Ron Carlos Caribbean Style Rum “Light Dry” – Review

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Dec 112019
 
Ron Carlos Caribbean Style Rum "Light Dry" - Review

Last time ‘round we looked at the Ron Carlos Caribbean Style Rum “Black”, which I dismissed with a snort of derision – it was too simple, too weak, and had nothing of any substance to really recommend it, unless all you were looking for is a jolt of something alcoholic in your coffee (and were curious about who Carlos was). It’s not often I find a product about which I can find almost nothing good to say except that “It’s a rum.” Here’s one made by the same company as the Black, in the same aggressive we-aim-for-the-low bar vein, and [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Carlos Caribbean Style Rum “Black” – Review

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Dec 082019
 
Ron Carlos Caribbean Style Rum "Black" - Review

If you want to know why American supermarket rums (sometimes called “value rums” which is two lies at once) get such short shrift from so many rum folks, one like this is enough to explain the general indifference. It’s milquetoast, vague, with not a single point of interest, and that’s including the equally lackluster promotion that surrounds it. Let’s start at the beginning. What is it, who makes it, where’s it from? We must begin with the label, which unfortunately just makes me want to cringe. No really. For starters, it’s noted as a “Caribbean Style rum”. That’s about as [Click here for the full review…]


Mainbrace Rum (Late 1980s)

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Dec 012019
 
Mainbrace Rum (Late 1980s)

Rumaniacs Review #106 | 0681 Mainbrace Rum is a Guyanese and Barbados blend released by Grants Wine and Spirits Merchants of London, one of many small emporia whose names are now forgotten, who indulged themselves by selling rums they had imported or bought from brokers, and blended themselves. It is unknown which still’s rums from Guyana were used, or which estate provided the rum from Barbados, though the balance of probability favours WIRR (my opinion). Ageing is completely unknown – either of the rum itself, or its constituents. The Mainbrace name still exists in 2019, and the concept of joining [Click here for the full review…]


Mía White Rhum Agricole (Vietnam)(2018) – Review

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Nov 282019
 
Mía White Rhum Agricole (Vietnam)(2018) - Review

It must be something about the French – they’re opening micro distilleries all over the place (Chalong Bay, Sampan, Whisper, Issan and Toucan are examples) and almost all of them are channelling the agricole ethos of the French West Indies, working with pure cane juice and bringing some seriously interesting unaged blancs to the attention of the world. Any time I get bored with the regular parade of rums from the lands of the pantheon, all I have to do is reach for one of them to get jazzed up about rum, all over again. í The latest of these [Click here for the full review…]


L’Esprit South Pacific Distillery “Still Strength” White Rum (3º Ed.) – Review

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Nov 252019
 
L'Esprit South Pacific Distillery "Still Strength" White Rum (3º Ed.) - Review

So here we have a white rum distilled in 2017 in Fiji’s South Pacific Distillery (home of the Bounty brand) and boy, is it some kind of amazing. It comes as a pair with the 85% Diamond I looked at before, and like its sibling is also from a pot still, and also spent a year resting in a stainless steel vat before Tristan Prodhomme of the French indie L’Esprit bottled the twins in 2018 (this one gave 258 bottles). Still-strength, he calls them, in an effort to distinguish the massive oomph of the two blancs from those wussy cask-strength [Click here for the full review…]


Clément Trés Vieux Rhum Agricole 1952

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Nov 212019
 
Clément Trés Vieux Rhum Agricole 1952

Rumaniacs Review #105 | 0678 1952 – an eventful year. Queen Elizabeth II ascends to the throne; Black Saturday in Egypt, followed by the overthrow of King Farouk; the US election puts Ike in the White House; the first steps towards the EU were taken with the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community; television debuts in Canada; Charlie Chaplin is barred from re-entry to the US; “Mousetrap” opens in London (and never closes) – and in Martinique, Clément distills this rum and starts ageing it. So here we are. We’ve arrived at the oldest rum that is within [Click here for the full review…]


Clément Trés Vieux Rhum Agricole 1970

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Nov 192019
 
Clément Trés Vieux Rhum Agricole 1970

Rumaniacs Review #104 | 0677 Unsurprisingly, the 1976 Clément Trés Vieux we looked at a few days ago sells for around €500 or more these days, which to me is a complete steal, because any Velier from that far back is going for multiple thousands, easy. This, the second-oldest component of the XO sells for quite a bit more – north of €700 (though you can find it for much less in any store that is out of stock, and that’s most of them). And I think that one is also remarkably undervalued, especially since it’s a really good rhum. [Click here for the full review…]


