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…]


Velier Enmore 1998 Full Proof 9 YO Old Demerara Rum – Review

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Jun 032020
 
Velier Enmore 1998 Full Proof 9 YO Old Demerara Rum - Review

It will come as some surprise to anyone reading this review, when I say that there is a certain pointlessness now, to reviewing a Velier rum from The Age. After all, this is a very young rum, not considered one of the Legends like the Skeldon or Port Mourant series, it’s practically unfindable, quite expensive when you can, and nowadays you’re more likely to find an ounce of Unobtainium than one of these unicorns. Also, 2007 was not noted for the richness of its releases — only the LBI 1998 and the Versailles 1998 were offered that year, both also [Click here for the full review…]


Dry Cane Extra Light Superior White Rum (1970s)

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May 312020
 
Dry Cane Extra Light Superior White Rum (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #116 | 0732 Dry Cane UK had several light white rums in its portfolio – some were 37.5% ABV, some were Barbados only, some were 40%, some Barbados and Guyanese blends. All were issued in the 1970s and maybe even as late as the 1980s, after which the trail goes cold and the rums dry up, so to speak. This bottle however, based on photos on auction sites, comes from the 1970s in the pre-metric era when the strength of 40% ABV was still referred to as 70º in the UK. It probably catered to the tourist, minibar, [Click here for the full review…]


SMWS R 11.3 Worthy Park 7YO Rum (“Crème Brûlée Flambé”) – Review

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May 272020
 
SMWS R 11.3 Worthy Park 7YO Rum (“Crème Brûlée Flambé”) – Review

Anyone from my generation who grew up in the West Indies knows of the scalpel-sharp satirical play “Smile Orange,” written by that great Jamaican playwright, Trevor Rhone, and made into an equally funny film of the same name in 1976. It is quite literally one of the most hilarious theatre experiences of my life, though perhaps an islander might take more away from it than an expat. Why do I mention this irrelevancy? Because I was watching the YouTube video of the film that day in Berlin when I was sampling the Worthy Park series R 11.3, and though the [Click here for the full review…]


The Real McCoy 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 242020
 
The Real McCoy 10 Year Old Rum - Review

No one these days needs any introduction to the Real McCoy series of rums, which Bailey Pryor released in 2013 in conjunction with Foursquare Distillery (another name requiring no elaboration). He was inspired, so the founder’s myth goes, to try his hand at rum after making a documentary on the Prohibition rum runner of yore for whom the phrase “The Real McCoy” is named, since said gent gave pure value for money and didn’t try to gyp his customers. You could almost say that this is the first instance of a Barbados rum being given a name that supposedly touts [Click here for the full review…]


United Rum Merchants Black Heart Rum (1970s/1980s)

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May 202020
 
United Rum Merchants Black Heart Rum (1970s/1980s)

Rumaniacs Review #115 | 0728 This rum is a companion of the various UK merchant bottlers’ rums which were common in the 1970s and 1980s. Examples are Lamb’s 70º Demerara Navy, Four Bells Finest Navy Rum, Mainbrace, Red Duster Finest Navy, Old Vatted Demerara rum, and so on. Many are made by now defunct companies and were Navy wannabes, or traded in on the name without being anything of the kind. This one is an oddity since it was made by United Rum Merchants, that conglomerate which had swallowed up Lamb’s, Keelings and Dingwall Norris: they did supply rums to [Click here for the full review…]


SMWS R 11.2 Worthy Park 7YO Rum (“Absolutely Fabulous!”) – Review

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May 172020
 
SMWS R 11.2 Worthy Park 7YO Rum ("Absolutely Fabulous!") – Review

It sounds strange to say it, but the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, aside from ushering in changes in the whisky world, had its impacts on rums as well. What made the Society stand out back in the day and initially made its name, was the focus on single cask fullproof bottlings, which at the time was only sporadically addressed by other whisky makers (and hardly at all with rums, except perhaps by the Italians like Samaroli and Velier, who were practically unknown outside Italy). At the time I wrote about the Longpond R5.1 and the WIRD R 3.4 and R [Click here for the full review…]


SMWS R 11.1 Worthy Park 7YO Rum (“Spicy Sweet Goodness”) – Review

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May 142020
 
SMWS R 11.1 Worthy Park 7YO Rum ("Spicy Sweet Goodness") - Review

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society is no longer, as outlined in the brief biography of the organization, quite any of those things, not really. It has offices way beyond Scotland, it’s not restricting itself to bottling malts, has moved past releasing only whiskies, and can just barely be considered a society (more of an independent bottler). This is especially so since they have begun to not just buy aged casks from whisky producers but also new-make spirit so they can age their own. This last development has not yet occurred in the fields of their rums, though it wouldn’t really [Click here for the full review…]


Saint James Rhum Vieux Agricole 15 Year Old – Review

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May 112020
 
Saint James Rhum Vieux Agricole 15 Year Old - Review

Saint James. It’s not a name that’s unknown, since it’s the source of one of the oldest surviving rums in the world (the mud-black 1885), the place where rum-swami Luca Gargano started working all those years ago, and where Marc Sassier now hangs his hat. They’ve been around — and have been among the largest Martinique agricole makers — for so long, that they sometimes get passed over in people’s estimation in favour of younger or more exciting or more innovative Martinique operations (like, oh, A1710, or the new parcellaires). Yet year in and year out, their standard lineup continues [Click here for the full review…]


