Rum – Review

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Sep 142022
 
1423 S.B.S. Antigua 2015 7 YO High Congener Rum - Review

Based on really really true events, which may or may not be factual…. “A column still can produce this!” smirked Indy as he poured me a generous dram of the seven year old SBS Antiguan hooch and handed it over, daring me to refuse and making sure my head was bowed and cap reverently doffed. I imagine he would not have been displeased with some genuflection, so chuffed was he – and others – with this rum. I considered my glass carefully, pen poised over the famed Little Black Book of Tasting Notes, trying to focus yet also look everywhere [Click here for the full review…]


Takamaka Overproof Rum (Seychelles) – Review

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Sep 122022
 
Takamaka Overproof Rum (Seychelles) - Review

As I remarked in the review of the Damoiseau 2009, there is an emergent trend for agricole rhum makers to make their white rhums stronger. This boosts flavours and intensity and makes for a drink or a mix that has the kick of a spavined mule, and because the rum is unaged, you are getting hit with all those enormous sweet grassy and herbal agricole-style tastes. That not only wakes up a Ti-Punch (or anything else you chose to add it to) but supercharges it. To some extent I think that this trend is meant to capitalise on the success [Click here for the full review…]


Bacardi Añejo “Cuatro” 4 Year Old Rum – Review

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Sep 082022
 
Bacardi Añejo "Cuatro" 4 Year Old Rum - Review

The Bacardi Añejo “Cuatro” hews to all the markers of the long-running Gold and Añejo variations upon which its distillery’s fame rests. It represents Bacardi in fine style, and those who pay the twenty five dollars or less it costs will find their comfort zone is well tended. Because, while it is a blend of mostly four year old rums (with some five and six year old rums mixed in), column still origin and filtered after ageing, the fact is that it represents the standards set by rums of yesteryear while positioning itself as an entry level almost-premium of today. [Click here for the full review…]


Damoiseau Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 2009 7 YO – Review

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Sep 052022
 
Damoiseau Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 2009 7 YO - Review

The French island rum makers take ageing in a slightly different direction than most of those elsewhere in the world. A normal Caribbean distiller (actually just about any from anywhere), will take a rum and age it and then issue a blend of X years, and then progressively older ones, year in and year out, with the occasional special edition thrown into the mix. You never know from the main line of El Dorado rum, for example, what year any of them came from, since that’s unimportant – the age is. Ditto for others like Jamaica or St. Lucia or [Click here for the full review…]


A User’s Guide To Attending A Rum Festival

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Aug 312022
 
A User's Guide To Attending A Rum Festival

Attending rum festivals is one of the most cost-effective ways of sampling a wide variety of rums you might not otherwise have the chance to encounter, as well as (and perhaps this is just as important), meeting all your friends and other folks you’ve only texted, tweeted or commented with over long periods. It’s not as riotous as a jump-up bottom-house, and not as staid as a formal tasting, but it’s almost guaranteed that over a few days you won’t be bored. Almost alone among major spirits categories, rum festivals are still modest enough for you to meet not just [Click here for the full review…]


Montanya “Platino” White Rum – Review

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Aug 282022
 
Montanya "Platino" White Rum - Review

“[In the US] there are a small number of rum distilleries, and a large number of distilleries making rum,” observed Will Hoekinga in our 2021 Rumcast interview, indirectly pointing to the paucity of quality American rum making. A corresponding remark I have made myself is that if the random picking of American rums to review results in just a minute percentage being really worth seeking out then the characteristics of the part can be extrapolated to the whole – and both together suggest that of the 600+ distilleries in the United states, only a handful are currently worthy of attention. [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World – Havana Club Selección de Maestros (Cuba)

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Aug 222022
 
Key Rums of the World - Havana Club Selección de Maestros (Cuba)

There are several worthy candidates for the claim of being the first one from Cuba. Havana Club 7 YO has been a really strong contender based on ubiquity and price, and the Santiago de Cuba 12 YO was also in the running for the same reasons. When one considers that the core criteria of the series is the Three ‘A’s – Affordability, Approachability and Availability – it would seem a slam dunk to say the HC-7 should get pride of place. Even the Havana Club 3 YO has had its adherents, though eventually I eliminated it based on several tastings [Click here for the full review…]


