Key Rums of the World: Damoiseau Rhum Vieux Agricole 5 Year Old (Guadeloupe)

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Aug 182019
 
Key Rums of the World: Damoiseau Rhum Vieux Agricole 5 Year Old (Guadeloupe)

The French islands provide a reviewer with a peculiar problem when trying to pick a single rum as being a “Key” anything. This is largely because Martinique and Guadeloupe are almost alone in the world in possessing such a gathering of world-famous rum distilleries in such a concentrated geographical space (a comparison to Islay, say, is not entirely out to lunch). Several Caribbean islands have a single large distiller (St. Lucia, Trinidad) or two (Grenada) or a few (Cuba, Barbados, Jamaica), and Haiti of course comes up for special mention — but none have so many whose names resound through [Click here for the full review…]


L’Esprit Diamond 2005 11 Year Old Guyanese Rum – Review

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Aug 142019
 
L'Esprit Diamond 2005 11 Year Old Guyanese Rum - Review

Damn but this rum is strong. Standard strength among the cognoscenti has been drifting up from 40% to nearly 50% (give or take), with the low sixties selling well, and the high sixties occasionally spotted running in the wild.  But over 70% ABV, and we’re entering more rarefied territory. When people see one of these, they cross themselves like Supes when he sees green kryptonite. A sip of one, and you know what it’s like to be t-boned by a fully-armoured SUV carrying a banana-republic dictator. And all his no-neck bodyguards. What’s all the more astounding about L’Esprit’s Guyanese Diamond [Click here for the full review…]


Sammy’s Beach Bar White (Hawaii) Rum – Review

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Aug 122019
 
Sammy's Beach Bar White (Hawaii) Rum - Review

Last week, I remarked briefly on persons who are famous or excel in some aspect of their lives, who then go off an lend their names to another product, like spirits – Blackwell was one of these, George Clooney’s Casamigos tequila is another, Bailey Pryor’s Real McCoy line might be among the best known, and here is one that crossed my path not too long ago, a Hawaiian white rum made with the imprimatur of Van Halen’s Sammy Hagar who maintains a residence on Maui and has long been involved in restaurants and spirits (like Cabo Wabo tequila) as a [Click here for the full review…]


Blackwell Fine Jamaican Rum – Review

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Aug 072019
 
Blackwell Fine Jamaican Rum - Review

The Blackwell Fine Jamaican rum is the result of another one of those stories we hear these days, about somebody with good intentions, oodles of spare cash, and some street cred in another creative field of endeavour (music, movies, TV, writing, master of the universe, Wall Street, take your pick), deciding they can make [insert product name here] just because (a) they always liked it (b) they have eaten / drunk / smoked / worn / read / watched / experienced it for many years and (c) they want to immortalize their own preference for said product.  “How difficult can [Click here for the full review…]


Karukera 2009 Select Casks “Black Bottle Edition” – Review

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Aug 052019
 
Karukera 2009 Select Casks "Black Bottle Edition" - Review

Last week when discussing the Karukera “L’Expression” I remarked that something of the agricole-ness, the grassy and herbal notes we associate with cane juice rhums from the French islands, was missing there.  To some extent the same thing could be said of the near-5000 bottles making up the limited outturn from various “select casks” (all fourteen of them) of this Black Bottle edition – but where I gave a guarded recommendation to the 2008 Rhum Vieux, here, I have to be more enthusiastic and say it’s one of the better rhums from Karukera I’ve tried — though not necessarily one [Click here for the full review…]


Karukera Rhum Vieux Agricole “L’Expression” 2008-2016 – Review

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Jul 312019
 
Karukera Rhum Vieux Agricole "L'Expression" 2008-2016 - Review

Karukera, that small distillery on the eastern side of the left wing of Guadeloupe also known as Basse-Terre (in the Domain of Marquisat de Sainte–Marie) used to release bottles with an AOC designation — it was clearly visible on the labels of the Millesime 1997 and the Rhum Vieux Reserve Speciale I went through some years ago.  However, by the time 2016 rolled around this apparently had been discontinued, since the “L’expression” 8 year old bottled in that year shows no sign of it.  While Guadeloupe as a whole has always been somewhat ambivalent about going the whole hog with [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Barbados 1999 16 YO Rum (Foursquare) – Review

