Revisiting the Plantation Barbados XO 20th Anniversary Rum

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May 012022
 
Revisiting the Plantation Barbados XO 20th Anniversary Rum

It’s an old saw that time grants experience at the expense of youth, and indeed the entire review of the El Dorado 21 YO rum was an extended meditation on this theme.  But perhaps, had I wanted to illustrate the issue more fully, it would have been better to reflect on the descent of the Barbados 20th Anniversary XO in my estimation over the intervening years since I first tried and wrote about it in 2012.  Back then I awarded it what by contemporary standards is an unbelievable 88.5 points and my opening blurb naming it “one of the top [Click here for the full review…]


Hoochery Distillery Spike’s Reserve 7 YO Australian Rum – Review

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Apr 282022
 
Hoochery Distillery Spike's Reserve 7 YO Australian Rum - Review

Just reading the name of this rum invites questions. Where does the rum come from, with a name like that?  Who is Spike? Is there a really a distillery named after the rotgut liquor the word “hooch” represents? In the welter of “cane spirit” new-make unaged rums emerging from the New Australians and the lack of many seriously aged rums from Down Under, is there actually one that’s seven years old? What could it possibly be like? Fortunately your fearless (if occasionally clueless) reviewer, possessed of rather more enthusiasm than good sense, has not only been here before but has [Click here for the full review…]


Navy Neaters 95.5º Proof (Guyana) Rum (1970s)

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Apr 252022
 
Navy Neaters 95.5º Proof (Guyana) Rum (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #134 | 0902 Back in 2015 I tasted another one of these older Navy-style rums, also called Navy Neaters and I have no idea why that rum didn’t make the Rumaniacs series. That one was a Guyana-Barbados blend, while this one is Guyana only; both were made by the same company of Charles Kinloch & Co. Kinloch made light white filtered rums and a Jamaican or two, plus various blends, but by the 1980s no rum bearing the Kinloch name were being made any longer. Four basic background facts are involved here and I’ll just give them to [Click here for the full review…]


Husk Distillers “The Lost Blend” Cultivated Australian Rum – Review

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Apr 212022
 
Husk Distillers "The Lost Blend" Cultivated Australian Rum - Review

In the increasingly crowded Australian spirits marketplace, for a rum maker to stand out means it has to have a unique selling point, some niche aspects of its production that sets it apart in people’s minds from all the other contenders in the marketplace. Killik’s is the one tinkering with the “Jamaican-style” of rum making; Jimmy Rum has its insouciant sense of humour, colourful owner and halcyon location; Beenleigh rests its laurels on being one of the oldest and its origin myth of the shipwrecked pot still; Cabarita Spirits has its vivacious solo proprietress, Brix goes with its yuppie urban [Click here for the full review…]


Plugging In To Rum – A Guide To Online Resources

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Apr 182022
 
Plugging In To Rum - A Guide To Online Resources

Originally published November 2020. Continuously updated, with the last edit in June 2023 Introduction More and more resources are coming online even as – or perhaps because – an increasing amount of people, young and old and in between, are coming into rum.  They arrive new, or from some other spirit, and are wont to inquire “Where can I find out about…?”  The questions are always the same and after more than ten years of doing this, I sometimes think I’ve seen them all: What rum do I start with? If I like this, what would you recommend? What’s the [Click here for the full review…]


Mhoba Pot Stilled High Ester Rum (2019) – Review

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Apr 182022
 
Mhoba Pot Stilled High Ester Rum (2019) - Review

The South African distillery of Mhoba is one of those small outfits like Richland, Privateer, A1710, Issan, Killik or J. Gow,  that almost single handedly builds a reputation from scratch through dogged persistence and ever-increasing word of mouth, to the point where they exercise an influence on the whole conversation around rums. None of these are the only ones, or the first, to do what they do: but all of them have qualities that are more than just beginner’s luck, and elevate — even redefine — the category of rums for their entire country. In the early 2010s, Mhoba’s founder, [Click here for the full review…]


Habitation Velier Privateer 2017 3 YO Pure Single Rum – Review

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Apr 132022
 
Habitation Velier Privateer 2017 3 YO Pure Single Rum - Review

Few in the rum world are unaware of the little rum company in Massachusetts called Privateer, so indelibly has it made its mark on the American rum scene. Maggie Campbell, the former master distiller there (as of late 2021 she is in Barbados working for Mount Gay) put her stamp on the company’s reputation quite firmly via a series of releases with evocative names like Distillers’ Drawer, Queen’s Share, Bottled in Bond and Letter of Marque (among others). And Privateer, like Velier, Savanna, Foursquare and others, had learnt of the value of limited editions, regularly released – they stoked excitement, [Click here for the full review…]


