Opinion: Tony Sachs should not be asking…

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Dec 212020
 
Opinion: Tony Sachs should not be asking...

When non-knowledgeable list-makers who pepper the pages of equally clueless online magazines with their silly compendia ask for advice and help, I can tolerate it, but not from this guy, who I read quite a lot of and respect a whole lot more. He should not be asking, in such vague terms, to get for free what he’s paid to write. On December 8th 2020, spirits writer Tony Sachs posed this question on the Ministry of Rum Forum on FB: “Hey all, picking your collective brain for an article I’m writing about the 21 best rums of the 21st century [Click here for the full review…]


Hoochery Distillery Ord River Overproof 3 YO Australian Rum – Review

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Dec 172020
 
Hoochery Distillery Ord River Overproof 3 YO Australian Rum - Review

Hoochery Distillery’s name derives from, as you might imagine, the word “hooch”, a slang term for moonshine, or illegal liquor, popular during Prohibition. Some references place the word’s origin as even earlier, with the Hoochinoo Native American tribe of Alaska, who supposedly – and unusually – made their own liquor. Whatever the case, a hoochery is a now apparently trademarked word for a low-end small-scale distillery making (you guessed it) hooch, specifically in Australia, which has a long history of formalizing words from the vernacular in new and charming ways.   The distillery itself was established in 1993 in north-western Australia’s [Click here for the full review…]


Coruba Blanca Extra Light White Rum (1970s)

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Dec 142020
 
Coruba Blanca Extra Light White Rum (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #122 | 0785 The original Basel-based trading house behind this long-surviving rum was formed in 1889 by Jules Fiechter and Peter Bataglia, who dealt with cognac and rum under the trading enterprise of (what else?) Fiechter & Bataglia.  In 1898 Bataglia moved back to France, and a new partner named Georges Schmidt bought in and the company was renamed with an equal lack of imagination to Fiechter & Schmidt and concerned itself with wines and cognac.  The first world war nearly bankrupted them, but they survived, and in the interwar years with the relaxation of border controls and [Click here for the full review…]


Veritas White Blended Rum (Foursquare/Hampden) – Review

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Dec 092020
 
Veritas White Blended Rum (Foursquare/Hampden) - Review

In commenting on the two-country blend of the Veneragua, Dwayne Stewart, a long time correspondent of mine, asked rather tartly whether another such blend by the Compagnie could be named Jamados.  It was a funny, if apropos remark, and then my thought went in another direction, and I commented that “I think [such a] blend’s finer aspects will be lost on [most]. They could dissect the Veritas down to the ground, but not this one.” It’s a measure of the rise of Barbados and the New Jamaicans that nobody reading that will ask what I’m talking about or what “Veritas” [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Veneragua 2018 13 Year Old Blended Rum – Review

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Dec 072020
 
Compagnie des Indes Veneragua 2018 13 Year Old Blended Rum - Review

In spite of being better known for the exceptional single cask line that made the name of the Compagnie des Indes (at least, with this writer), it was the later blends that sold a lot better and moved off the shelves with more alacrity. Independent bottlers are businessmen, and while sentiment may have them prefer the tuxedo-crowd snoot-rums, it’s the low-end tanker loads that keep the company afloat (a matter not restricted to the Compagnie) and therefore get made. Compagnie des Indes has a whole lot more blends than is immediately apparent: the Darklice, Dominidad, Kaiman, Latino, Caraibes and Boulet [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Small Batch Rare Rums – Caroni 1997 21 Year Old – Review

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Dec 032020
 
Rum Nation Small Batch Rare Rums - Caroni 1997 21 Year Old - Review

Any independent bottler who’s been around for a few years always has rums at various tiers of quality, or premiumness.  Most of this has to do with increasingly elaborate packaging, marketing campaigns, price (of course) or just the hype surrounding the bottle. Though of course once we see a price tag in the hundreds (or thousands), and an age in the third decade or more, we tend to perk up and pay attention anyway without any prodding, right? Rum Nation, a fomerly Italian-based IB has always been on board with this practice. Even back in 2011 when I bought their [Click here for the full review…]


Chamarel Premium Double Distilled White Rum – Review

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Nov 302020
 
Chamarel Premium Double Distilled White Rum - Review

It says “rum” on the label, but for all intents and purposes we should be calling it rhum. Chamarel made it out of cane juice on the island of Mauritius, and it’s an easy-going, sweet-smelling, good-tempered cane juice rhum that got wrung out of a pot still on the island and somehow didn’t turn into some foul-smelling, cantankerous harridan in the process.  That’s probably deliberate, because had they done so, while it might have enthused the fanboys of unaged white lightning made in the backwoods, it might also cost a sale or two among the less adventurously minded. Suffice to [Click here for the full review…]


