Barrels & Butts, Casks & Kegs: The Containers of Rum

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Mar 312021
 
Barrels & Butts, Casks & Kegs: The Containers of Rum

Introduction Although most of us are aware of the fact that rum, like many other spirits, is aged in barrels, it’s not always clear how large (or small) those barrels actually are, why they are called what they are, or what their original functions were. We just hear “barrels”, visualize a cylindrical container made of of wooden staves held in place by three bands, and think American oak, Limousin, French, amburana, or what have you, and move on. Occasionally we would read something like “refill barrel” or “hogshead” and if we have any more in depth queries, a trip to [Click here for the full review…]


Naga Triple Wood Small Batch Indonesian Rum – Review

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Mar 292021
 
Naga Triple Wood Small Batch Indonesian Rum - Review

  Indonesia is the region where sugar cane originated and gave rise to the proto-rums of yesteryear, which have their genesis in arrack, a distillate first identified by the Dutch and Portuguese in the town of Batavia (now Jakarta, the capital). After being practically unknown to the larger rum drinking public for a long time, arrack and local rums are now slowly being shown to western audiences, most notably from By The Dutch and their Batavia Arrack, and the little company of Naga which produced the rum we’re looking at today. Based in Indonesia, Naga is a rum company formed [Click here for the full review…]


Chamarel VS Premium 3 Year Old Rum – Review

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Mar 122021
 
Chamarel VS Premium 3 Year Old Rum - Review

Let’s quickly run down the tasting notes for the Chamarel youthful aged expression, the VS.  This is the most junior of the company’s aged pantheon – named, one would presume, after the brandy designators of VS, VSOP, XO and so on. The VS supposedly stands for “Very Superior”, but that just goes to show the French had marketing departments in their old maisons for centuries before Madison Avenue was invented, because overall, the rum didn’t exactly wow my socks off. It smells, right off the bat, of toast — literally.  Lots of toast. Also coconut shavings, vanilla, and cereals that [Click here for the full review…]


Chamarel Premium Classic Unaged White Rum – Review

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Mar 082021
 
Chamarel Premium Classic Unaged White Rum - Review

La Rhumerie de Chamarel, that Mauritius outfit we last saw when I reviewed their 44% pot-still white, doesn’t sit on its laurels with a self satisfied smirk and think it has achieved something.  Not at all.  In point of fact it has a couple more whites, both cane juice derived and distilled on their Barbet columnar still: one at 42º (the “Classic 42”) for cocktails like a mojito, and the other delivering a sharper 52º and clearly meant for the islanders’ own beloved Ti-punch. Chamarel distillery is situated in a small valley in the south west of Mauritius, cultivates its [Click here for the full review…]


SMWS R8.3 Nicaragua 2004 12 YO Rum (“Fruit and Nut Case”) – Review

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Mar 042021
 
SMWS R8.3 Nicaragua 2004 12 YO Rum ("Fruit and Nut Case") - Review

If two rums from the same company were made the exact same way on the same still, there are just a few things that would explain any profile variations. There’s the still settings themselves, because one rum might have different “cuts” than the other, or from higher or lower plate; there’s the proof point, stronger or weaker, at which either is bottled; and then there’s the barrel strategy, which is to say, the barrel itself and the duration of the rum’s slumber therein. Last week I looked at a 12 year old Flor de Caña Nicaraguan rum from Compañía Licorera [Click here for the full review…]


Revisiting the Flor de Caña “Centenario” 12 YO Rum

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Mar 012021
 
Revisiting the Flor de Caña "Centenario" 12 YO Rum

[Based on a bottle acquired and tasted in July 2017, Berlin] Nearly ten years ago, I was rather indifferent to Flor de Cana’s 12 year old rum.  It wasn’t as cool as the older expressions like the 18 for sipping, and was outdone by the 7 year old for a more assertive a cocktail. The 12 YO made a decent drink…except insofar as I thought it was somewhat unfinished mid range rum which didn’t seem to be either flesh or fowl.  A decade has now passed, and the brand has lost both brownie points and market lustre with consumers. The [Click here for the full review…]


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

 3 Responses »
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…]


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