Santiago de Cuba “Carta Blanca” Cuban White Rum – Review

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Aug 132020
 
Santiago de Cuba "Carta Blanca" Cuban White Rum - Review

There’s a peculiar light yellow lustre to the Santiago de Cuba rum somewhat euphemistically called the Carta Blanca (“White Card”), which is a result, one must assume, of deliberately incomplete filtration. The rum is aged three years in oak casks, so some colour is inevitable, but in anonymous white barroom mixers, that’s usually eliminated by the charcoal used: so whatever colour remains can’t be an accident. It’s likely, in this case, that the makers figured since it was issued at a trembly-kneed sort of please-don’t-hurt-me sub-proof strength, it might be better to leave something behind in case people forgot it [Click here for the full review…]


Pusser’s British Navy “Gunpowder Proof” Rum – Review

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Aug 092020
 
Pusser's British Navy "Gunpowder Proof" Rum - Review

Black Tot day came and went at the end of July with all the usual articles and reviews and happy pictures of people drinking their Navy Rum wannabes. Although it’s become more popular of late (a practice I’m sure rum-selling emporia are happy to encourage), I tend not to pay too much attention to it, since several other countries’ navies discontinued the practice on other days and in other years, so to me it’s just another date. And anyway, seriously, do I really need an excuse to try another rum? Hardly.   However, with the recent release of yet another ‘Tot [Click here for the full review…]


Cadenhead Uitvlugt 1964 36 YO Guyana Rum (PM) – Review

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Aug 052020
 
Cadenhead Uitvlugt 1964 36 YO Guyana Rum (PM) - Review

The Cadenhead 1964 Port Mourant is one of the great unicorns of our time, a rum whose 36 years of ageing sail majestically across the senses, impervious and indifferent to the up-and-coming claimants for the crown of “oldest” and “strongest’ and “bestest” and “mostest”.  Not since the Age of Velier have we seen anything like this and in some ways it supersedes even those behemoths we had all ignored back in the day, because they were “too expensive.” And expensive this is: in June 2020 a variant bottle of this thing (bottled in 2000, 70% ABV) was bid up past [Click here for the full review…]


1423 S.B.S. Versailles 2003 12 Year Old Guyana Rum – Review

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Aug 032020
 
1423 S.B.S. Versailles 2003 12 Year Old Guyana Rum – Review

The three wooden stills now all gathered at DDL’s Diamond facility are called Heritage stills, their wooden greenheart components regularly serviced and replaced, and the questions they pose about the matter of Theseus’s ship are usually ignored. That’s not really important, though, because they may be the three most famous stills in existence, and the taste profiles of the rums they create are known by all dedicated rumistas, who enjoy nothing more than relentlessly analyzing them for the minutest variations and then bickering about it in a never-ending cheerful squabble. My own preference has always been for the stern elegance [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Caribe Añejo Superior 5 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jul 302020
 
Ron Caribe Añejo Superior 5 Year Old Rum - Review

Although the unrealized flashes of interest and originality defining the Mexican Ron Caribe Silver still make it worth a buy, overall I remain at best only mildly impressed with it. Still, given the opportunity, it’s a no-brainer to try the next step up the chain, the 40% ABV standard-strength five year old Añejo Superior. After all, young aged rums tend to be introductions to the higher-end offerings of the company and be the workhorses of the establishment – solid mixing ingredients, occasionally interesting neat pours, and almost always a ladder to the premium segment (the El Dorado 5 and 8 [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Caribe Silver Premium Rum – Review

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Jul 262020
 
Ron Caribe Silver Premium Rum - Review

If you believe the marketing blah (which I don’t) then here we have a nice little white rum made by a small craft company, located in the Yucatan peninsula town of Merida, in Mexico. The premises are built on the remains of an old sugar making hacienda and thirty employees labour diligently to hand prepare every bottle. They probably sing as they do so. I dab a single tear from my eye at such tradition-respecting, old-school rum making.  It warms the cockles of my pickled and cynical old heart, truly. And, the rum is quite nice for what it is [Click here for the full review…]


Habitation Velier Muller LL IV/3177 White Rhum – Review

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Jul 222020
 
Habitation Velier Muller LL IV/3177 White Rhum - Review

By now most will be aware of my admiration for unshaven, uncouth and unbathed white rums that reek and stink up the joint and are about as unforgettable as Mike Tyson’s first fights.  They move well away from the elegant and carefully-nurtured long-aged offerings that command high prices and elicit reverent murmurs of genteel appreciation: that’s simply not on the program for these, which seek to hammer your taste buds into the ground without apology. I drink ‘em neat whenever possible, and while no great cocktail shaker myself, I know they make some mixed drinks that ludicrously tasty. So let’s [Click here for the full review…]