Clément Trés Vieux Rhum Agricole 1976 20 YO

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Nov 172019
 
Clément Trés Vieux Rhum Agricole 1976 20 YO

Rumaniacs Review #103 | 0676 The Clément XO was one of the first top end agricoles I ever tried, one of the first I ever wrote about, and one that over the years I kept coming back to try. It evoked memories and recollections of my youth in Guyana which alone might justify its purchase price (to me, at any rate). There’s something undefinable about it, a trace of its heritage perhaps, the blend of the three rums that made it up, millesimes from what were deemed exceptional years – 1976, 1970 and 1952. The Clément 1976 is the first [Click here for the full review…]


Cihuatán “Nikté” Ron de El Salvador Limited Edition – Review

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Nov 142019
 
Cihuatán "Nikté" Ron de El Salvador Limited Edition - Review

Three years ago I tried and later wrote a review of the 8-year-solera Cihuatán rum from El Salvador (bottled at 40%), and noted rather disappointedly that “this was a remarkably quiet rum.” Essentially, I regarded it with some indifference. At the time, Paul Senft of Rum Journey and I were trading notes and he told me they had a 12 year solera variation slated to be released, and Cihuatán themselves told me they were working on some more limited editions of their own. Well, I moved on, liking but not completely won over by the brand at that point, and [Click here for the full review…]


La Belle Cabresse Rhum Blanc Agricole de la Guyane – Review

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Nov 112019
 
La Belle Cabresse Rhum Blanc Agricole de la Guyane - Review

In case you’re wondering, in the parlance of the Francophone West Indies the term “cabresse” (or “chabine”) refers to a light skinned mulatto, what Guyanese would call a dougla gyal – not altogether politically correct these days, but French Caribbean folks have always been somewhat more casual about such terms (witness the “Negrita” series of rums, for example) so perhaps for them it’s less of a big deal. The rum in question comes from French Guiana in this case, made there by the same distillery of St. Maurice which also provides the stock for the rhums of that little indie [Click here for the full review…]


Mhoba “Strand 101°” South African Rum – Review

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Nov 072019
 
Mhoba "Strand 101°" South African Rum - Review

It’s when you smell and then taste the Strand 101° (58% ABV) rum from South Africa’s Mhoba, that you begin to get an appreciation for what this relative newcomer has accomplished in so short a time. The initial punch is all pot still, all righteous reek, all the time — there’s no holding back and it’s just fascinating to inhale. It smells sharply of paint thinner, nail polish, turpentine and rancid fruit left to go bad in the sun…after a tropical rain, with the steam still coming off the ground. It contains the tartness of a lemon meringue pie mixed [Click here for the full review…]


Mhoba Select Reserve French Cask South African Rum – Review

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Nov 042019
 
Mhoba Select Reserve French Cask South African Rum - Review

There was a lot of interest in and written about Mhoba between the UK 2018 and Paris 2019 rumfests, and when one checks out the rums they make, it’s not hard to see why. It’s from a unique part of the world, has been deep-dived by Steve James in a thee-part-post that could hardly be bettered (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 are here), has a pot still action going on, and the rums themselves are solidly distinct. So we should beware of letting them fall off our mental rum radar in between expos – because they’re good, and, [Click here for the full review…]


Murray McDavid Jamaican 1992 13 Year Old Rum – Review

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Oct 302019
 
Murray McDavid Jamaican 1992 13 Year Old Rum - Review

Few except deep-diving, long-lasting rum geeks now remember Murray McDavid, the scotch whisky bottler that acquired Bruichladdich in 2000, and created a rum label of the same name at the same time. Most who spot the distinctive slender bottles with the steel-gray enclosures and red-patterned labels just see an older independent bottler and move along (some might stop for a taste, especially if they pay attention to the dates on the bottles). The MM line is long defunct, folded into the Renegade line in 2006 – Mark Reynier, the man behind it all, put into practice some of the ideas [Click here for the full review…]


Pre-1970s Royal Navy Rum (~1955)

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Oct 272019
 
Pre-1970s Royal Navy Rum (~1955)

