Hampden Estate 8 Year Old Overpoof Rum – Review

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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…]


Velier Antigua Distillers 2012 6 YO Rum – Review

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Dec 062018
 
Velier Antigua Distillers 2012 6 YO Rum - Review

  Not only was the Antigua Distilleries’ English Harbour 1981 25 YO the very first rum review posted on this site, but for a long time it was also one of my personal top sipping rums (as well as the highest priced), and ever since, I’ve had a fond place in my heart for their work.  In 2017 I tried their new sherry matured rum and was impressed and intrigued at the directions in which they were going – but the 2012 rum issued the following year as part of the Velier 70th anniversary collection, that one was something really [Click here for the full review…]


Tilambic 151 Overproof Mauritius Rum – Review

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Dec 042018
 
Tilambic 151 Overproof Mauritius Rum - Review

Ten years ago, the 151s were regarded with the sort of wry caution with which one approaches a crazy old uncle who may lash out with either invective or drool at any moment, depending on the circumstances.  They encouraged adverbial density, were the strongest rums available to the rumworld, and used exclusively as cocktail bases and mixing agents. Myself, I was always a little amused by their ferocity and used their elephantine profiles as an excuse to write reviews that didn’t take themselves too seriously (like the Bacardi, Lemon Hart, Cavalier, or Appleton 151 reviews, for example).  But what else to do? I [Click here for the full review…]


Old Fort Reserve Rum (St. Lucia) – 2000s

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Dec 022018
 
Old Fort Reserve Rum (St. Lucia) - 2000s

Rumaniacs Review #087 | 0574 As with the Bucaneer rum in R-086, the Old Fort Reserve rum is from St. Lucia Distillers, and while it won an award in the 80-proof light category in an (unknown) 2003 “Rumfest”, it was withdrawn from the company’s lineup in that same year.  Bucaneer did not fit the portfolio as the company had decided to concentrate on brands like Bounty; and the Old Fort Reserve had a similar fate – it was overtaken by the Chairman’s Reserve brand.  What this means, then, is when you taste an Old Fort (and you are interested in [Click here for the full review…]


Samai Gold Rum (Cambodia) – Review

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Nov 292018
 
Samai Gold Rum (Cambodia) - Review

Now here’s an interesting standard-proofed gold rum I knew too little about from a country known mostly for the spectacular temples of Angor Wat and the 1970s genocide.  But how many of us are aware that Cambodia was once a part of the Khmer Empire, one of the largest in South East Asia, covering much of the modern-day territories of Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Viet Nam, or that it was once a protectorate of France, or that it is known in the east as Kampuchea? Samai is a Khmer word for modern (it has subtleties and shades of meaning beyond [Click here for the full review…]


Issan White Rum (Thailand) – Review

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Nov 272018
 
Issan White Rum (Thailand) - Review

Thailand doesn’t loom very large in the eyes of the mostly west-facing rum writers’ brigade, but just because they make it for the Asian palate and not the Euro-American cask-loving rum chums, doesn’t mean what they make can be ignored; similar in some respects to the light rums from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Panama and Latin America, they may not be rums du jour, yet they continue to produce for their own local audiences and sell very nicely worldwide, thank you very much.  There’s a market for the profile, and given the enormous population of Asia, it’s no surprise that [Click here for the full review…]


Buccaneer St. Lucia Rum (1990s)

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Nov 242018
 
Buccaneer St. Lucia Rum (1990s)

Rumaniacs Review #086 | 0571 Ed Hamilton, in his 1995 book Rums of the Eastern Caribbean, made mention of the Buccaneer rum as a regular part of the St. Lucia Distillers lineup, but nowadays the rum is no longer in production – the last reference to it was an award given to it in the 2003 Rum Fest (which fest it was is somewhat open to conjecture), and a notation that it was discontinued, later confirmed by Mike Speakman that it was in the same year.  So we can assume that the Buccaneer I tasted is at best an early [Click here for the full review…]


Cadenhead Uitvlugt Distillery “MPM” 1998 Guyanese 12 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 222018
 
Cadenhead Uitvlugt Distillery "MPM" 1998 Guyanese 12 Year Old Rum - Review

It’s an old joke of mine that when it comes to Cadenhead, they produce great rums and confusing letter combos. To use this one as an example, the label might lead more to head-scratching confusion than actual enlightenment (for nerd or neophyte alike) but a little background research can ferret out the basic details fairly well when it comes to Guyanese rums. In this instance, the “MPM” moniker probably stands for Main Port Mourant or some variation thereof – the key fact it purports to convey is that the rum within is from a pot still rum from there, which [Click here for the full review…]


