1423 S.B.S. Jamaica 2018 (DOK) Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Jun 172019
 
1423 S.B.S. Jamaica 2018 (DOK) Rum - Review

It’s remarkable how fast the SBS line of rums have exploded onto the rumconsciousness of the world. This is a series released by 1423, the same Danish outfit which made the really quite elegant 2008 Mauritius rum I wrote about with such love a while back, and has received enormously positive word of mouth on social media for the last year or so.  The only similar company I can call to mind that rose so quickly in the public’s esteem would be the Compagnie des Indes, which shared a similarly exacting (and excellent) sense of which barrels to choose and [Click here for the full review…]


Romdeluxe R1 “Wild Tiger” Jamaican Rum (Hampden) – Review

 No Responses »
Jun 132019
 
Romdeluxe R1 "Wild Tiger" Jamaican Rum (Hampden) - Review

Romdeluxe in Denmark is at this point (2019) more a commercial rum club that makes private label bottlings and runs promotions around the country, than a true independent bottler — but since they do several releases, I’ll call them an indie and move right on from there.  Earlier, in May 2019, they lit up FB by releasing this limited-edition high-ester funk-bomb, the first in their “Wild Series” of rums, with a suitably feral tiger on the label. I can’t tell whether it’s yawning or snarling, but it sure looks like it can do you some damage without busting a sweat [Click here for the full review…]


Vulcão Cabo Verde Grogue – Review

 3 Responses »
Jun 092019
 
Vulcão Cabo Verde Grogue - Review

“Could grogue be the next clairin?” asked Dwayne Stewart in a facebook post the other day, when he and Richard Blesgraaf were discussing the Vulcão, and his respondent (you could almost see him smile) replied with a sort of yoda-like zen calm, “Clairin is clairin.”  Which is true. Because beyond the superficial similarities of the two island nations – the relative isolation of the islands, the artisanal nature of their juice, the mom-and-pop rural distillation of the spirit far away from modern developments or technological interference – the truth is that you could not mistake one for the other. At [Click here for the full review…]


Helios Distillery “Kiyomi” White Japanese Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Jun 032019
 
Helios Distillery "Kiyomi" White Japanese Rum - Review

The Kiyomi white rum is made by the Helios Distillery, the same outfit in Japan that makes the very tasty five year old Teeda rum we looked at before. Formed by Tadashi Matsuda in the postwar years (1961) at a time of economic hardship and food privation for Okinawa , the decision was made to distill rum because (a) it could easily be sold to American soldiers stationed there (b) Okinawan sugar was readily available and (c) rice, which normally would have been used to make the more popular local sake, was needed as a food source and could not [Click here for the full review…]


Helios Distillery “Teeda” 5 Year Old Japanese Rum – Review

 No Responses »
May 302019
 
Helios Distillery "Teeda" 5 Year Old Japanese Rum - Review

In any rum festival, if you are moving around with a posse or simply keep your ears open, there’s always one or two new or unknown rums that create an underground buzz. You drift from booth to booth, tasting, talking, writing, thinking, listening, and gradually you separate voices from the din, that quietly remark “Check out that one over there” or “Did you hear about….?” or “You really gotta try…” or a simple, disbelieving “Holy crap!” The Whisper Antigua rum was one of those, Lazy Dodo another; in various years there was the Toucan white, the Compagnie’s Indonesian rum,  the [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World – Pusser’s 15 Year Old Original Navy Rum

 4 Responses »
May 272019
 
Key Rums of the World - Pusser's 15 Year Old Original Navy Rum

When you really get down to it, Pusser’s claim to fame rests on two main planks. The first is that it is they are the true inheritors of the actual British Navy rum recipe after Black Tot Day in 1970.  The second is that they follow it. Unfortunately, neither is completely true, depending on how you look at the background. With respect to the first point, any research done on Navy rums shows that Lyman Hart, Lamb’s and ED&F Man, among others, sold rums to the Royal Navy back in the 1800s (Man became the major supplier in the 1900s, [Click here for the full review…]


Sampan Rhum Vietnam Overproof – Review

 No Responses »
May 262019
 
Sampan Rhum Vietnam Overproof - Review

The Sampan Vietnamese Rhum is made by the Distillerie d’Indochine: and Antoine Pourcuitte, a long haired Frenchman who seems to be channelling Fabio and who lives in Vietnam, is the man who bootstrapped his desire to make good rums into a business that combines a small hotel and bar close to the beach with a distillery he pretty much built himself (officially it opened for business in late 2018). This newly constructed establishment, which produces one of those excellent white rhums which must be causing the French islands conniption fits, is his brainchild… and it can take its place proudly [Click here for the full review…]