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Jul 282019
 
Compagnie des Indes Barbados 1999 16 YO Rum (Foursquare) - Review

If the proposed new GI for Barbados goes into force, it’s likely that rums such as this one will have to be relabelled, because the ageing will have to be done in Barbados, and it’s debatable whether a third party could be permitted to say it was a Foursquare rum(see other notes, below).  Still, even if that happens, that’s not a particularly serious problem on either count given the appreciation most have for tropical ageing these days; and one only has to see any independent bottler saying “Secret Distillery” on a label, for the rum pundits to work themselves up [Click here for the full review…]


J.M. XO Tres Vieux Agricole Rhum – Review

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Jul 252019
 
J.M. XO Tres Vieux Agricole Rhum - Review

We hear a lot about Damoiseau, HSE, La Favorite and Trois Rivieres on social media, while J.M. almost seems to fall into the second tier of famous names. Though not through any fault of its own – as far as I’m concerned they have every right to be included in the same breath as the others, and to many, it does.  Situated in the north of Martinique, J.M. began life with Pére Labat, who was credited with commercializing and proliferating the sugar industry in the French West Indies during the 18th century. He operated a sugar refinery at his property [Click here for the full review…]


Mhoba Select Release White Rum – Review

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Jul 222019
 
Mhoba Select Release White Rum - Review

South Africa has been making wine for centuries, backyard bathtub liquors are a local staple, and rums and rotgut of some kind (and quality) have always been made. Still, we may want to pay more attention to those rums going forward because in the last decade there have been quite a few small local companies starting up operations there, making small batch rums with little-stills-that-could and quietly garnering kudos for themselves for some interesting products, none of which I’ve tried (which is my loss). Companies like Copeland, Inverroche, Tapanga, Whistler, 25° South, DeVry, Distillery 031, Brickmakers, and the list goes [Click here for the full review…]


Bielle Millesime 2001-2015 14 YO Guadeloupe Rhum – Review

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Jul 182019
 
Bielle Millesime 2001-2015 14 YO Guadeloupe Rhum - Review

“This is a distillery … which deserve some serious attention” I wrote back in 2017.  I should have taken my own advice and picked up more from there, because this rhum is really well done, and one to share generously.  Located just south of dead centre on the tiny island of Marie Galante (itself south of Guadeloupe), Bielle is a small sugar plantation dating back to the late 1700s, named after Jean-Pierre Bielle (he also owned a coffee shop), which went through a series of owners and went belly-up in the 1930s; the property was sold to a local landowner, [Click here for the full review…]


A. A. Baker Jamaican Rum (1970s)

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Jul 152019
 
A. A. Baker Jamaican Rum (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #098 | 0642 Everything about this rum is fascinating, and while there are gaps in its provenance, there’s still more available than some other rums in this series we’ve looked at. Note that it comes from the same timeframe as the Sangster’s Jamaican (R-097), but this one is much better and has more convoluted historical antecedents. A.A. Baker & Co was founded back in 1898 by Arthur and Arnold Baker (and their cousin George) in Trieste, which at the time was the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and their main trading port and shipbuilding centre (it [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Santiago de Cuba 25 Year Old – Review

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Jul 142019
 
Ron Santiago de Cuba 25 Year Old - Review

It’s been some time since a current production Cuban rum not made by a third party crossed my path.  Among those was the Santiago de Cuba 12 YO, which, at the time, I enjoyed a lot, and made me anxious to see how older versions from the Cuba Rum Corporation’s stable would work out.  So when the 25 YO became available, you’d better believe I snapped it up, and ran it past a bunch of other Latin rums: a Don Q, the Diplomatico “Distillery Collection” No. 1 and No. 2 rums, a Zafra 21 and just because I could, a [Click here for the full review…]


1423 S.B.S. Enmore 1988 28 Year Old Guyana Rum – Review

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Jul 112019
 
1423 S.B.S. Enmore 1988 28 Year Old Guyana Rum - Review

There’s another S.B.S rum from Trinidad I should really be writing about, tried on that magical evening in Paris when I ran heedless and headfirst into the Mauritius 2008 and the Jamaican DOK 2018, but naah – there’s this other one they made back in 2016, probably long sold out and gone, which I remember equally well.  And that’s the S.B.S. Enmore, distilled in 1988, bottled twenty seven years later, with the sort of solid 51.8% ABV strength that would make the near legendary Bristol Spirits PM 1980 nod approvingly and dab a single ethanol tear from its metaphorical eye. [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Réunion Traditionelle “Cask Strength” 2011 7 YO Rum – Review