Charles Kinloch Liquid Sunshine Finest Rum “Dark Jamaica” (1970s)

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Aug 182022
 
Charles Kinloch Liquid Sunshine Finest Rum "Dark Jamaica" (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review # 137 | 0931 It is becoming a working theory of mine that the heydey of the merchant bottlers and their near-ubiquitous minis of rum must have been in the 1960s and 1970s, bleeding over into the 1980s. Granted this may be because the majority of such rums I find stem from that period, I just don’t think it’s all a coincidence. Air travel and tropical drinks was a thing, hotels had well-loaded minibars, cruise lines stocked them everywhere and while I’ve never found that many merchant-bottler “indie” minis from pre-1960s or post-1990s, the auction sites are rife [Click here for the full review…]


Opinion – The New Australian Rums

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Aug 172022
 
Opinion - The New Australian Rums

When it comes to Australia and its rums, it’s likely that only two names immediately jump to mind (assuming you know of any at all and are not from there yourself): Bundaberg and Beenleigh. Both are relatively long-lived companies that predate many better-known producers founded much more recently in other parts of the world, yet it is only recently that awareness of them has climbed. Of course, this is in a large part due to association with or ownership by other major spirits companies with worldwide clout and visibility that can be leveraged, as well as social media trends. Those [Click here for the full review…]


Diplomatico “Distillery Collection” No.3 Pot Still Rum – Review

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Aug 152022
 
Diplomatico "Distillery Collection" No.3 Pot Still Rum - Review

Diplomatico is one of those brands that seesaws wildly in the estimation of drinkers, has its determined detractors and equally unmoveable fans, and the opinion one gets for any of the rums in the range is very much dependent on [a] the stance said drinker has with respect to the purported dosage, [b] where they are (North Americans seem to like it more than Europeans do) or [c] what other drink they came to rum from (whisky drinkers will walk away, brandy and cognac fanciers will stick around). All agree though, that more transparency is needed with respect to any [Click here for the full review…]


Black Gate Distillery Dark Overproof 3 YO Rum (Australia) – Review

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Aug 112022
 
Black Gate Distillery Dark Overproof 3 YO Rum (Australia) - Review

Without question, Black Gate Distillery’s “overproof” rum is one of the best of the crop of the New Australians that I’ve tried in the last years, and the standout of the 2021 advent calendar. It is a 52% pot-still molasses-based bag of bragaddocio, it sports an attitude, it’s big, it’s bold, and completely the sort of thing John Wick would have in order to finish off the evening in a style we can best describe as, oh, ”assertive”. This is all the more remarkable since we’re talking about not only a relatively new distillery (founded in 2009) with relatively few [Click here for the full review…]


Bristol Spirits Venezuela 2010 12 YO Rum – Review

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Aug 082022
 
Bristol Spirits Venezuela 2010 12 YO Rum - Review

Long time readers of this site will know something of my movement away from softer Spanish/Latin style rons over the years. There’s nothing particularly deficient about many of them (only some), and I have a soft spot for quite a few. It’s just that I find most quite unadventurous, occasionally boring, sometimes added-to — though of course they all have their adherents and supporters who buy them and keep the distilleries humming. At most, one can cast aspersions on their escutcheon with matters having to do with disclosure and/or adulteration, something which companies like La Hechicera and Dictador out of [Click here for the full review…]


Inner Circle Navy Strength “Green” Rum (Australia) – Review

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Aug 042022
 
Inner Circle Navy Strength "Green" Rum (Australia) - Review

It’s been a few years since I last looked at Beenleigh’s Inner Circle rum from Australia, and while that iteration from around 2004 was the same strength as this one — 57.2% — there are several differences between it and the current version. For one, it is no longer named “Overproof” but “Navy Strength” (incorrectly, in my view, but maybe that’s just semantics), and uses molasses from three separate sugarcane regions along the east coast of Australia to produce its own distillate from Beenleigh’s column and pot stills, while back in the day it was (supposedly) pot still distillate from [Click here for the full review…]


