Goslings 151 Proof Black Seal Bermuda Black Rum – Review

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Sep 262025
 
Goslings 151 Proof Black Seal Bermuda Black Rum - Review

Goslings remains a well-regarded rum brand for Americans in particular, even if most rum geeks pass it by these days, in favour of better rums with more disclosure and more distinct flavour profiles. At the time when I began my own rum journey, they were a mainstay of the affordable and easily mixable rums (Appleton, Cruzan, Doorley’s, Flor de Cana, Pussers and El Dorado were others), but over the years they have receded somewhat from the minds of many. Still, the brand exists and has an ever expanding stable of releases, it couldn’t very well be ignored forever. So when [Click here for the full review…]


Don Q Double Cask Finish (Cognac) 8YO Puerto Rican Rum – Review

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Aug 222025
 
Don Q Double Cask Finish (Cognac) 8YO Puerto Rican Rum - Review

What a difference a few percentage points of proof and a second maturation can make.  I have gone through a fair few of Don Q’s rums that were all issued at 40%, and commented on the stuff I didn’t like, almost every single time.  Well, here is the proof that better is out there, and yes, they can do it if they really want to.  Because the Double Cask Cognac edition of the Serralles Collection, is a quiet stunner of a rum. No need to write more about the Puerto Rican brand of Don Q or Destilería Serrallés — previous [Click here for the full review…]


Don Q Double Cask Finish (Zinfandel) 8YO Puerto Rican Rum – Review

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Aug 132025
 
Don Q Double Cask Finish (Zinfandel) 8YO Puerto Rican Rum - Review

Don Q, the flagship brand of Destilería Serrallés out of Puerto Rico, is a company whose products I’ve taken the time took at in some depth over the last months; this is largely due to the courtesy of their enormously friendly brand rep, Duncan Hayter, who let me hang out at the Serrallés / Don Q  booth at the German rum festival some time back. I didn’t get to try everything the company has, just enough to get a good feel for the line from their bottom feeders to the top end.  What’s interesting here, now, is how many rums [Click here for the full review…]


Marauda “Steelpan” Blended Rum (USA) – Review

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Aug 062025
 
Marauda "Steelpan" Blended Rum (USA) - Review

Rumaniacs Review #R-165 | #1126 There’s a lot about the presentation, background, labelling and online information of the Marauda rum which is frustrating, so it’s a good thing I had my tasting notes and scoring down pat before I ever did a lick of research, since my snark might just have bled over into the evaluation, and that would be unfair. So I’ll leave that until the end and lead you right into the rum itself. The Marauda is a rum supposedly bottled in South Carolina (but maybe in Europe) by an outfit of the same name, is apparently the [Click here for the full review…]


Don Q Gran Reserva Añejo XO Puerto Rican Rum – Review

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Jul 282025
 
Don Q Gran Reserva Añejo XO Puerto Rican Rum - Review

It’s a peculiarity of the Don Q Gran Reserva Añejo XO, one of the last un-messed with editions of the Serralles Collection issued by the Puerto Rico firm of Destilería Serrallés, that the more specific details of the components aren’t actually on the label – one has to check the website to find out what makes it so special. Though it may just be so in the eyes of the producers, in this case they might actually be on to something. Now, further up the line we start running into various finished editions (like the Vermouth, Cognac, Zinfandel and so [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World: Destilería Serrallés Don Q Reserva 7YO Rum

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Jul 192025
 
Key Rums of the World: Destilería Serrallés Don Q Reserva 7YO Rum

Five years after its introduction, the Don Q Reserva 7YO rum from Puerto Rico has established itself as something of a quiet underground rum that is not usually recognized for its quality in the online rum fora – most of the time people skip over it to try the slightly older Gran Anejo, for example, or the single barrel release. And yet, it comes up for discussion quite often – rarely by itself, as itself, but usually as a comparator, something looked at with other rums of its kind (like the Bacardi Ocho, for one).  It flies under the radar [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado Grand Special Reserve 1997 25YO Rum – Review

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Jul 162025
 
El Dorado Grand Special Reserve 1997 25YO Rum - Review

  In my rum drinking life, I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have tasted up and down the pantheon of great and not so great Guyanese rums – blends, single still bottlings, caskers, aged dinosaurs, special editions, the works. These days independent bottlers and single barrel offerings hog the lion’s share of the limelight, the rums of Velier remain grail quests for many, and therefore DDL’s standard offerings (3, 5, 8, 12, 15 and 21 year olds) which put Guyana and the famed wooden stills on the map have lost a little of their lustre. Yet, perhaps because of their [Click here for the full review…]