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Jul 072019
 
Rum Nation Réunion Traditionelle "Cask Strength" 2011 7 YO Rum - Review

“Austere” says the back label of Rum Nation’s massive rum beefcake from Réunion, and they weren’t kidding. The rhum traditionalle from the French Department is bottled at 60.5% ABV, is seriously violent, a tropically-aged molasses-derived brown bomber, and to my mind it’s quite a step up from the lower-proofed 45% 7 year old agricole they had previously released in 2016.  It is not recommended for people who don’t know what they’re getting into. Why?  Because insofar as it has those wild, fierce and pungent smells and tastes, it’s very much like the new wave of Jamaican rums now making such [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Uitvlugt 1996 18 Year Old Demerara Rum (Mod GS) – Review

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Jul 042019
 
Velier Uitvlugt 1996 18 Year Old Demerara Rum (Mod GS) - Review

2014 was both too late and a bad year for those who started to wake up and realize that Velier’s Demerara rums were something special, because by then the positive reviews had started coming out the door, the prices began their inexorable rise, and, though we did not know it, it would mark the last issuance of any Demeraras of the Age by the Genoese concern headed by Luca Gargano.  Yesu Persaud – DDL’s chairman – was slated to retire by the end of that year, and in early 2015 the new chairman terminated the preferential relationship. That said, it [Click here for the full review…]


M&G Rhum du Cap-Vert Grogue Velha (Aged) – Review

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Jul 012019
 
M&G Rhum du Cap-Vert Grogue Velha (Aged) - Review

M&G out of Cabo Verde, as noted in the review of their tasty little white, stands for Musica e Grogue, a hat tip to the love of island music and island rum that characterized the founders, Jean-Pierre Engelbach (with his fascinating involvement in the dramatic and musical arts over the decades), and Simão Évora, a local Cabo Verde grogue producer and music-devotee. Using one of the five grogue producers in the tiny village of Tarrafal (population = 450, stills = 5, a stat that fascinates everyone who’s ever read it) they produce two main products, the white, and a slightly [Click here for the full review…]


Palmera White Aruba Rum – Review

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Jun 262019
 
Palmera White Aruba Rum - Review

The fourth and last of the four Dutch West Indies rums that I obtained solely to shed some light on the islands is a pale 35% shrug of indifference called the Palmera White Aruba rum. You know me, I have a thing for unapologetically barking-mad high-proofed white rums – but dis ain’ dat, as my bushmen squaddies would say back in the old days. Were you to google it, you’d find that the Palmera Quality Products company produces several rums – notably the White and the Dark “authentic Arubian rums with a rich heritage flavour” at standard strength, and is [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Superior Carta Reserva Aruba Rum – Review

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Jun 242019
 
Ron Superior Carta Reserva Aruba Rum - Review

This is one of those strange rums that clearly exists, but about which nobody seems to know anything, even though I was informed it remains on sale in Aruba to this day. Jazz Singh out of the UK couldn’t help – he rather witheringly remarked that the only local stuff he found on the island was “a lot of imported column rubbish” and that the one distillery Aruba used to have is definitely closed. And good luck with finding any info on the company whose name is on the label, Playa Liquor and Bottling Co, ‘cause that’s equally opaque and [Click here for the full review…]


12 Rum Bottles, Sitting on a Wall…

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Jun 232019
 
12 Rum Bottles, Sitting on a Wall...

It makes no difference one way or the other what kind of bottle encloses a rum…at least not to those who just want to taste it. But let’s be honest: presentation sells, cool design is cool design and sometimes we come across rums which stand out on the shelf just because they look so different from the standard barroom bottle, akin to a wooden chess set of unrecognizable but oh-so-beautiful pieces bought in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar.  And sometimes that has less to do with a fancy label than it does with the very shape of the bottle itself. I am [Click here for the full review…]


M&G Rhum du Cap-Vert Grogue Natural (White) – Review

 1 Response »
Jun 202019
 
M&G Rhum du Cap-Vert Grogue Natural (White) - Review

The “M&G” in the rhum’s title is not, as you might expect, the initials of the two founders of this small operation in Cabo Verde. In a lyrical twist, the letters actually stand for Musica e Grogue: Music and Grog.  Which is original, if nothing else, because artistic touches are not all that common in our world, and such touches are often dismissed as mere frippery meant to distract from a substandard product. In this case, however Jean-Pierre Engelbach, who founded the company with local Cabo Verde grogue producer and music-lover Simão Évora, has an interesting background in the dramatic [Click here for the full review…]


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