SMWS R6.1 Barbados 2002 14 Year Old Rum (“Spice At The Races”) – Review

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Feb 252021
 
SMWS R6.1 Barbados 2002 14 Year Old Rum ("Spice At The Races") - Review

Back in 2013 when I wrote about the Scotch Malt Whisky Association’s release R3.4 Barbados 2002 10YO “Makes You Strong Like  Lion”, several people went on FB and passed the word around that it wasn’t a Foursquare rum, which was hardly needed since I noted in the review that it was from WIRD, and the (mythical) Rockley Still. Four years later the SMWS did however, decide that the famed Barbados company shouldn’t be left out and bottled an aged rum from Foursquare (the first of two), named it R6.1, and gave it one of their usual amusing titles of “Spice [Click here for the full review…]


Havana Club Silver Dry White Rum (Cuban)(1980s-1990s)

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Feb 222021
 
Havana Club Silver Dry White Rum (Cuban)(1980s-1990s)

Rumaniacs Review #124 | 0803 There were several varieties of the standard white Havana Club mixer: strengths varied from 37.5% to 40%, the labels changed from saying “El Ron de Cuba” to “Mix Freely” and in the early 2000s this old workhorse of the bartending scene, which had been in existence at least since the 1970s and produced all over the world, was finally retired, to be replaced by the Anejo Blanco.  From the label design I’m hazarding a guess mine came from the early 1990s (it lacks the pictures of the 1996 and 1997 medals it won that were [Click here for the full review…]


Opinion – The Implications of Superfast Ageing and the Alteration of Rum

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Feb 172021
 
Opinion - The Implications of Superfast Ageing and the Alteration of Rum

This is a completely theoretical “what-if?” about the implications for the rum world if the technological process of superfast ageing were ever to be perfected. Ever since ageing of spirits became a thing, people have been trying to make it faster in a sort of half-assed time-travel wish-fulfilment. They’ve tried the adding of wood chips, smaller barrels, keeping the barrels in motion, dosage, temperature control, music, ultrasound, etc etc – all in an effort to have the taste of a 20 year old rum stuffed inside a spirit made the day before yesterday. Take Rational Spirits’ Cuban Inspired rum I [Click here for the full review…]


Rational Spirits Cuban Inspired Rum – Review

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Feb 152021
 
Rational Spirits Cuban Inspired Rum - Review

Remember Lost Spirits? No? This was the company that made rumbles a few years ago, by using a proprietary “flash ageing” process developed by its founder, Bryan Davis, to promote “super fast ageing”. In theory, the chemical reactor Davis built would create a spirit that would taste like a twenty year old mature product, when in fact only a week old. Most sniffed condescendingly, made remarks about charlatans and snake oil sellers, sneered about how it had been tried and failed many times throughout history (usually to con the unwary and fleece the innocent) and walked away…but I was intrigued [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes New Yarmouth 2005 12 YO Jamaica Rum – Review

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Feb 112021
 
Compagnie des Indes New Yarmouth 2005 12 YO Jamaica Rum - Review

With the rise of the New Jamaican and their distillery offerings, it is instructive to remember that indies still have a pretty good handle on the good stuff too. We keep seeing new aged releases from Monymusk, Clarendon, Long Pond from makers big and small.  Velier continues to add new Hampden releases (or whole new collections) every time we turn around and Worthy Park is always around putting out really good pot still juice for those who know the difference.  Lastly there’s New Yarmouth, which is the distillery in Clarendon Parish which is part of Appleton (not to be confused [Click here for the full review…]


German Overseas Rum (1920s / 1930s)

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Feb 082021
 
German Overseas Rum (1920s / 1930s)

Rumaniacs Review #123 | #800 Here is a rum that defies easy tracing.  It predates us all, and almost everything about it remains educated conjecture and guesswork — even the name, assuming it has one.  It was bought by the German firm of Gerb. Hoff Weinkeller in 1941 from Wilhelm Roggemann in Hamburg (essentially that’s what the typewritten text on the label says – WR were wine and spirits merchants, no longer extant); Rene van Hoven, in whose collection the bottle currently sits gathering yet more dust, told me that all the research he had done on tax stamps, invoices, [Click here for the full review…]


Hamilton St. Lucia 2007 7 Year Old Pot Still Rum – Review

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Feb 042021
 
Hamilton St. Lucia 2007 7 Year Old Pot Still Rum - Review

Given the backward Prohibition-era-style rules governing alcohol in the US, Americans rightly sigh with envy when they see the rum selections in Europe. To get their favourite rums, they have to use any number of workarounds: bite the bullet and go over in person to buy some; have somebody mule it; come to an arrangement with a local liquor store in their state; or, heaven forbid, courier it – a tricky and not hazard-free process, I assure you.   But occasionally the situation goes in reverse, and it’s the Europeans who grumble at the luck of the Yanks. Ed Hamilton’s little [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum Rhum PMG Rhum Blanc Agricole 56º- Review