St. Nicholas Abbey White Overproof Rum – Review

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Aug 012022
 
St. Nicholas Abbey White Overproof Rum - Review

It’s been years since I looked at any of the rums of Barbados’s boutique micro-distillery, St. Nicholas Abbey. This is not for want of interest, really – just opportunity. Plus, I had enthusiastically reviewed most of the original three-rum 8–10–12 YO lineup (later expanded to five with the additions of the 5 and 15 YO), and felt no immediate need to search for and buy and try progressively aged and more expensive expressions like the 18, 20 and 23 year-olds that kept on coming out the door at standard strength – sooner or later one of them would cross my [Click here for the full review…]


Lord Byron Distillery 2018 2YO Pure Single Rum (Australia) – Review

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Jul 282022
 
Lord Byron Distillery 2018 2YO Pure Single Rum (Australia) - Review

More and more, being environmentally conscious and paying attention to a sustainable agricultural business model is a determinant for any forward looking distillery that can trade on this aspect of its operations to make sales, gain visibility and win awards. What was once a minor aspect of production methodology has grown to the point where it is something almost every new micro distillery — and many major ones — seeks to institute. More than just ethically correct, it’s good business. Lord Byron Distillery (named after the 19th century poet who is arguably the world’s first modern celebrity) is one which [Click here for the full review…]


Taking Some More Time Off…

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Jul 192022
 
Taking Some More Time Off...

It’s been several hard and somewhat depressing years since I’ve managed to leave the country, see some friends and drink rum in their loud, cheerfully disreputable, fun-filled company. This week is the first in what feels like forever, so no posts for the next week, no reviews, or essays or opinions. The ‘Caner is on vacation. But just so you don’t feel unappreciated or without something on hand to pass the time, I’m posting this cartoon I’ve been working on for a few weeks in my spare time. Enjoy! Share this… Facebook Threads Twitter Bluesky Reddit Messenger Whatsapp Telegram


Saint James Brut de Colonne “Bio” 2020 Rhum Blanc Agricole – Review

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Jul 182022
 
Saint James Brut de Colonne "Bio" 2020 Rhum Blanc Agricole - Review

To drink the still strength, high proofed “Bio” that Saint James distilled in July of 2020, is to be reminded what a distiller at the top of his game can do without even ageing his product. Yes, they’ve made the pot still white I was so impressed by in 2019, but to try this 74.2% growler immediately afterwards (as I did) is like running the bulls in Pamplona in one year…then coming back later when all of them had been replaced by a particularly aggressive bunch of wild Kenyan Zebus that had been fed a diet of diced tigers and [Click here for the full review…]


Holmes Cay 2005 Belize 15 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jul 142022
 
Holmes Cay 2005 Belize 15 Year Old Rum - Review

Belize, until recently, had somewhat withdrawn from the epicenter of avant-garde and popular rum culture. Traveller’s, the main distillery in the country, produced soft Spanish-heritage-style rums like the One-Barrel, Three-Barrel and Five-Barrel rums and the excellent Don Omario (not sure if it remains in production), yet it was overtaken by the full-proof pot-still ethos that have of late almost defined quality modern rums for the deep diving aficionados and connoisseurs. That’s not to say Belize’s rums weren’t popular – they were, and remain so, especially to those who knew about them and liked the style. It’s just that in terms [Click here for the full review…]


Damoiseau 8 YO Rhum Vieux Agricole – Review

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Jul 112022
 
Damoiseau 8 YO Rhum Vieux Agricole - Review

The Damoiseau 8 YO was for years one of the unsung stars of the brand, a rhum that has been made year in and year out for ages, and the one that edged most into premiumized territory without actually being one itself . But if its increasing online unavailability and absence on the webpage of the company is any indication, we might be seeing it headed for a decline and discontinuation, and if that’s true then my advice for those reading this review would be to stock up, because this is one pretty damned fine piece of work, and you’ll [Click here for the full review…]


Yack Creek Distillery Amber “Tavern Style” Rum #5 (Australia) – Review

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Jul 072022
 
Yack Creek Distillery Amber "Tavern Style" Rum #5 (Australia) - Review

When it comes to Australia, the wider world knows of Bundy and Beenleigh almost by default, because they are the big guns that export globally and allow us to try their stuff as found in a duty-free or released by the independent bottlers. But perhaps a better sense of the country could be provided if we run through the rums of those multitudinous small micro-distilleries that dot the landscape, because seriously, that’s where all the cool stuff and innovation seems to be happening as these New Australians seek for the elusive magic of a truly indigenous rum that could not [Click here for the full review…]


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