Le Galion Grande Arôme Matinique Rum – Review

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Nov 192018
 
Le Galion Grande Arôme Matinique Rum - Review

It was the words “Grand Arôme” that caught my eye: I knew that term.  “Galion”, which I seemed to remember but didn’t, quite. And “Martinique,” hardly seeming to go with either.  It had no brothers and sisters to its left and right on the shelf, which, in a shop stocking rows and rows of Plantations, Rum Nation, BBR, Saint James, Bally, HSE, Dillon, Neisson and all the others, struck me as strange (that and the rather “poor-relation-from-the-backcountry” cheap label and tinfoil cap).  What on earth was this thing? I bought it on a whim and cracked it in the company [Click here for the full review…]


San Pablo “Platinum White” Curaçao White Rum – Review

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Nov 152018
 
San Pablo "Platinum White" Curaçao White Rum - Review

Smaller Caribbean islands can be sleepy sorts of places where (partly in my imagination, partly in my boyhood experiences) old, lovingly-maintained Morris Oxfords and Humber Hawks sedately roll down leafy, sun-drenched boulevards reminiscent of the colonial era, and pass rumshops on every corner where men slam down dominos and drink paralyzingly powerful local white lightning with coconut water while discussing Sobers, Kanhai, Lloyd and Lara from the Windies’ long-past glory days with plenty “suck-teet” and “styupsin” and “cuss-up”. All right so that’s a bit of poetic license, but in my youth, it really was like that up and down the [Click here for the full review…]


San Pablo “Gold Label” Curaçao Rum – Review

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Nov 132018
 
San Pablo "Gold Label" Curaçao Rum - Review

Let’s move away from the full proofed rums released by indies and the major Caribbean companies, and switch over to something we don’t see very often, rums from the smaller islands —  these traditionally sell well to the tourist trade, the minibars of cheap hotels and within their local markets, but don’t make much of a splash elsewhere. Some are considered undiscovered steals, and the internet is rife with throwaway comments on personal blogs and travel sites about some rum nobody ever heard about being the best they ever had. One of these is the golden 40% San Pablo rum [Click here for the full review…]


Velier NRJ “Long Pond TECC” 2007 11 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

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Nov 112018
 
Velier NRJ "Long Pond TECC" 2007 11 YO Jamaican Rum - Review

So now we are the fourth and last ester-boosted rums issued in 2018 by Velier from the distillery of Long Pond in Jamaica, and in a strange way it sums up the preceding three rums in a way that emphasizes many of the best parts and tones down the excesses of all of them.  This is all the more curious a statement since it has the highest ester counts of the quartet, and one would expect the massive taste-bomb effluent of the TECA to be jacked up a few notches more…to “12”, maybe. And yet it doesn’t. It’s a really [Click here for the full review…]


Velier NRJ “Long Pond TECA” 2003 15 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

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Nov 072018
 
Velier NRJ "Long Pond TECA" 2003 15 YO Jamaican Rum - Review

“Pungent f*cker, isn’t it?” smirked Gregers, responding to my own incredulous text to him, when I recovered my glottis from the floor where the TECA had deposited and then stomped it flat. Another comment I got was from P-O Côté after the Vale Royal review came out: “Can’t wait to read your thoughts about the TECA…!! … Hard to describe without sounding gross.” And Rumboom remarked on a taste of “sweat” and “organic waste” in their own rundown of the TECA, with another post elsewhere actually using the word “manure.” I start with these varied comments to emphasize that I [Click here for the full review…]


Velier NRJ “Cambridge STC❤E” 2005 13 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

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Nov 052018
 
Velier NRJ "Cambridge STC❤E" 2005 13 YO Jamaican Rum - Review

For those who are deep into rumlore, trying the quartet of the National Rums of Jamaica series issued by Velier in 2018 is an exercise I would recommend doing with all four at once, because each informs the other and each has an ester count that must be taken into consideration when figuring out what one wants out of them, and what one gets – and those are not always the same things.  If on the other hand you’re new to the field, prefer rums as quiescent as a feather pillow, something that could give the silkiness of a baby’s [Click here for the full review…]


Velier NRJ “Vale Royale VRW” 2006 12 YO Jamaican Rum – Review

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Nov 042018
 
Velier NRJ "Vale Royale VRW" 2006 12 YO Jamaican Rum - Review

This whole week I’ll be looking at the quartet of stern, forbidding black and white bottles of the National Rums of Jamaica, which have excited a slowly rising conversation on social media as pictures get posted and more and more people try them.  Certainly, they’ve got all the Jamaican rum punditry in transports already (plus they are issued by Velier, which is clear from the minimalist label and box design). All four will be written about in a sequence, because there’s simply no way to speak to them individually at long intervals without missing the point, which is that they’re [Click here for the full review…]


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