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…]


Chantal Comte Rhum Agricole Extra Vieux (Depaz) 1975 – Review

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Mar 092020
 
Chantal Comte Rhum Agricole Extra Vieux (Depaz) 1975 - Review

In a time of exploding visibility of masterful ladies in the rum world – Joy Spence, Maggie Campbell, Trudiann Branker, Karen Hoskins, Dianne Medrano, and so many others – it’s good to also remember Chantal Comte, who bottled her first rum in 1983 (it was a Depaz, and possibly even this one, though I’m still tracking that down), who has fiercely and doggedly stuck with her first love of the French islands’ rums in all the years from then to now.  She is, in my opinion, along with Tristan Prodhomme, one of the undiscovered treasures of the indie bottling scene.  [Click here for the full review…]


Cor Cor “Red” Okinawan White Rum – Review

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Mar 052020
 
Cor Cor "Red" Okinawan White Rum - Review

Given Japan has several rums which have made these pages (Ryoma, Ogasawara, Nine Leaves, Helios, Seven Seas), by now most should be aware that just about all of them source their molasses out of the southern islands of Okinawa, if not actually based there themselves. The Grace distillery, who make the Cor Cor line of rums, conforms to that informal rule, yet is unusual in two ways – first, it is still very much a manual operation, somewhat surprising for a nation with a massive technological infrastructure; and it produces rums from both molasses (the red labelled rum we’re looking [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Castillo Imperial (Mexico, 1980s)

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Mar 042020
 
Ron Castillo Imperial (Mexico, 1980s)

Rumaniacs Review #111 | 0707 Back country Mexico has creole hooch like the Paranubes to keep the flame of pure rums alive, and larger, better known brands like Mocambo, Ron Prohibido, Los Valientes et al are there for those with deeper wallets or more upscale tastes.  And Bacardi has long been known to have made rum in the country – not just their own eponymous brand, but also a lower-priced, lesser-ranked ron called Castillo, which was created specifically to take on low cost alternatives which were cutting into Bacardi’s market share. That’s the rum I have in front of me, [Click here for the full review…]


Fortin “Heroica” Paraguay Rum – Review

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Mar 022020
 
Fortin "Heroica" Paraguay Rum - Review

Every now and then we find some peculiar, almost completely unknown rum in some unlikely spot, and are struck by exactly how far flung and widespread the production of the spirit really is. I mean, if you aren’t a rumfest junkie or deep diver (and perhaps even if you are), can you recall much about Paraguayan rums? Paraguay — one of two landlocked countries in South America (quick, name the other one) — is something of a newcomer on the international rum scene, and most of the rums they have made that are distributed abroad have only come on the [Click here for the full review…]


Mad River PX Limited Edition Rum – Review

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Feb 272020
 
Mad River PX Limited Edition Rum - Review

It must be something intrinsic to the USA and their commercial distilling culture, that almost every distillery I’ve come across seems to like making ten different thing off their apparatus.  It’s as if they view a single point of focus, a single product line, as an anathema – a still must be multipurpose, and work to earn its keep by wringing the maximum different amount of spirits out of it.  And this leads to my oft-repeated remark that American distillers seem to like making whiskies, gins, vodkas and other stuff — and produce rum not because of real love for [Click here for the full review…]


Saint James Rhum Vieux Agricole 7 Year Old – Review

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Feb 232020
 
Saint James Rhum Vieux Agricole 7 Year Old - Review

Recently we’ve looked at rums from Jamaica, Guyana, the Dominican Republic, Japan, India, Australia, Guadeloupe, Haiti and Mauritius (and that’s just since the year began) which goes a far way to showcasing the incredible variety of the spirit.  Today we’ll try something from Martinique – and when one considers the fame of Saint James, home of the near legendary 1885 Rhum (one of oldest rhums I’ve ever tried) and from which I’ve tasted several old editions from the past, well, it’s a wonder I haven’t come here more often to try their current offerings. At this time, the Saint James [Click here for the full review…]