Naga Double Cask Aged Indonesia Rum – Review

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Nov 262020
 
Naga Double Cask Aged Indonesia Rum - Review

The Naga double-cask aged rum is part of the company’s standard lineup without any fancy whistles and bells, and when you nose it, you get a sensory impression both hauntingly familiar and obscurely strange. Even dialled-down and wispy as it is, it reminds one of chocolate, very ripe dark cherries, Fanta, sweet caramel, bonbons, and delicate perfumed flowers; and it’s the extras beneath all that which add piquancy and puzzlement: white pepper, a foamy Guinness stout, and a gamey, meaty smell which is fortunately quite faint.  The rum, bottled at 40%, exists outside the comforting confines of the Caribbean and [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Diamond / Versailles (SVSG) 18 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 232020
 
Velier Diamond / Versailles (SVSG) 18 Year Old Rum - Review

Sooner or later in these reviews, I always end up circling back to Velier, and for preference, it’s usually the rums from the Age of the Demeraras.  It’s not that I have anything against the Caronis in their near-infinite variations, the Habitation’s pot still range, or the series of the New Hampdens, Villa Paradisetto or 70th anniversary. And I have a soft spot for even the smaller and more exactingly selected outturns of one-offs like the Courcelles or the Basseterre rums. It’s just that the Demeraras speak to me more, and remind me of the impact a then-relatively-unknown indie bottler [Click here for the full review…]


Samaroli Grenada 1993 22 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 192020
 
Samaroli Grenada 1993 22 Year Old Rum - Review

Recently I was observed to be writing more reviews of obscure rums nobody ever hears about (or can get) than the commonly favoured tipple and new releases favoured by the commenterati.  That’s a completely fair thing to say, because I do. Not because I want to be behind the times — I’m gutted I couldn’t try the three new pot-still Appletons from Velier so many people are waxing rhapsodical about, for example —  it’s more a factor of my current location, and inability to travel and the cancellation of the entire 2020 rumfest season. It’s also as a somewhat deliberate [Click here for the full review…]


Island Cane “Red Cane” Rhum Agricole Blanc 53º – Review

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Nov 162020
 
Island Cane "Red Cane" Rhum Agricole Blanc 53º – Review

It’s when you sniff this understated and really quite excellent agricole from Marie Galante that you gain some sense of how well made both it and the green labelled “standard” blanc 50º are.  The Green Label — my term, not theirs — was good and I really liked it, but this one was a few degrees stronger and a few degrees better and makes a good case for both the utilization of specific cane varietals and a single source of origin. Briefly, Rhum Island – a company founded in 2017 – issues rhums which are bottled in Saint Martin (a [Click here for the full review…]


Rendsburger Barbados (Rockley Still) 1986 18 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 092020
 
Rendsburger Barbados (Rockley Still) 1986 18 Year Old Rum - Review

Rendsburger is one of the last of the great old houses from around Flensburg, that north German / Danish town which once had a near hammerlock on the rum trade in northern Europe and the Baltic. The company is actually located in (guess?) Rendsburg, 66km due south of that famed entrepôt, in which the parent company Kruger has its home; they in turn are a small, family-run whisky and spirits specialist mainly known for being a large whisky auction house and while they have done some releases in the past, they don’t really “do,” and are not known for, rums. [Click here for the full review…]


Reimonenq Vielli 7 YO Grande Reserve Guadeloupe Rhum – Review

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Nov 052020
 
Reimonenq Vielli 7 YO Grande Reserve Guadeloupe Rhum - Review

Reimonenq out of Guadeloupe is not a producer whose rhums I’ve tried much of, and so the initial attack of this Grande Reserve — nuts, nougat, toblerone, vanilla ice cream and sweet white chocolate — took me somewhat off balance.  The Vielli was a rhum aged 7 years, so I expected a bit of agricole-ness mixed up with more traditional aged olfactory components, not something like that, not right off. But there they were, clogging up my nose.  And that wasn’t all – the dourness of the opening was followed by stuff that was a lot more sprightly – dried [Click here for the full review…]