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Feb 012021
 
Rhum Rhum PMG Rhum Blanc Agricole 56º- Review

Although the Rhum Rhum PMG is essentially a rhum made at Bielle distillery on Guadeloupe, it uses a Mueller still imported there by Luca Gargano when he envisioned producing a new (or very old) type of rhum agricole, back in 2005. He wanted to try making a double distilled rhum hearkening back to the pre-creole-still days, and provide a profile like that of a Pére Labat pot still rhum he had once been impressed with and never forgot. Co-opting Gianni Capovilla into his scheme (at the time Capovilla was creating a reputation for himself playing around with brandy, grappa and [Click here for the full review…]


Cadenhead “1842 Living Cask” Caribbean Blended Rum – Review

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Jan 282021
 
Cadenhead "1842 Living Cask" Caribbean Blended Rum - Review

Every now and then a reviewer has to bite the bullet and admit that he’s got a rum to write about which is so peculiar and so rare and so unknown (though not necessarily so good) that few will have ever heard of it, fewer will ever get it, and it’s likely that nobody will ever care since the tasting notes are pointless.  Cadenhead’s 2016 release of the Caribbean Rum blend (unofficially named “Living Cask” or “1842” because of the number on the label) is one of these.   Why is it so unknown? Well, because it’s rare, for one — [Click here for the full review…]


Clément “Canne Bleu” Rhum Blanc Agricole Millésime 2014 – Review

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Jan 262021
 
Clément "Canne Bleu" Rhum Blanc Agricole Millésime 2014 - Review

In an ever more competitive market – and that includes French island agricoles – every chance is used to create a niche that can be exploited with first-mover advantages.  Some of the agricole makers, I’ve been told, chafe under the strict limitations of the AOC which they privately complain limits their innovation, but I chose to doubt this: not only  there some amazing rhums coming out the French West Indies within the appellation, but they are completely free to move outside it (as Saint James did with their pot still white) – they just can’t put that “AOC” stamp of [Click here for the full review…]


Opinion – Flipping: Love, Loathe Or Leave It

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Jan 212021
 
Opinion - Flipping: Love, Loathe Or Leave It

Flipping at is most basic is simply reselling, and mostly seen as akin to scalping tickets. A seller has a bottle of a rum which is sold out of the stores that a buyer wants , and a bargain is struck usually at a markup. It’s a sale. Its specificity arises because of the practice of buying a (usually newly released) rum alight with a buzz and hype: not to enjoy, but to resell at a profit – in other words, introducing yet another intermediary with sticky finger between the distillery of origin and the consumer. Unsurprisingly, flippers have become [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Malecon Reserva Imperial 25 YO Rum – Review

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Jan 182021
 
Ron Malecon Reserva Imperial 25 YO Rum - Review

We’ve been here before. We’ve tried a rum with this name, researched its background, been baffled by its opaqueness, made our displeasure known, then yawned and shook our heads and moved on. And still the issues that that one raised, remain. The Malecon Reserva Imperial 25 year old suffers from many of the same defects of its 1979 cousin, most of which have to do with disclosure and some of which have to do with its nature. It astounds me that in this day and age we still have to put up with this kind of crap. The little we [Click here for the full review…]


Oliver & Oliver Ron Presidente 23 Solera – Review

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Jan 142021
 
Oliver & Oliver Ron Presidente 23 Solera - Review

Ahh, that magical number of 23, so beloved of rum drinking lovers of sweet, so despised by those who only go for the “pure”.  Is there any pair of digits more guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of those who want to make an example of Rum Gone Wrong? Surely, after the decades of crap Zacapa kept and keeps getting, no promoter or brand owner worth their salt would suggest using it on a label for their own product? Alas, such is not the case.  Although existing in the shadow of its much-more-famous Guatemalan cousin, Ron Presidente is supposedly made [Click here for the full review…]


Moon Import Guadeloupe 1998 12 Year Old Rhum – Review

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Jan 112021
 
Moon Import Guadeloupe 1998 12 Year Old Rhum - Review

The rum starts slowly.  I don’t get much at the inception. Bananas, ripe; pineapples, oversweet; papayas, dark cherries, nice….and a touch of beetroot, odd. Not my thing, this rather thin series of tastes — it develops too lethargically, is too dim, lacks punch. I wait ten minutes more to make sure I’m not overreacting…perhaps there’s more? Well, yes and no. These aromas fade somewhat, to be replaced by something sprightly and sparkling – fanta, sprite, red grapefruit, lemon zest – but overall the integration is poor, and doesn’t meld well and remains too lazily easygoing, like some kind of clever [Click here for the full review…]