Behind Old Monk Rum – A History of Mohan Meakin (India)

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Jul 192020
 
Behind Old Monk Rum - A History of Mohan Meakin (India)

Introduction One of the rum-producing countries about which we don’t know enough is India, home of companies like Rhea, Amrut, Radico Khaitan, Krimpi, Tilaknagar, McDowell’s (part of Diageo) and the subject of today’s biography, Mohan Meakin. Originally it was to form part of the review of their Old Monk Supreme XXX Vatted Rum, but when I delved into the weeds, the “tale grew in the telling” until it was clear that it deserved a full treatment by itself. The Founders and Early Years The company that eventually became Mohan Meakin was founded by a Scottish businessman named Edward Abraham Dyer. [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Panama 18 YO 2009 Edition – Review

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Jul 162020
 
Rum Nation Panama 18 YO 2009 Edition - Review

The Rum Nation Panama 2009 edition exists in a peculiar place of my mind, since it’s the unavailable, long-gone predecessor of the 18 YO Panamanian which RN released in 2010; this in turn was one of the first Panamanian rums that I had tried that wasn’t an indifferently blended bland blah, that possessed more years  and complexity than I had heretofore experienced, and was an all round lovely drink…or so I thought at the time. Nearly a decade later, my opinions of Panamanian rums is no longer so stellar: but in all honesty, to see a rum from Rum Nation [Click here for the full review…]


Old Monk Supreme XXX Old Vatted Rum – Review

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Jul 132020
 
Old Monk Supreme XXX Old Vatted Rum - Review

The Old Monk series of rums, perhaps among the best known to the Western world of those hailing from India, excites a raft of passionate posts whenever it comes up for mention, ranging from enthusiastic fanboy positivity, to disdain spread equally between its lack of disclosure about provenance and make, and the rather unique taste. Neither really holds water, but it is emblematic of both the unstinting praise of adherents who “just like rum” without thinking further, and those who take no cognizance of cultures other than their own and the different tastes that attend to them. That’s unfortunate — [Click here for the full review…]


Nine Leaves “Encrypted” III 2 Year Old Blended Rum – Review

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Jul 092020
 
Nine Leaves "Encrypted" III 2 Year Old Blended Rum - Review

After having written on and off about Yoshiharu Takeuchi’s company Nine Leaves for many years, and watching his reputation and influence grow, it seems almost superfluous to go on about his background in any kind of detail. However, for those new to the company who want to know what the big deal is, it’s a one-man rum-making outfit located in Japan, and Yoshi-san remains its only employee (at least until July 2020, when he takes on an apprentice, so I am reliably informed). Nine Leaves has been producing three kinds of pot-still rums for some time now: six month old [Click here for the full review…]


Bardinet Rhum Negrita (1980s)

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Jul 062020
 
Bardinet Rhum Negrita (1980s)

Rumaniacs Review #117 | 0742 Bardinet was a French company — now part of La Martiniquaise-Bardinet —  formed by Paul Bardinet in 1857 in the south of France: he came up with the not-terribly-original idea of blending various rhums, much as various merchant bottlers were doing across the channel. Arguably their most famous product was the Negrita brand, originally a blend of Reunion, Martinique and Guadeloupe rhums, which was first released in 1886 with the now famous (or infamous) picture of the black girl on the label. That picture, drawn by Max Camis (a famous poster designer and press cartoonist [Click here for the full review…]


Habitation Velier Monymusk 2010 EMB 9 YO – Review

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Jul 012020
 
Habitation Velier Monymusk 2010 EMB 9 YO - Review

As the memories of the Velier Demeraras fades and the Caronis climb in price past the point of reason and into madness, it is good to remember the third major series of rums that Velier has initiated, which somehow does not get all the appreciation and braying ra-ra publicity so attendant on the others. This is the Habitation Velier collection, and to my mind it has real potential of eclipsing the Caronis, or even those near-legendary Guyanese rums which are so firmly anchored to Luca’s street cred. I advertise the importance of the series in this fashion because too often [Click here for the full review…]