Rumaniacs Review #102 | 0670 The moniker of Navy Rum is one of the most recognized rum names on the planet, aided and abetted by Pusser’s supposed recreation of the rum after Black Tot Day. The Black Tot Rum (the old one retailing for a thousand bucks, not the new recreation just released in 2019) certainly helped, and over the years, we have seen the odd old decanter or jug or bottle or what have you, go on sale (the UK government was the seller) – some were actual flagons of Navy stocks that had been left over after 1970s, [Click here for the full review…]


Stolen Overproof Jamaican Rum – Review

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Oct 232019
 
Stolen Overproof Jamaican Rum - Review

For all the faux-evasions about “a historic 250 year old Jamaican distillery” and the hints on the website, let’s not dick around – the Stolen Overproof is a Hampden Estate rum. You can disregard all the marketing adjectives and descriptors like “undiscovered”, “handmade” etc etc and just focus on what it is: a New Jamaican pot still rum, released at a tonsil-chewing 61.5%, aged six years and remarkably underpriced for what it is. The Stolen Overproof has gotten favourable press from across the board almost without exception since its launch, even if there are few formal (i.e., review-website based) ones [Click here for the full review…]


1985 Distilled Old Barbados Rum (Alleyne Arthur / Foursquare) – Review

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Oct 222019
 
1985 Distilled Old Barbados Rum (Alleyne Arthur / Foursquare) - Review

This is a rum that has become a grail for many: it just does not seem to be easily available, the price keeps going up (it’s listed around €300 in some online shops and I’ve seen it auctioned for twice that amount), and of course (drum roll, please) it’s released by Richard Seale. Put this all together and you can see why it is pursued with such slack-jawed drooling relentlessness by all those who worship at the shrine of Foursquare and know all the releases by their date of birth and first names. But what is it? Well, to go [Click here for the full review…]


George Morton’s Old Vatted Demerara (O.V.D.) Rum (1970s)

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Oct 192019
 
George Morton's Old Vatted Demerara (O.V.D.) Rum (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #101 | 0667 Like the Lamb’s Navy rum we looked at last time, this is a 70º proof rum, which was produced by George Morton Ltd out of Scotland. Dating this bottle is tricky, since George Morton still exists and is folded into William Grant & Sons, and OVD continues to be made (it’s popular in Scotland and Northern England, wrote Wes Burgin, who reviewed a more recent edition back in 2014) — but my own feeling is that this bottle hails from the early 1970s. By the 1980s the old British companies had left Guyana — DDL [Click here for the full review…]


Samaroli Jamaican 1992-2016 24 Year Old Rum – Review

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Oct 172019
 
Samaroli Jamaican 1992-2016 24 Year Old Rum – Review

Although it’s older, Samaroli is somewhat eclipsed these days (by Velier), and is sometimes regarded as being on the same tier as, say, Rum Nation, or L’Esprit (though the comparisons are at best inexact). With the passing of its eponymous founder, there is no single person around whom aficionados can rally, no-one to show the flag, to enthusiastically promote its rums and excitedly show off the best and newest thing they have going (not that he was doing much of that in the years immediately prior to his passing, but still…). It survives in the regard of many – myself [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World – J. Wray & Nephew White Overproof Rum (Jamaica)

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Oct 142019
 
Key Rums of the World - J. Wray & Nephew White Overproof Rum (Jamaica)

At the opposite end of the scale from the elegant and complex mid-range rum of the Appleton 12 year old – a Key Rum in its own right – lies that long-standing rum favourite of proles and puritans, princes and peasants — the rough ‘n’ tough, cheerfully cussin’ and eight-pack powerful rippedness of the J. Wray & Nephew White overproof, an unaged white rum bottled at a barely bearable 63%, and whose screaming yellow and green label is a fixture in just about every bar around the world I’ve ever been in and escorted out of, head held high and [Click here for the full review…]


The 100th Rumaniacs Review: Rhum Jamaique Saint Germaine (est 1890s)

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Oct 102019
 
The 100th Rumaniacs Review: Rhum Jamaique Saint Germaine (est 1890s)

Rumaniacs Review #100 | 0664 The further back in time we go, the less we can find out about rum, not least because such things weren’t considered anything particularly premium back then and the collector’s bug is a recent phenomenon. And even if a bottle were in fact to have survived from as far back as the 1890s – which is when this one was estimated to have been released – who would have bothered to record it, or written about it, or tried to preserve the appearance, or the label? Well, we have what we have, so let’s see [Click here for the full review…]


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