Laodi Pure Sugar Cane Rhum (Brown) – Review

 5 Responses »
May 222019
 
Laodi Pure Sugar Cane Rhum (Brown) - Review

Let me run you past the tasting notes of this lower-proofed, higher-aged companion rum to the Laodi White I wrote about last time. It was an amber-coloured 42% which was aged, according to the rep at the 2019 rhumfest in Paris, for 5 years in French oak…so it seemed like it would be relatively tame and mild, taking into account the milquetoast strength and a barely-enough aging regimen (at least, compared to its unaged 56% blanc bro’). But it wasn’t. To begin with, the nose – well, that was quite a nose, a Cyrano de Bergerac of rum noses.  It [Click here for the full review…]


Laodi Pure Sugar Cane Rhum (White) – Review

 No Responses »
May 202019
 
Laodi Pure Sugar Cane Rhum (White) - Review

The word agricole is nowadays used indiscriminately to refer to any cane juice distillate, no matter where it is made, and by consumer and producers both.  Discussions have recently popped up on FB arguing that appropriating the term under such circumstances was (and is) theft of reputation and quality, which the French Island rum makers had garnered for themselves over long decades (if not centuries) of quality rhum-making, and was therefore being ripped off by any producer not from those islands who used the term.  And here comes a rum company from the Far East, Laodi, seeming to have found [Click here for the full review…]


Tanduay CLX Chairman’s Reserve Philippine Rum – Review

 No Responses »
May 152019
 
Tanduay CLX Chairman's Reserve Philippine Rum - Review

Tanduay, for all its small footprint in the west, is one of the largest rum makers in Asia and the world (they’re either 1st or 2nd by sales volume, depending on what you read and when), and have been in business since 1854. Unsurprisingly, they see fit to commemorate their success with special editions, and like all such premiums with a supposedly limited release meant only for the upper crust, most can get one if they try. The question is, as always, whether one should bother. The presentation of the CLX rum is good – boxed enclosure, shiny faux-gold label, [Click here for the full review…]


Naga “Java Reserve” Indonesian Double-Aged 7 YO Rum – Review

 No Responses »
May 132019
 
Naga "Java Reserve" Indonesian Double-Aged 7 YO Rum - Review

Everything you research on Naga is likely to make you rend your robes with frustration at what little you do manage to dig up. Yet paradoxically, everything you do find out about the rum itself seems guaranteed to keep you reading, and make you buy it, if no other reason than because it seems so damned interesting. The label seems designed specifically to tantalize your curiosity.  Perusing it, you can with equal justification call it “Naga Batavia Arrack” (“made with Indonesian aged rum” says the script, implying there it’s arrack plus rum), or “Naga Double Cask rum” or “Naga Java [Click here for the full review…]


Sang Som Special Rum (Thailand) – Review

 1 Response »
May 092019
 
Sang Som Special Rum (Thailand) - Review

Like most rums of this kind, the opinions and comments are all over the map.  Some are savagely disparaging, other more tolerant and some are almost nostalgic, conflating the rum with all the positive experiences they had in Thailand, where the rum is made. Few have had it in the west, and those that did weren’t writing much outside travel blogs and review aggregating sites. And that’s not a surprise. If you exclude the juice emerging from new, small, fast-moving micro-distilleries in Asia, and focus on the more common brands, you’ll find that many adhere to the light latin-style column-still [Click here for the full review…]


Sangster’s Old Jamaica De Luxe Gold Rum (1980s/1990s)

 3 Responses »
May 052019
 
Sangster's Old Jamaica De Luxe Gold Rum (1980s/1990s)

Rumaniacs Review #097 | 0621 As far as I can tell, Dr. Sangster arrived in Jamaica to lecture at UWI in 1967, got sidetracked into the rum business, and died in 2001. During his time on the island, Dr. Sangster did more to popularize rum cream and spiced / infused rums (pineapple, coconut, orange, etc – there were some 20+ varieties) than promote pure rums themselves, but he was also known for his blends, like Conquering Lion Overproof and this one, the Old Jamaica DeLuxe Gold which is definitely off the grid and, in a curious way, also quite modern. [Click here for the full review…]