Aguardiente Mulata de Cuba – Review

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Apr 112022
 
Aguardiente Mulata de Cuba - Review

The brand of Ron De Mulata is a low end version of Havana Club, established in 1993: it was sold only in Cuba until 2005 when it gradually began to see some export sales, mostly to Europe (UK, Spain and Germany remain major markets). It is a completely Cuban brand, and has expanded its variations up and down the age ladder, from a silver dry rum, aged white, to rons aged 3, 5, 7 and 15 years, plus a Gran Reserva, Palma Superior and even an Elixir de Cuba. It is supposedly one of the most popular rums on the [Click here for the full review…]


FNQ (Mt. Uncle) Distillery Iridium Gold 5 YO Australian Rum – Review

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Apr 072022
 
FNQ (Mt. Uncle) Distillery Iridium Gold 5 YO Australian Rum - Review

Mt. Uncle Distillery is one of the older distilleries of the New Australian rum renaissance we are living through, founded more than twenty years ago, in 2001. Initially it concentrated on fruit liqueurs and spirits, which were based on ingredients conveniently found on the property and the surrounding Atherton tablelands of North Queensland where the distillery was established. Over the years Mt. Uncle branched out to produce gins, whiskies, liqueurs, vodka, and a small range of (you guessed it) rums. It is, as it likes to say, the first (and still only) distillery in northern Queensland and wears that label [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World – St. Lucia Distillers Chairman’s Reserve (Original)

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Apr 032022
 
Key Rums of the World - St. Lucia Distillers Chairman's Reserve (Original)

Of all the rums that St Lucia Distillers makes, perhaps the best known and most widely drunk is the line of Chairman’s Reserve. It was already well regarded when I started this gig in 2009, and it remains a workhorse brand of the company today, more than twenty years after its debut. The Bounty brand is below it, the Admiral Rodney was once above it (in perception if nothing else) but the Chairman’s Reserve always held a cachet all its own, even when it was represented by just that single expression that started the cart rolling. Made as a blend [Click here for the full review…]


JimmyRum “RumRum Barrel 12” 3 YO Australian Rum – Review

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Mar 312022
 
JimmyRum "RumRum Barrel 12" 3 YO Australian Rum - Review

JimmyRum, if you remember, is that cheeky little rum distillery perched down south of Down Under in Dromana, a small community just south of Melbourne. Founded in 2018 after several years of prep work, it has a large hybrid column still bolted to the floor of a structure on a picturesque property (which includes a cafe), a light and breezy sort of website, and an owner, James McPherson, who was a marine engineer before he found his true calling, doesn’t take life too seriously, and just likes rum. The first product I tried from JimmyRum was the Silver 40%, which [Click here for the full review…]


Depaz Rhum Vieux Agricole “Plantation” – Review

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Mar 282022
 
Depaz Rhum Vieux Agricole "Plantation" - Review

Rum and rhum aficionados are no strangers to Depaz, the distillery on Martinique now owned by Bardinet-La Martiniquaise. The sugar factory and (later) distillery had once been a family operation  — the Depaz family from Livorno in Italy had been part of Martinique society since the 1700s — and was in existence even before its destruction by the eruption of Mt. Pelee in 1902. The estate’s modern history can truly be said to have begun with the reconstruction of the distillery in 1917; their immediate success at rum-making could be inferred from their winning of medals at the Marseille expos [Click here for the full review…]


Husk Distillers “Bam Bam” Australian Spiced Rum (Batch 8) – Review

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Mar 232022
 
Husk Distillers "Bam Bam" Australian Spiced Rum (Batch 8) - Review

Of the New Australian distilleries that have emerged in the last ten years, Husk may be one of the older ones.  Its inspiration dates back to 2009 when the founder, Paul Messenger, was vacationing in the Caribbean; while on Martinique, he was blown away by agricole rhums and spent the next few years establishing a small distillery in northern New South Wales (about 120km SE of Brisbane) which was named “Husk” when it opened in 2012. Its uniqueness was and remains that it uses its own estate-grown sugar cane to make rum from juice, not molasses, and is a field-to-bottle [Click here for the full review…]


Antoniazzi Jamaican Rum (1970s)