Doctor Bird Jamaican Rum – Review

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Feb 192020
 
Doctor Bird Jamaican Rum - Review

The strangely named Doctor Bird rum is another company’s response to Smith and Cross, Rum Fire  and the Stolen Overproof rum. These are all made or released in the USA (Stolen hails from New Zealand but its rum business is primarily in the US), but the rums themselves come from Jamaica, and there the similarity sort of breaks down, for the Doctor Bird is one of the few from Worthy Park — one of the New Jamaicans which has quietly been gaining its own accolades over the last few years — and not from Hampden or Monymusk or Longpond or [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Barceló Imperial Premium Blend (12 YO) – Review

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Feb 172020
 
Ron Barceló Imperial Premium Blend (12 YO) - Review

Barceló has slipped somewhat in our mental map of rum companies to watch, which comes as no surprise to those noting the current dominance which the Big Countries and the Big Names have in defining what we “should” be drinking. But ⅓ of the “Three Bs” of the Domincan Republic has been around for a while, releasing their light Spanish-style rons day in and day out, and if their primary markets are elsewhere than the homes of the online commentariat who flog Jamaica, Guyana and Barbados almost without pause, then at least their level of expertise shows no sign of [Click here for the full review…]


Cadenhead Green Label Demerara 12 YO (Laphroaig Cask) – Review

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Feb 122020
 
Cadenhead Green Label Demerara 12 YO (Laphroaig Cask) – Review

What a difference the passage of years makes. In 2010, a mere year after my long rum journey began, I came across and wrote about the Cadenhead 12 YO and gave it a rather dismissive rating of 76, remarking that while I liked it and while it had some underlying harmony, the decision to mature it in Laphroaig casks led to “not a rum, but some kind of bastardized in-the-middle product that isn’t fish or fowl.” Later I began searching for it again, having in the interim gained rather more respect for what Cadenhead was doing.  The Campbelltown-based company of [Click here for the full review…]


Lemon Hart Royal Navy Demerara Rum 151 (1970s)

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Feb 092020
 
Lemon Hart Royal Navy Demerara Rum 151 (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #110 | 0700 Lemon Hart needs no further introduction, since the brand is well known and reasonably regarded – I’ve written about quite a few of their products.  Their star has lost some lustre of late (though one of their recent 151 releases from 2012 or thereabouts found much favour with me), and it’s interesting that Ed Hamilton’s own line of 151s was specifically introduced to challenge the equivalent LH, if not actually supplant it.  With so much going on at the high end of the proof-list these days, it’s good to remember what Lemon Hart was capable [Click here for the full review…]


Berry Bros. & Rudd Hampden 1990 17 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

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Feb 052020
 
Berry Bros. & Rudd Hampden 1990 17 YO Jamaican Rum - Review

Hampden is now one of the belles du jour of the New Jamaicans, but it’s been on the horizon for much longer than that, though sadly much of its output from the Elder Days was sold outside Jamaica as a sort of miscellaneous bulk item, to be bastardized and mixed and blended and lost in the drab ocean of commercial rums that made up most of what was sold up to ten years ago. Never mind, though, because these days they’ve more than made up for that by issuing rums under their own estate brand, getting the single-barrel limited-edition treatment [Click here for the full review…]


Helios Distillery “Teeda” 21 Year Old Japanese Rum – Review

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Feb 032020
 
Helios Distillery "Teeda" 21 Year Old Japanese Rum - Review

The Okinawan Helios Distillery came to greater attention (and reknown) of the western rum scene in 2019, when they presented a white rum and a 5 Year Old that were impressive right out of the gate.  Perhaps we should not have been surprised, given that the company has been in the business since 1961 – it is supposedly the oldest such distillery in the country. Then, it was called Taiyou, and made cheap rum blends from sugar cane, both to sell to the occupying American forces, and to save rice for food and sake production. In the decades since, they’ve [Click here for the full review…]


Rhea Distillers Gold Rum – Review

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Jan 302020
 
Rhea Distillers Gold Rum - Review

India is one of these countries that makes a lot of rum but is not reknowned for it — and if you doubt that, name five Indian rums, quick.  Aside from a few global brands like Amrut (who are more into whiskies but also dabbled in rum with the Old Port Deluxe and the Two Indies rums) rum makers from there seem, for the moment, quite happy to sell into their internal or regional markets and eschew going abroad, and are equally indifferent to the foreign rum festival circuit where perhaps they could get more exposure or distribution deals. Perhaps [Click here for the full review…]


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