Below the Salt L’Ardois JaQ “Marc de Canne” Canadian Rum – Review

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Jun 272025
 
Below the Salt L'Ardois JaQ "Marc de Canne" Canadian Rum - Review

For those who trawl the Canadian rum scene and occasionally despair at ever finding a locally made hooch that would blow their hair back and wow their pants off, well, I have a new candidate for you: the very tasty, lightly (very lightly) aged, almost-white stinker of a rum called L’Ardois JaQ, made by a recently opened craft distillery in Nova Scotia run by (and I shit you not) a tug boat captain I met named Gregg Colp, whose business card very appropriately gives his position as “Chief Adept and Bottle Filler” and sort of gives you a flavour for [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Sponge 1998 Caroni 25YO Trinidad Rum – Review

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May 242025
 
Rum Sponge 1998 Caroni 25YO Trinidad Rum - Review

There’s a reason I don’t buy many rums from the relatively recently established indie bottler of the Rum Sponge, and that’s all about the price. It’s not that I can’t afford one here or there, but to get them all is just too much, and leaves me like a smelly over-the-hill mendicant whining for samples from the more generously endowed. In this case, however, a Calgary Book Club whisky lover bought a bottle and brought it along just to have the rowdies try it, and I was able to sample it without denuding my already slim purse. For those who [Click here for the full review…]


Don Q 151 Overproof Puerto Rican Rum – Review

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May 182025
 
Don Q 151 Overproof Puerto Rican Rum - Review

As I remarked in the Don Q gold rum review not too long ago, the Puerto Rican producer, Distileria Serrallés, has three tranches of rums in its portfolio, up and down the value chain. There is the “traditional” range which includes the Gold, the white Cristal … and today’s subject, the overproof 151. These are mixing agents of a little ageing and are quite affordable. Then there are some flavoured offerings I ignore, and after that everything is lumped into the “Serrallés Collection” which has some older offerings, a spiced rum (oddly enough), a single barrel or two and some [Click here for the full review…]


Bacardi Superior White Rum – Review

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Apr 272025
 
Bacardi Superior White Rum - Review

Bacardi’s white “Superior” rum is paradoxically both one of the most popular, best selling rums in the world, as well as one of the most sneered at.  Any time we extol the magnificence of the unaged Jamaicans, clairins, grogues, agricoles or charandas, it is very likely that the lightly aged, filtered Bacardi product comes in for mention, rarely in any kind of positive light. At best it excites a sort of monumental indifference. Yeah, we drink it but…. The Superior is one of those rums that made the name of Bacardi. At the time of its initial introduction in 1862, rums [Click here for the full review…]


Amrut Two Indies Dark Rum (India) – Review

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Apr 212025
 
Amrut Two Indies Dark Rum (India) - Review

You’d think that after a bit more ageing and less components to squabble together, the lacklustre performance of the underwhelming White would be somewhat redeemed, but naah, there isn’t much to report here either. Amrut continues to chase the mass market at the expense of something (anything) more upscale, and I guess we’ll have to accept that and move on. Just to recap the background, Amrut Distillers is an Indian-founded and Indian-run spirits company which, unlike several other Indian spirits combines, did not originate from a British run colonial enterprise, and has always been completely local. They have been making [Click here for the full review…]


That Boutique-y Rum Co. Ten Cane 2009 14YO Trinidad Rum (Batch #1) – Review

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Apr 182025
 
That Boutique-y Rum Co. Ten Cane 2009 14YO Trinidad Rum (Batch #1) - Review

Ten Cane rums don’t seem to be disappearing from the indie bottling scene any time soon, given the variety of small companies who put out small bottling runs from the now closed LVMH-created Trini-located micro-distillery every year or two.  We have seen expressions from The Duchess, TBRC, Rom Deluxe, Rum Artesanal, Kill Devil, Berlin’s Rum Club, Valinche & Mallet, BBR, Cave Guldive, L’Espirit, Holmes Cay, Rum Shark, Whisky & Rum, Familia Ricci, Blackadder, and, oh, quite a few others, some more than once. Here, from That Boutique-y Rum Company from England, we have an interesting one that was made in [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Trinidad 2012-2021 “Ten Cane” 9YO Rum – Review

