That Boutique-y Rum Co. O Reizinho White Agricole Rum (Batch 1) – Review

 14 Responses »
Feb 042019
 
That Boutique-y Rum Co. O Reizinho White Agricole Rum (Batch 1) - Review

Last October, I ran into Pete Holland of the Floating Rum Shack at the Berlin Rum Fest (literally – I tripped and nearly fell into his shelf of rums, and he saved them by interposing himself so they would not be damaged, even if I was).  Although we, as long-existing rum bloggers, knew of each other — all of us know each other in the Oasis — we had only met once before, so I bee-lined over to see what he was doing. It turned out he was stewarding the line of rums from the cheekily named “That Boutique-y Rum [Click here for the full review…]


C.J.Wray Dry White Rum (2000s)

 No Responses »
Feb 022019
 
C.J.Wray Dry White Rum (2000s)

Rumaniacs Review #090 | 0595 We’re all familiar with the regular roundup of major Appleton rums like the Reserve, the 12 YO, the 15 YO, 21 YO and 30 (old version or new), as well as their halo rum du jour, the 50 YO. But the company also had and has distinct and not so well known brands for sale locally (or niche export markets), such as Edwin Charley, Coruba, Conquering Lion, JBW Estate and Cocomania.  And as the years turned, the company outlived some of its own brands – for example the previously well-known One Dagger, Two Dagger and Three [Click here for the full review…]


Dzama 3 Year Old Madagascar Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Jan 312019
 
Dzama 3 Year Old Madagascar Rum - Review

More than four years ago I wrote about the Rhum Vieux Millésimé 1998 10 YO made by Dzama and concluded that I was pretty stoked to see what else the brand had in the larder.  It’s taken a long time for me to make good on that desire, so here we have something lower down on the totem pole from the same company, and I thought it was a good effort, for all its youth and in spite of the niggly questions it raised. Let’s refresh the memory first: for the geographically challenged, Madagascar is that huge island off the [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Nicaragua 2004 11 Year Old Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Jan 282019
 
Compagnie des Indes Nicaragua 2004 11 Year Old Rum - Review

Speaking in general terms, my personal drift away from Latin- or South American rums over the last few years derives from the feeling that they’re a little too laid back, and lack pizzazz.  They’re not bad, just placid and easy going and gentle, and when you add to that the disclosure issues, you can perhaps understand why I’ve moved on to more interesting profiles. Far too many producers from the region do too much unadventurous blending (Canalero), don’t actually have a true solera in play (Dictador), have a thing for light column still products which may or may not be [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World – Barbancourt Réserve Spéciale 8 Year Old Rhum (Haiti)

 1 Response »
Jan 222019
 
Key Rums of the World - Barbancourt Réserve Spéciale 8 Year Old Rhum (Haiti)

Haiti is unique as a nation because it is where the only successful slave revolt in the world took place, at the turn of the 18th century. Sadly, it is now the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and successive dictatorships, foreign interference and natural disasters have left the place in shambles. That any businesses manage to survive in such an environment is a testament to their resilience, their determination, their ingenuity….and the quality of what they put out the door. The country has become the leading world producer of vetiver (a root plant used to make essential oils and [Click here for the full review…]


Jack Iron Grenada Overproof Rum (Westerhall) – Review

 No Responses »
Jan 202019
 
Jack Iron Grenada Overproof Rum (Westerhall) - Review

The Jack Iron rum from Westerhall is a booming overproof issued both in a slightly aged and a white version, and both are a whopping 70% ABV. While you can get it abroad — this bottle was tried in Italy, for example — my take is that it’s primarily a rum for local consumption (though which island can lay claim to it is a matter of idle conjecture), issued to paralyze brave-but-foolhardy tourists who want to show off their Chewbacca chests by drinking it neat, or to comfort the locals who don’t have time to waste getting hammered and just [Click here for the full review…]


Clarke’s Court Superior Light Rum (2000s)

 No Responses »
Jan 172019
 
Clarke's Court Superior Light Rum (2000s)

Rumaniacs Review # R-089 | 590 This spite of a light white — to give it its full name, the “Clarke’s Court Superior Refined Grenada Light Rum” – should not be confused with either the current version of the Superior Light being released at 40%, or the best selling and much better Pure White at 69%.  The one here is an older version of the rum, column distilled (Ed Hamilton’s 1995 book Rums of the Eastern Caribbean mentions a two-column still in operation around that time), aged for under a year, filtered to clarity and meant as a low level [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Jamaica 1991 Supreme Lord VIII 25 Year Old Rum (Monymusk) – Review

