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…]


Superb Tortuga Light Rum (1980s)

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Apr 092020
 
Superb Tortuga Light Rum (1980s)

Rumaniacs Review R-113 | 0717 My apologies to anyone who has bought and enjoyed the Superb Tortuga Light Rum on some Caribbean cruise that docked in the Cayman Islands for the last three decades or more….but it really isn’t much of anything. It continues to sell though, even if nowadays its star has long faded and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone of the current crop of writers or commentators who has ever tried it. The white rum, a blend of unidentified, unspecified Jamaican and Barbadian distillates bottled at 40%, is not really superb and not from the island [Click here for the full review…]


Limtuaco Single Cask Pot Still Heavy Rum – Review

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Apr 062020
 
Limtuaco Single Cask Pot Still Heavy Rum - Review

I should begin by warning you that this rum is sold on a very limited basis, pretty much always to favoured bars in the Philippines, and then not even by the barrel, but by the bottle from that barrel – sort of a way to say “Hey look, we can make some cool sh*t too! Wanna buy some of the other stuff we make?”. Export is clearly not on the cards…at least, not yet. But most of it is blended with the same company’s middling rum called the Very Old Captain, which wasn’t “very” anything, not all that old, and [Click here for the full review…]


The Scotch Malt Whisky Society

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Apr 012020
 
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society

Introduction If ever there was a hook, a cachet, a point of distinctiveness, something that set apart an independent bottler’s rums from the pack of baying pretenders, surely the SMWS has nailed it. Here is a bottler of primarily whiskies, that does no advertising, issues barely any rums, and yet whose rum-cred can be said to be up there with any of the Big Names. And this is in spite of their relative obscurity and rarity, and their cost. Their rums are never available on supermarket racks, only on the shelves of its own Members’ Rooms, its partners or online [Click here for the full review…]


Kirk & Sweeney 18 Year Old Rum – Review

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Mar 292020
 
Kirk & Sweeney 18 Year Old Rum - Review

Let’s dispense with the origin story right away. Call me jaundiced, but after doing this for over ten years, I not only roll my eyes when I read about rum heritage and pirates and prohibition heroes and (in this case) rum-running schooners, but fight a near-overwhelming urge to fall asleep. The facts are as follows: this is a rum named after a boat; it is made by Bermudez in the Dominican Republic; launched in 2012; it is claimed to be 18 years true ageing (a statement that is something of a bone of contention); it is a light, standard-strength Latin-style [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum Rich Vernhes (~1960s)

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Mar 252020
 
Rhum Rich Vernhes (~1960s)

Rumaniacs Review #112 | 0714 Bought at an auction for curiosity and an interest in old rhums, it was dated in the listing to the sixties or seventies, and because of its association with two other (Bardinet) bottles from Martinique, it was also deemed to be from there (the info was provided by the seller, so it strikes me as reasonable).  The address given on the label is now a modern building which houses a Hermes shop, and one of the only clues that an online search provides is a 1906 listing from the Milan International Exhibition, which notes Vernhes [Click here for the full review…]


Trois Rivières Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 2006 (Cask Strength) – Review

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Mar 232020
 
Trois Rivières Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 2006 (Cask Strength) - Review

If I had a single regret about tasting this exceptional cask strength millésime rum from Trois Rivieres which was distilled in August 2006 and bottled eight years later, it’s that I neglected the opportunity to find and try the single cask version of the same vintage.  That one was bottled at 43% while the cask strength I was trying here was more than ten points higher, and it would have been fascinating to see how they ranked against each other. Yet even without that comparison, there’s no doubt when you put together a range of variously aged agricoles (as I [Click here for the full review…]


La Mauny Rhum Ambrė Agricole (Heritage 1749) – Review

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Mar 192020
 
La Mauny Rhum Ambrė Agricole (Heritage 1749) - Review

Staying with some of the lesser-known agricoles I’ve delayed writing about for far too long, let’s talk about La Mauny for a bit. This is one of the larger establishments on Martinque, and now owned by Campari, which bought both it and Trois Rivieres in late 2019, ending nearly three hundred years of (various) families’ or witless conglomerates’ control over it. That history is a bit lengthy, so I’ll put it at the bottom and dive right in to the main schtick. The La Mauny distillery remains one of the largest in Martinique, both for its planted cane area and [Click here for the full review…]


La Favorite Rhum Agricole “Coeur Ambrė” – Review

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Mar 162020
 
La Favorite Rhum Agricole "Coeur Ambrė" - Review

With all those distilleries dotting the landscape of Martinique, one could be forgiven for thinking there’s rather little to chose among the agricoles they make aside from canny marketing. I used to think so myself, until I began to amass an ever-increasing series of tasting notes and memories on these rhums from the myriad estates, and realized that there are indeed noticeable points of difference between any one and any other.  And that’s not just between the distilleries, but among the various expressions issued from the same one, as well.  Saint James is a good example of this, with their [Click here for the full review…]


Cor Cor “Green” Okinawan White Rum – Review

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Mar 122020
 
Cor Cor "Green" Okinawan White Rum - Review

The Cor Cor “Green”, cousin to the molasses-based “Red” (both are actually white – the colours refer to their labels’ hues) is an order of magnitude more expensive than its scarlet labelled relative, largely because it is made from cane juice, not molasses, and therefore rather more seasonal in production.  The question is, how does the cane juice white compare when run up against its intriguing (if off-beat) molasses-based white. Both are, after all, made by the same master blender who wanted to apply an awamori sensibility to making rum. Tasting the Red and Green side by side, then, is [Click here for the full review…]


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