“Red Duster” Finest Navy Rum (1970s)

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May 072020
 
"Red Duster" Finest Navy Rum (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #114 | 0724 These days, the only way to get some of the lesser-known rums from the last century that were made by small merchant bottlers in vanishingly small quantities, is to know an old salt, be friends with a collector like Steve Remsberg, bag an estate sale, have an elderly relative who was into rum but isn’t any longer, find a spirits emporium that forgot about their inventory, or — lacking all these as I do — troll around the auction sites. It’s in this way that you find odd rums like the Red Duster Finest Navy [Click here for the full review…]


Flor de Caña Gran Reserva “7” – Review

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May 042020
 
Flor de Caña Gran Reserva "7" - Review

There was a very good reason why I took this bottle off a shelf and tried it, even when surrounded by many other rums from equally proud old houses, better made, stronger, of greater quality, produced to more exacting standards, with less kerfuffling oin the label. And that was because I was evaluating Flor de Caña’s entry-to-mid-level rum to see whether it could or should be named to the Key Rums series. The price was attractive, and I retained good memories of an epic bender with my Newfie squaddie Keenan, where we polished off a bottle in labba time on [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Millonario 10th Anniversary “Cincuenta” – Review

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Apr 302020
 
Ron Millonario 10th Anniversary "Cincuenta" - Review

By the time this review is read, digested and (incredulously) sniffed over and dismissed, somebody out there might well be sharpening pen, tablet or iphone and getting ready to verbally off me online. And no surprise – were I to repeat the hosannas of my original 2012 review of the Millonario XO, which scored what would now be considered a near-unbelievable, is-the-Caner-out-of-his-friggin’-mind? 88 points, I would never be taken seriously again. The rum has become a lightning rod for rum purists, on par with the Diplo Res Ex, Dictador, Zacapa 23 or the Zaya 21, all of which are from [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World – Saint James 12 YO Rhum Vieux Agricole (Martinique)

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Apr 272020
 
Key Rums of the World - Saint James 12 YO Rhum Vieux Agricole (Martinique)

After more than a decade of sampling rums from around the world, Martinique remains one of those islands to whose myriad distilleries I keep returning. Yet sometimes, when I remark on my liking for them, it’s a 50-50 chance that people wonder what I’m talking about (or why). But no list of Key Rums could possibly be complete without examples from that island, and the real issue is not so much that there has to be one (because there are many worthy candidates), as which it could possibly be and which one to start with when there’s so much choice [Click here for the full review…]


Big, Bad & Brutal – A Short History of the 151s

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Apr 232020
 
Big, Bad & Brutal - A Short History of the 151s

Introduction Brutta ma buoni is an Italian phrase meaning “ugly but good”, and as I wrote in the SMWS 3.5 “Marmite” review, describes the oversized codpieces of the “151” types of rums very nicely indeed. These glute-flexing ABV beefcakes have been identifiably knocking people into stupors for at least since the 1930s and possibly even before that — and while they were never entirely good, when it came to serving up a real fast drunk with a hot-snot shot of whup-ass, they really couldn’t be beat. Flavours were often secondary, proof-power everything. Everyone involved with rums — whether bartender, barfly [Click here for the full review…]


1423 S.B.S. Brazil/Barbados 2019 2YO Blended Rum – Review

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Apr 202020
 
1423 S.B.S. Brazil/Barbados 2019 2YO Blended Rum - Review

It’s not often we see a multi-country or multi-style blend released by an independent bottler. The trend in IBs in recent years has more been towards the exacting individuality of a single cask from a single place (or a single still, in the case of the Guyanese rums). And that makes sense, especially for up-and-coming new micro-indies, who work with one barrel at a time, for economic reasons if nothing else. That hasn’t stopped some companies from trying to push the envelope, of course, in the never ending Red Queen’s race to wring a few extra points of taste out [Click here for the full review…]


Gordon & MacPhail Demerara 1974-2003 29 Year Old Rum – Review

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Apr 162020
 
Gordon & MacPhail Demerara 1974-2003 29 Year Old Rum – Review

1974 was clearly a good year for barrel selection by the Scottish whisky maker Gordon & MacPhail. So good in fact that they were able to release several exceptional rums from that year – one was in 1999, the near spectacular 25 year old, which my Danish friends kicked themselves for missing when it came up for a tasting one year in Berlin. They got their own back at me by locating this slightly older version that was laid to sleep in the same year, emerged 29 years later (in 2003), and which is also a quietly amazing aged Demerara [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Nicaragua 1998 17 YO Rum – Review

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Apr 132020
 
Compagnie des Indes Nicaragua 1998 17 YO Rum - Review

Of all the Central American rums I’ve tried, Nicaraguan rums from the Flor de Caña facilities probably are the least like that light Spanish style so popularized by Bacardi. They inhabit a tasting style niche that isn’t quite Latin (or Cuban, if you will), but something that blends the light column still taste with something a bit deeper and richer. It makes for a nice amalgam, though it must be said that their own rums don’t always showcase that effectively, and sometimes it takes an indie to make the point with a single barrel expression. Not as a rule, not [Click here for the full review…]


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