 No Responses »
Jan 152019
 
Rum Nation Jamaica 1991 Supreme Lord VIII 25 Year Old Rum (Monymusk) - Review

Before considering the €300+ price tag, or grumbling about Rum Nation’s penchant for adding something extra to (some of) its rums, give the last Supreme Lord Jamaican rum from 1991 a whiff, a sniff and a snort. Sip a dram. Take your time with it. Enjoy. Because it’s simply outstanding, and even in concert with eight other Jamaicans that were on the table the day I tried it, it held up in fine style.   Part of that derives from the extended “sherry finish” — though since it spent eleven years in oloroso casks I’d suggest it’s more a double [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 2007 8 Year Old Rum (WP) – Review

 No Responses »
Jan 122019
 
Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 2007 8 Year Old Rum (WP) - Review

Hampden has been getting so much press of late that it’s only fair to have a look at the other products of the island, of which, these days, there are no shortages. For a long time these distilleries — with names geeks could recite in their sleep, like New Yarmouth, Innswood, Clarendon, Long Pond Monymusk, Worthy Park, Hampden — laboured in relative obscurity, living in J. Wray’s gargantuan shadow, selling mostly bulk rum abroad, or for the local market. Somehow, though, the distilleries remained alive, and so did their names, their rums. While I’m by no means disparaging or downplaying [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum J.M. Vieux Millésime 1989 15 Year Old

 No Responses »
Jan 092019
 
Rhum J.M. Vieux Millésime 1989 15 Year Old

Rumaniacs Review #088 | 0587 You’d think that a rhum issued less than fifteen years ago would still be reasonably available – you’d be wrong. This amazing leather-labelled, oak-aged 15 year old agricole from J.M. (Martinique) is almost impossible to find, and if you do, it’s not cheap.  It’s long since vanished from J.M.’s online shop, and I finally ended up tracking a bottle down in Switzerland, where it was a fetching a cool five hundred bucks or more, which just goes to show it’s not just other people’s money the Swiss are squirrelling away.  One can only wonder how [Click here for the full review…]


A1710 2017 “La Perle” Martinique White Rhum – Review

 1 Response »
Jan 072019
 
A1710 2017 "La Perle" Martinique White Rhum - Review

After the initial flurry of articles attendant on the forming of the first new distillery / rum brand in Martinique in, oh, I don’t know, forever, there’s been a surprising drop in attention for A1710. The big guns like Neisson, Bally, HSE, Trois-Rivieres, Depaz et al, with decades (or centuries) of brand awareness underlying their name and fame, continue to issue their excellent agricole rums, of course, but it’s almost like A1710 dropped by the wayside.  Yet this tiny outfit makes rums with a lot of zip, zap, zowee and swoosh, and should not be ignored just because it’s small. [Click here for the full review…]


Toucan Rhum Blanc Agricole – Review

 No Responses »
Jan 022019
 
Toucan Rhum Blanc Agricole - Review

There must be something about the French that just leads them into starting little rum companies in other countries. There was Hembert Achard and Anne-Francois Houzel who formed Whisper Rums from Antigua; David Giallorenzo of Issan; and Marine Lucchini and Thibault Spithakis of Chalong Bay. And of course there’s Toucan, which, if you recall from my posts of a year ago, is a relatively new entrant to the field of rums, yet distinguished itself (in my eyes at least) by making the really nifty-but-underpowered Toucan No. 4, as well as being from French Guiana, a place we have not seen [Click here for the full review…]


Seven Seas Japanese Rum – Review

 5 Responses »
Dec 302018
 
Seven Seas Japanese Rum - Review

Take this as less a review, than a description of my experience with a rum I didn’t know what to do with. * I have been sitting on this review for over a year, alternately confused and disgusted and wondering and puzzled.  It was a rum like nothing I’d ever had before, tawdry and smelly and meaty, an open sewer of a rum, a discarded tart’s handkerchief, yet I could not believe it could actually be so.  No reputable company – no company period – would willingly release such a product into the wild without reason, so what was I [Click here for the full review…]


