L’Esprit Beenleigh 2014 6YO Australian Rum – Review

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May 162022
 
L’Esprit Beenleigh 2014 6YO Australian Rum – Review

Two years ago I took a look at L’Esprit’s Beenleigh 5YO rum from Australia and after trying manfully to come to grips with the gasp-inducing strength of 78.1%, I got up off the floor and wrote a fairly positive review about the thing. That rum was hot-snot aggressive and not bad at all, and there I thought the tale had ended…but then came this one. And then it became clear that Steve Magarry (who was then Distillery Manager over at Beenleigh) and Tristan Prodhomme (the showrunner at L’Esprit) read my review, rubbed their hands gleefully while cackling in fiendish delight, [Click here for the full review…]


SMWS R7.1 Jamaica 2000 16 YO Rum “Welcome to Jamrock” – Review

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May 122022
 
SMWS R7.1 Jamaica 2000 16 YO Rum "Welcome to Jamrock" - Review

Sooner or later, no matter what the SMWS thought the Big Gun Rums deserving of their own Big Green Bottle were, they had to come here, to Release 7.1 of the vaunted and much ignored “R” (rum) series. By 2016 when it was put on sale for the membership, they had rums from Guyana (DDL), Jamaica (Monymusk and Longpond), Barbados (WIRD) and Trinidad (Providence)…and that was it. And even if you’re not in to rums – or weren’t, six years ago – it’s clear there’s just a whole lot missing there, which could have buffed and burnished the SMWS’s sadly [Click here for the full review…]


Foursquare “Premise” 2008 10 YO Rum (ECS Mark VIII) – Review

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May 092022
 
Foursquare "Premise" 2008 10 YO Rum (ECS Mark VIII) - Review

One of the downsides of working and living where I do is that the latest newest releases pass by and can’t be tried in time to catch the initial wave of advertising and consumer interest. Sometimes whole years pass by between the much ballyhooed arrival of some interesting new product and my ability to write the review…by which time not only has the interest flagged but also the supply, and a whole new raft of fresh rums are hogging the limelight. This is particularly thorny with respect to the very limited issues of independent bottlers who do single cask releases, [Click here for the full review…]


Boatrocker Brewers & Distillers Double Barrel Aged Australian Rum Batch #3 – Review

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May 052022
 
Boatrocker Brewers & Distillers Double Barrel Aged Australian Rum Batch #3 - Review

The distillery and brewery called BoatRocker (with what I am sure is representative of a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour shared by many Aussies) is another small family-run outfit located in Melbourne, a mere 50km or so north of JimmyRum. It was officially founded in 2009, and like many other such small enterprises I’ve written about, their genesis is far older: in this case, in the 1980s, when the (then teenaged) founder, Matt Houghton, was enthused by the Michael Jackson (no, not that Michael Jackson) show “The Beer Hunter” – this led to a lifelong love of beer, homebrewing, studies of [Click here for the full review…]


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…]


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