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Mar 202022
 
Antoniazzi Jamaican Rum (1970s)

Rumanicas Review R-133 | 0892 There was a lot of rum floating around Italy in the post-WW2 years, but not all of it was “real” rum; much was doctored miscellaneous plonk based on neutral alcohol. I tried some a few times, but a brief foursome with a trio of Italian Rum Fantasias from the 1950s, carelessly indulged in back when I was young and irresponsible, left me, as all such things do, with little beyond guilt, a headache and a desperate need for water. Even way back then — when I knew less but thought I knew more — I [Click here for the full review…]


Nine Leaves Encrypted IV Blended Japanese Rum – Review

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Mar 172022
 
Nine Leaves Encrypted IV Blended Japanese Rum - Review

The world shut down for the better part of two years and it’s been almost three since I’ve seen a Nine Leaves rum, but the little one-man Japanese distillery I have written about with such affection since 2014 has continued chugging along, releasing its young rums every six months to a year and somehow managing to make rent.  Several festivals ago I remember Yoshiharu Takeuchi (the owner) telling me that because tax laws in Japan were so obscure, it was not worth his time to age for more than two years – and indeed, many of his initial releases were [Click here for the full review…]


2022 Rum Festival Schedule

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Mar 132022
 
2022 Rum Festival Schedule

PINNED ON SIDEBAR After the drought of festivals over the last two years, it’s good to see that dates are being announced and get-togethers organized once again. Festivals are those great meeting places where people from all walks of life can get together to sample, learn, educate, understand and meet many of the movers and shakers of the rum world. New rums are launched and old ones given new life. Friends are made, favoured enemies are offered spiced rums. Distillers new and old, producers, owners, ambassadors, agents, brokers, bloggers, vloggers, writers, instagrammers, journalists, hobbyists, aficionados, podcasters, personages and the simply [Click here for the full review…]


Habitation Velier Worthy Park “Forsyths WP” 2005 10 YO Rum – Review

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Mar 102022
 
Habitation Velier Worthy Park "Forsyths WP" 2005 10 YO Rum - Review

For what seems our entire lifetime, Appleton was the first name in Jamaican rum. They gained their accolades by not being too extreme, and producing a tasty series of blended pot-column-still rums that didn’t push boundaries too much, too far, or too often.  But by the second decade of the 21st century this was all changing and stronger, forceful, pot-still only rums were being issued at cask strength by various independent bottlers; turbo-charging that process which I term the Rise of the New Jamaicans.  One of the early adherents of WP was the Genoese company of Velier, which had been [Click here for the full review…]


Opinion – The 2022 Spirits Business Rum & Cachaca Masters

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Mar 062022
 
Opinion - The 2022 Spirits Business Rum & Cachaca Masters

Introduction In February 2022 the Sprits Business magazine published a list of the 2022 Rum and Cachaca Masters competition awards (also referred to as the Global Spirits Masters’ Awards), which I would strongly recommend you read (it’s not a long article and the list of awardees is at the bottom). Normally I pass by spirits competitions without comment (and occasionally with indifference), since I think they have more value as marketing tools; they may possibly alert me to something I might want to check out and review one day, though.  So when first scanning the list of the medal winners [Click here for the full review…]


Killik Handcrafted Silver Overproof – Review

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Mar 022022
 
Killik Handcrafted Silver Overproof - Review

When reviewing the Gold (rum) produced by the Melbourne-based distillery of Killik Handcrafted, I was less than enthusiastic, grumbling and mumbling that the mildly aged rum would impress in five years but right now was mostly potential with not enough follow-through. I made those remarks because I knew there was a rum in their portfolio that proved the skills did exist and which really did impress me, and it wasn’t aged or set in a barrel or anything: it was their full proof 59% unaged white.  For the curious: Killik handcrafted is a small rum distillery started by the brothers [Click here for the full review…]


Killik Handcrafted Rum (Australia)

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Mar 012022
 
Killik Handcrafted Rum (Australia)

Killik Handcrafted is a rum company now, but it didn’t originate that way. In fact, the original basis of operations way back in 2009 was a brewery (of sour beer) which was begun by the brothers Ben and Callum Pratt when they hadn’t even hit their twenties. For most of the next decade they slowly did research, visited other breweries, and learned about distillation. Their first love was indeed rum (and corn spirits) and beer was a stepping stone to that goal, allowing the development of expertise, and gaining of equity sufficient to start the distillery.  By 2019 things were [Click here for the full review…]


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