1423 S.B.S. Mauritius 2008-2018 10 YO Rum – Review

 1 Response »
May 022019
 
1423 S.B.S. Mauritius 2008-2018 10 YO Rum - Review

Like those tiny Caribbean islands you might occasionally fly over, the Maria Loca cocktail bar in Paris is so miniscule that if you were to sneeze and blink you’d go straight past it, which is what happens to us, twice. When Mrs. Caner and I finally locate it and go inside, it’s dark, it’s hectic, it’s noisy, the music is pounding and the place is going great guns. At the bar, along with two other guys, Guillaume Leblanc is making daiquiris with flair and fine style, greeting old customers and barflies and rumfest attendees, the shaker never still. Even though [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado Rare Collection PM+Diamond 2001-2017 16 YO Rum (Velier 70th Anniversary) – Review

 4 Responses »
Apr 292019
 
El Dorado Rare Collection PM+Diamond 2001-2017 16 YO Rum (Velier 70th Anniversary) - Review

El Dorado and their high-end collection, the Rares, continue to inspire head scratching bafflement – they get issued with such a deafening note of silence that we might be forgiven for thinking DDL don’t care that much about them.  Ever since 2016 when they were first released, there’s been a puzzling lack of market push to advertise and expose them to the rum glitterati. Few even knew the second release had taken place, and I suggest that if it had not been for the Skeldon, the third release would have been similarly low key, practically unheralded, and all but unknown. [Click here for the full review…]


Barbosa Grogue Pure Single White Rum – Review

 1 Response »
Apr 242019
 
Barbosa Grogue Pure Single White Rum - Review

Although the grogues of Cabo Verde have been seeping through our rumconsciousness for years now, it’s a curious thing that there are almost no reviews to be found online at all. All we have is rumours and quiet whispers in the dark corners of smoke-filled tiki-bars, random small comments on FB, and stories that Luca Gargano of Velier has been sniffing about the islands for years, perhaps putting together another series of organic, pure single rums designed to wow our socks off. 2019 might at last, then, be the year to change that, as grogues were quite visible in the [Click here for the full review…]


Inner Circle “Green Dot” Overproof Rum (Australia/Fiji) (2000s)

 6 Responses »
Apr 212019
 
Inner Circle "Green Dot" Overproof Rum (Australia/Fiji) (2000s)

Rumaniacs Review # 096 | 0617 Inner Circle out of Australia is one of those rums originally made by a now-defunct company called the Colonial Sugar Refinery, which had a long history pretty much unknown outside its country of origin. Formed in 1855, CSR established refineries in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji by the 1890s, and in 1901 they opened a distillery in Sidney, using pot stills to make rums from Fijian and Australian cane. The Inner Circle brand name, which appeared in 1950, came from the limited high-quality rums they made for distribution to the favoured elite of the [Click here for the full review…]


Nine Leaves “Encrypted” II 2 Year Old Rum (2017 release) – Review

 3 Responses »
Apr 172019
 
Nine Leaves "Encrypted" II 2 Year Old Rum (2017 release) - Review

You just gotta love Yoshiharu Takeuchi, who hired a brand ambassador, travel agent, accountant, general manager, master distiller, janitor, chief cook and bottle washer, the cook, the baker and candlestick maker, and still only has a single employee in his Japanese rum-making outfit Nine Leaves – himself. And lest you think he’s a dour, serious, penny-pinching cost-cutting ninja who’d prefer to be making a Yamazaki single-handedly or something, you can take it from me that he’s a funny, personable, dynamic and all-round cool dude, a riot to hang out with in any bar in any country. Oh yeah, and he [Click here for the full review…]


Berry Bros. & Rudd 1982 33 Year Old Jamaica Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Apr 092019
 
Berry Bros. & Rudd 1982 33 Year Old Jamaica Rum - Review

The stats and the label speak to a rum that can almost be seen as extraordinary, which usually fills me with dread as a reviewer: for, how could any rum live up to that? I mean – from Jamaica in the 1980s, 33 years old, a cousin to another really good rum from there, bottled by an old and proud indie house…that’s pretty impressive, right? Yet somehow, against my fears,  Berry Bros. & Rudd have indeed released something special. The initial tasting notes could come from any one of a dozen rums, but as it develops and moves along, it [Click here for the full review…]


Smooth Ambler “Revelation” 1990 23 YO Rum – Review

 1 Response »
Apr 072019
 
Smooth Ambler "Revelation" 1990 23 YO Rum - Review

When a bunch of the rum chums and I gathered some time back to damage some rums and show them who was boss, one of them remarked of this rum, “Easy drinking” — which initially I thought was damning it with faint praise until I tried it myself, and continued with it three or four more times after they all staggered back to their fleabag hotels, surprised by its overall worth.  It’s not often you get to try (or be really pleased by) an indie bottling from the USA, given how much they are in love with starting whole distilleries [Click here for the full review…]


 Older Entries  Newer Entries