Clarke’s Court No. 37 Limited Edition 8YO Grenada Rum – Review

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Jan 072021
 
Clarke's Court No. 37 Limited Edition 8YO Grenada Rum - Review

The Masters of Malt blurb for the Grenada-distilled Clarke’s Court No. 37 rum contains two sentences that make one both smile and ask more questions. A “blended Caribbean rum” which is “the thirteenth limited release rum from Clarke’s Court.” And as if trying to top that, they go on to say “The rum was designed to be supplied to exclusive social events” and both just reek of some marketing intern making ad copy in his sleep, evidently unable to come up with anything more interesting about this equally lackadaisical rum. Why not a “Grenadian” rum, one wonders. And, if this [Click here for the full review…]


Dzama 6 Year Old Madagascar Rum – Review

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Jan 042021
 
Dzama 6 Year Old Madagascar Rum - Review

The Dzama 6 year old rum from the island of Madagascar sits between the modest 3 and 5 year old rums, rubs shoulders with an 8 YO, and looks up to the more exclusive 10 YO and 15 YO expressions; the company has been busy expanding the range since I first tried their 3 year old back in 2014. Unsurprisingly, the local market share of the company’s spirits is a massive 60% or so – they make a bit of everything alcoholic and are a very diversified drinks conglomerate – their prime market remains Madagascar itself with exports to Europe, [Click here for the full review…]


Habitation Velier Forsyth’s Pot Still Unaged White Rum (WPE) (2017) – Review

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Dec 302020
 
Habitation Velier Forsyth's Pot Still Unaged White Rum (WPE) (2017) - Review

Hampden gets so many kudos these days from its relationship with Velier —  the slick marketing, the yellow boxes, the Endemic Bird series, the great tastes, the sheer range of them all — that to some extent it seems like Worthy Park is the poor red haired stepchild of the glint in the milkman’s eye, running behind dem Big Boy picking up footprints. Yet Worthy Park is no stranger to really good rums of its own, also pot still made, and clearly distinguishable to one who loves the New Jamaicans. They are not just any Jamaicans…they’re Worthy Park, dammit. They [Click here for the full review…]


SMWS R9.2 Panama 2004 12 YO Rum (“Paddington Bear’s First Sip”) – Review

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Dec 282020
 
SMWS R9.2 Panama 2004 12 YO Rum ("Paddington Bear's First Sip") - Review

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) has always had a peculiar turn when it comes to labels and tasting notes. The original bottlings didn’t always have permission to use the distillery names on the bottlings — at the time, blends were big, and distilleries did not always want their names to be associated with some off-the-wall, left-field bottle from a strange outfit, when this might shed a poor light on what they were more famed for…the consistency of their blends. This led the SMWS to the use of numerical identifiers for their outturns, and a whimsically titled name that had [Click here for the full review…]


Ron 1914 “Interoceánico” 15 Year Old Panama Rum – Review

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Dec 232020
 
Ron 1914 "Interoceánico" 15 Year Old Panama Rum - Review

Here’s my personally imaginative take on how the (fictitious) Board of Blenders from Consorcio Licorero Nacional (CLN) presented their results to the good folks at Rum of Panama Corp (registered in Panama in 2016) about the rum they intended to make for them at Las Cabras in Herrera. “We will make a true Panamanian Rum to represent the year the Canal was opened in 1914!” they say, high fiving and chest bumping themselves in congratulation at this perspicacious stroke of marketing genius. “But CLN is originally from Venezuela, isn’t it?” comes the confused question. ”Shouldn’t you perhaps pay homage to [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Vacilón Anejo Gran Reserva 15 YO Cuban Rum – Review

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Dec 212020
 
Ron Vacilón Anejo Gran Reserva 15 YO Cuban Rum - Review

The Cuban-made Vacilón brand was launched in 2016 (as a relaunch of an apparently very popular brand from the 1950s) and has been making the rounds of the various rum festivals off and on.  It’s part of the brand’s “luxury range” of 15 / 18 / 25 year old rums, which is fine, except that as usual, there’s very little to actually go on about the production details – which remains one of the more annoying things about latin rons in general, hardly unique to Cuba.  Suffice to say, it is made by Destilería Heriberto Duquesne attached to the local [Click here for the full review…]


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