Island Cane Rhum Agricole Blanc 50º – Review

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Nov 022020
 
Island Cane Rhum Agricole Blanc 50º - Review

There are quite a few interesting (some would say strange) things about the Rhum Island / Island Cane brand, and the white rums in their portfolio.  For one thing, the rhums are bottled in Saint Martin, only the second island in the Caribbean where two nations share a border – the Netherlands and France in this case, for both the constituent country of Sint Maarten (south side) and the Collectivité de Saint-Martin (north side) remain a part of the respective colonizing nations, who themselves don’t share a border anywhere else. Secondly, there is neither a sugar or rum making industry [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Guatemala Rum Gran Reserva – Review

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Oct 292020
 
Rum Nation Guatemala Rum Gran Reserva - Review

Aside from Zacapa, Botran is the other big rum name we know which comes out of Guatemala.  Both have lost some of their lustre in the last years (though probably not their sales), the former for its sweetness, the latter because it got left behind by the fast moving indie world and cask strength ethos that gradually took over the top end. That certainly did not stop Rum Nation though, because they happily took some of the distillate from Botran’s Destiladora del Alcoholes y Rones SA (also known as DARSA) and aged it for around four years (minimum) in the [Click here for the full review…]


A1710 La Perle “Brute” Parcellaire White Rhum – Review

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Oct 262020
 
A1710 La Perle "Brute" Parcellaire White Rhum - Review

It doesn’t say so, but A1710’s rhum “Brute,” stuffed into a bottle at a rip snorting 66%, is another example of a mini-terroire called a parcellaire – a single small section of an estate, like, oh the UF30E or the similar A1710 54.5% edition that was also issued in the year this was, 2017.  There are a few of these micro-terroire rhums floating around and while still uncommon, do show an interesting new direction for the rum world.  Though, for obvious reasons I don’t see them as becoming mass market products any time soon – more like exactingly made small [Click here for the full review…]


Tres Hombres No.8 La Palma Ron Tradicional Anejo XVII Años Solera – Review

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Oct 212020
 
Tres Hombres No.8 La Palma Ron Tradicional Anejo XVII Años Solera - Review

Before delving into the (admittedly interesting) background of Tres Hombres and their “fair transport” concept, let’s just list the bare bones of what this rum supposedly is, and what we do and don’t know.  To begin with, it’s unclear where it’s from: “Edition No. 8 La Palma” goes unmentioned on their webpage, yet Ultimate Rum Guide lists a rum with the same stats (41.3% ABV, la Palma, Solera) as Edition No. 9, from the Domincan Republic.  But other La Palma rums made by Tres Hombres list the named rums as being from the Canary islands – Aldea, in point of [Click here for the full review…]


Bristol Spirits Classic Rum 1985 Versailles 13YO – Review

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Oct 192020
 
Bristol Spirits Classic Rum 1985 Versailles 13YO - Review

If one rates popularity or the reach of a brand by how many joyful fanboys post pictures of their latest acquisition on social media and chirp how lucky they are to have gotten it, surely Velier’s oeuvre leads the pack, followed by Foursquare, and after them come trotting Kraken and Bumbu and maybe an agricole or two from Martinique.  Nowhere in this pantheon (I use the term loosely) is Bristol Spirits to be found – yet, in the late 1990s right up to the mid 2010s, Bristol was releasing some very good juice indeed, including the near legendary 30 year [Click here for the full review…]


Reddit XXX/One Foursquare 2005 13YO Rum – Review

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Oct 152020
 
Reddit XXX/One Foursquare 2005 13YO Rum - Review

The Reddit /r/rum forum gets far too little attention and kudos for what it accomplishes.  It acts as a useful backup for (and provides a deeper well of knowledge than) the fleeting one-sentence commentary on Facebook from which I have gradually withdrawn more and more.  Most of the really intelligent and literary rum discussions take place here, and that’s not even counting the witty short-form text-only reviews of T8ke and Tarquin_Underspoon, LIFO_Accountant and all the others who post here.  In 2018 one of the moderators suggested to the redditors that perhaps we all, as a collective, get a cask and [Click here for the full review…]


L’Arrangé Dosai Unaged White Vietnamese Rhum – Review

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Oct 122020
 
L'Arrangé Dosai Unaged White Vietnamese Rhum - Review

Every now and then you come across a rum in its nascent stages which you just itch to write about — even if it’s not (yet) for sale. The Mim from Ghana was one such, an aged St. Aubin was another, and last year, Reuben Virasami (currently tending bar in Toronto) passed on a new Vietnamese rhum that I felt really deserved rather more attention than it got (even from those who made it).  In brief, two expat Frenchmen, Jérémy Marcillaud and Nicolas Plesse, seeing all that lovely cane growing in Vietnam, were looking around for something to do with [Click here for the full review…]


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