RomDeluxe R2 “Wild Jaguar” Enmore 17 YO – Review

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Jun 282020
 
RomDeluxe R2 "Wild Jaguar" Enmore 17 YO - Review

On the first day and at the opening hour of the 2019 Berlin Rumfest, a motley collection of scruffy rum folks met at the back of the hall. Alex Sandu (the young Oxford-based Romanian barman who’s now making a name for himself on the Rum Barrel site) was talking with me about what it takes to manage and maintain a rum site. Indy and Jazz Singh of Rumcask and Skylark Spirits drifted by and sat down, and we all sighed rapturously with the memory of a rum session we had had at Lebensstern rum bar the evening before. Nicolai Wachmann, [Click here for the full review…]


That Boutique-y Rum Co. Casa Santana 12 YO Colombia Rum – Review

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Jun 242020
 
That Boutique-y Rum Co. Casa Santana 12 YO Colombia Rum - Review

It’s a peculiar facet of That Boutique-y Rum Company (Master of Malt’s rum arm) and their marketing, that Pete Holland, their brand ambassador (he has some other title, but this is what he is) is so completely identified with the brand. As I’ve noted before, that’s largely because of his inclusion on the brightly coloured, easter-egg-filled, self-referential labels on the company’s rums, done by the talented Jim of Jim’ll Paint It.  And yet, he looms larger in memory than in actuality – when you go back and count, there are 33 releases to date and Pete is (to our detriment) [Click here for the full review…]


Clement Tres Vieux Rhum 2000 “Distiller Edition” – Review

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Jun 222020
 
Clement Tres Vieux Rhum 2000 "Distiller Edition" - Review

Clement has a stable line of releases that have remained consistent for a long time – the “Bar and Cocktail” range of mixers and the “Classic” mid-level bottlings of the Ambre, Vieux, Canne Bleu and three blancs (40º, 50º, 55º)’. There is also the “Prestige” range consisting of the VSOP, 6YO, 10YO, single cask, Cuvée Homère, the XO, and that famed set of really aged millésimes which comprised the original XO — the 1952, 1970 and 1976.  And for those with more money than they know what to do with, the Carafe Cristal, ultimate top of the line for the [Click here for the full review…]


Savanna Rhum Traditionnel Vieux 2005 “Intense” 5YO (Cognac) – Review

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Jun 182020
 
Savanna Rhum Traditionnel Vieux 2005 “Intense” 5YO (Cognac) – Review

Savanna is probably one of the most exciting distilleries out there for high-ester loving rum chums, with a reputation growing by leaps and bounds, and not solely because of their own superb HERR 10 YO, or the Johnny-come-lately Habitation Velier HERR white (which was such an amazing piece of work that whole virtual forests have been clear cut to provide the electronic paper for the many online reviews about it, and I’ve heard of grown men bursting into tears at the mere sight of one in the wild). But leaving aside such Himalayan peaks, it’s good to remember that Savanna’s [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Francisco Montero 50th Anniversary Rum – Review

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Jun 152020
 
Ron Francisco Montero 50th Anniversary Rum - Review

Francisco Montero is, unusually enough, a Spanish rum making concern, and the website has the standard founding myth of one man wanting to make rum and going after his dream and establishing a company in Granada to do so in 1963.  Initially the company used sugar from cane (!!) grown around southern Spain to make their rums, but over time this supply dried up and now in the 21st century they source molasses from a number of different locations around the world, which they distill and age into various rums in their portfolio. Francisco Montero continues operations to this day, [Click here for the full review…]


Habitation Velier Longpond “TECA” 2005 14 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jun 112020
 
Habitation Velier Longpond "TECA" 2005 14 Year Old Rum - Review

    There are few people who tried the quartet of the Velier black-bottled Long Pond series that was released (or should that read “unleashed”?) in 2018, who didn’t have an opinion on the snarling beastie that was the 2003 NRJ TECA. That was a rank, reeking, sneering, foul-smelling animal of a rum, unwashed, uncouth, unafraid, and it blasted its way through each and every unwary palate on the planet.  If Luca Gargano, the boss of Velier, wanted to provide a rum that would show what a high ester beefcake could do, and to educate us as to why it [Click here for the full review…]


Austrian Empire Navy Rum (Cognac Cask) – Review

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Jun 082020
 
Austrian Empire Navy Rum (Cognac Cask) - Review

Part of the problem The major problem I have with this rum is that it simply tastes artificial – “fake,” in today’s updated lexicon – and that’s entirely aside from its labelling, which we’ll get into in a minute.  For the moment, I’d suggest you follow me through a quick tasting, starting with a nose that reminds one disconcertingly of a Don Papa – oak, boatloads of vanilla, icing sugar, honey, some indeterminate fleshy fruits and more vanilla. This does not, I’m afraid, enthuse.    In spite of its 46.5% strength (ah, the good old days when this was considered [Click here for the full review…]


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