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Apr 142025
 
Compagnie des Indes Trinidad 2012-2021 "Ten Cane" 9YO Rum - Review

The rumisphere is littered with the detritus of small companies and experiments that started off well and then just gave up and died at the side of the road.  The original and the new Renegade company, Toucan, Nine Leaves, all those small British merchant bottlers from decades past, they all bear witness to efforts that sadly could not be sustained, leaving us poorer than before. It’s usually economics, of course, but here with the Ten Cane brand, one would have thought the deeper pockets of the parent company might have allowed it to find its feet and establish a better [Click here for the full review…]


Shakara 12 YO Thailand Rum – Review

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Apr 072025
 
Shakara 12 YO Thailand Rum - Review

Even now, all these years after the Demeraras, Caronis, Indian Ocean series, Hampdens and Habitation series, Velier continues to be able to pull out a new rabbit from the hat every now and then, something we have not quite seen in this way before. There were the last Nine Leaves expressions from last year, the Amrut from a few years back, the new Habitation Velier Nepalese rum that popped up a few months ago – and last year, at Whisky Live, they debuted the Shakara 12YO rum from Thailand. Now Thailand generally does not loom large in the pantheon of [Click here for the full review…]


Rivers Royale “Slightly Overproof” Grenadian White Rum – Review

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Apr 032025
 
Rivers Royale "Slightly Overproof" Grenadian White Rum - Review

We have looked at rums from Rivers Antoine before, although admittedly that was just the regularly available 69% version, which I’ve tried several times.  Now, Rivers Antoine is a very old rum making estate on Grenada — they date back to 1785, were certainly in existence since two decades before that, and have only grudgingly upgraded their facilities in all that time —  and is perhaps unique in that they not only grow their own sugar cane with which they press and render to “honey” make their rums, but the press is run by a water wheel (made in 1840), [Click here for the full review…]


St. Lucia Distillers Denros “Strong” Double Strength Rum – Review

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Mar 282025
 
St. Lucia Distillers Denros "Strong" Double Strength Rum - Review

The label of this rum has several variations, but all of them have the word “Strong” in bold red capitals right up front, just to grab the attention, warn the unwary and make sure the timid don’t set fire to themselves with an involuntary flatus. Although when you consider the wannabe beefcake power of 80% ABV, you could reasonably wonder who except a cigar-chomping, glute-flexin’ badass (or brain dead reviewer with access to too many rums and a few screws loose) would even try to drink such a product neat…and for what reason? In the evolution of very strong rums, [Click here for the full review…]


SMWS Barbados 1986-2001 15YO “Rockley Still” Rum – Review

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Mar 192025
 
SMWS Barbados 1986-2001 15YO "Rockley Still" Rum - Review

If one were discussing rum, I suppose you could call the SMWS among the first of the modern independent bottlers, alongside Samaroli, Moon Imports, Velier, Rum Nation and Renegade (and not a few whisky companies like Cadenhead, Gordon & MacPhail and AD Rattray). The expense of their bottlings, their relative scarcity – the subscription model discourages casual punters looking for cheap deals on single cask offerings which are never found in stores – the striking bottle appearance, and their amusing numbering system have certainly given them a visual and mental cachet few others can match. However, my feeling has always [Click here for the full review…]


Distillerie de la Meuse Rhum Ste. Lucie des Antilles (1941)

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Mar 152025
 
Distillerie de la Meuse Rhum Ste. Lucie des Antilles (1941)

Rumaniacs Review #R-164 | #1111 Everything about this rum is strange. It carries no strength notation. It is from a distillery I have never heard before. And it is from a period of time when we have almost no data at all – not distillery, not the still, not the stock source, its provanance or travels through time, nothing. As if that isn’t enough, consider this: it is made in France; it claims to be from the Antilles; it has a 1968 Italian tax strip on the top, and the cap itself has a notation that it was bottled in [Click here for the full review…]


Opinion – Planteray Isn’t Going Anywhere

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Feb 252025
 
Opinion - Planteray Isn't Going Anywhere

This 7,000-word essay is the transcript of a four part video opinion I released in February 2025, based on an unpublished essay written mostly in 2023 and amended over the subsequent months and years. I have elected to not include a bunch of graphics and pictures to go with it, because it’s long and deserves to be read as it is without distraction. If video is your thing, they are on YouTube Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 1 – Introduction and Background Hello everyone Today I’m going to do a fairly long four-part opinion piece. This [Click here for the full review…]


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