St. George Spirits California Agricole White Rum (2014) – Review

 No Responses »
Dec 282018
 
St. George Spirits California Agricole White Rum (2014) - Review

Just as we don’t see Americans making too many full proof rums, it’s also hard to see them making true agricoles, especially since the term is so tightly bound up with the spirits of the French islands. Agricole, let it be remembered, is the French term for agricultural rums made from pure sugar cane juice, and called such to distinguish them (not without a little Gallic disdain, to be sure) from traditionnels, or traditional rums, which are made from molasses, a by product of the sugar making process. For the most part, having much to do with the finances, molasses [Click here for the full review…]


Hampden Estate 8 Year Old Overpoof Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Dec 242018
 
Hampden Estate 8 Year Old Overpoof Rum - Review

My own personal memories of the Hampden Overproof will always be combined with the Tasting of the Century in London, where we tried those magnificent old rums the Harewood 1780, St James 1885, Bally 1924 and Skeldon 1978…and the two new Hampdens. Truth to tell, my focus was so fiercely on that geriatric quartet, that I had little time to pay attention to the twins….time kind of ran out on me, and I could barely do them justice. So knowing I had the bottles in Berlin, I waited until October and then dealt with them there again. Velier, as is [Click here for the full review…]


Balcones Texas Rum 2016 Special Release – Review

 3 Responses »
Dec 222018
 
Balcones Texas Rum 2016 Special Release - Review

We don’t much associate the USA with cask strength rums, though of course they do exist, and the country has a long history with the spirit.  These days, even allowing for a swelling wave of rum appreciation here and there, the US rum market seems to be primarily made up of low-end mass-market hooch from massive conglomerates at one end, and micro-distilleries of wildly varying output quality at the other. It’s the micros which interest me, because the US doesn’t do “independent bottlers” as such – they do this, and that makes things interesting, since one never knows what new [Click here for the full review…]


HSE Rhum Blanc Agricole 2016 Parecellaire #1 – Review

 No Responses »
Dec 182018
 
HSE Rhum Blanc Agricole 2016 Parecellaire #1 - Review

White rhums – or blancs – were not products I paid much attention to back in the day, but over the last five years they have continually risen in my estimation, and now I consider them one of the key building blocks of the entire category.  Not the lightly-aged, blandly filtered and softly murmuring Spanish-style cocktail staples, you understand – those I regard with relative indifference. No, I mean stuff like the Mexican Paranubes, the Haitian Le Rocher, the Guyanese Superior High Wine, Japanese Nine Leaves Clear, Tahitian Mana’o White or the Surinamese Toucan White, to say nothing of the [Click here for the full review…]


K&L “Faultline” Uitvlugt 1994 20 Year Old Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Dec 162018
 
K&L "Faultline" Uitvlugt 1994 20 Year Old Rum - Review

When we think of independent bottlers, all the usual suspects out of Europe usually come to mind — Velier, Rum Nation, L’Esprit, the Compagnie, the whisky boys up north who indulge themselves in the odd single cask expression from time to time, SMWS, Bristol Spirits, and the list goes on. These well-known names obscure the fact that smaller operations — stores and even individuals — can and do in fact issue single barrel offerings as well.  For example, Kensington Wine Market in Calgary does it with whiskies quite often; a bunch of redditors recently got together and bought a cask [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 1983 33 Year Old Rum (Hampden) – Review

 No Responses »
Dec 132018
 
Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 1983 33 Year Old Rum (Hampden) - Review

  There all sorts of fascinating things about this rum, whose age and rarity and limited outturn makes it almost impossible to find (and as for actually getting a full bottle? I dreams me dreams, kid).  It’s aged more than thirty years. It was issued for the Hong Kong market. And it’s from Hampden, certainly one of the most interesting companies making rums in Jamaica today. Compagnie des Indes is one of those rare indie outfits that seems to be able to smell these oddly compelling forgotten casks squirrelled away in dusty warehouses someplace, and the only regret is that [Click here for the full review…]


Habitation Velier “Last Ward” Barbados 2009 9 Year Old Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Dec 092018
 
Habitation Velier “Last Ward” Barbados 2009 9 Year Old Rum - Review

Habitation Velier’s second edition of the distillate derived from Mount Gay, known as the Last Ward — a nod to the Ward family who ran Mount Gay for over a hundred years — retains much of what makes its 2007 sibling so special, but is a distinct and wonderful rum in its own right, if not entirely superseding its predecessor.  It comes close though, and does that by simply being a Barbados rum that blends a triple distilled pot-still distillate of uncommon grace and strength into something uniquely itself, leading us to wonder yet again (and probably muttering a fervent [Click here for the full review…]


 Older Entries  Newer Entries