L’Esprit Barbancourt 2004 12 Year Old Full Proof Haitian Rum – Review

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Aug 272018
 
L'Esprit Barbancourt 2004 12 Year Old Full Proof Haitian Rum - Review

Let’s move away from Jamaica, Barbados, St. Lucia and Guyana for a bit, and go back to a company from Haiti and an independent bottler out of France for whom I have a great deal of respect and affection: Barbancourt and L’Esprit respectively. L’Esprit, as you may recall from its brief biography, is a small outfit from Brittany run by Tristan Prodhomme, who has the smarts to issue all of his rums in pairs – one version at cask strength in a small outturn from the barrel, and the remainder (usually from the same barrel) at a diluted 46%, aimed [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Fiji 2004-2016 11 YO Rum – Review

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Aug 252018
 
Compagnie des Indes Fiji 2004-2016 11 YO Rum - Review

Although the Compagnie des Indes has a few very well received multi-island blends like the Tricorne, Boulet de Canon, Caraibes and the Domindad, my appreciation of their work is so far given more to individual islands’ or countries’ rums. There’s something about their specificity that makes the land of origin snap clearly into focus in a way a blend doesn’t (and doesn’t try to, really). That’s not a criticism by any means, just a direction in which my preferences bend, at least for now. After having gone through a few Fijian rums recently, I finally arrived at this one, which [Click here for the full review…]


Stubb’s Queensland White Rum (1990s)

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Aug 212018
 
Stubb's Queensland White Rum (1990s)

Rumaniacs Review #082 | 0541 Although the Ministry of Rum speaks to Stubb’s as being made from molasses, the label of the bottle itself says it’s made from cane juice, and I think I’ll go with that. And in spite of the retro-style design of the label, it seems that it was created from scratch in the 1990s with a view to capturing some export market share from Bacardi, and after being introduced to the market, fell flat and was discontinued. And while both Peter’s Rum Labels and the Ministry make reference to the fact that Beenleigh Distillery is the [Click here for the full review…]


Transcontinental Rum Line Fiji “Navy Strength” 2009 8YO Rum – Review

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Aug 182018
 
Transcontinental Rum Line Fiji "Navy Strength" 2009 8YO Rum - Review

Over the years I’ve gone through a few Pacific island rums and while appreciative of their inventiveness, wasn’t entirely chuffed about them. They had elements I liked and elements I didn’t, and on balance while they were workable rums, nothing to really get excited about…unless it was the Mana’o white, which was quite an animal, though it reinforced my appreciation for white rums rather more than it did for Tahiti. In 2017, though, the Transcontinental Rum Line put out this 8 Year Old rum and when I tried it earlier this year, I was blatted into next week. I literally [Click here for the full review…]


Kill Devil Fiji (South Pacific Distillery) 2002 14 YO Rum – Review

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Aug 172018
 
Kill Devil Fiji (South Pacific Distillery) 2002 14 YO Rum - Review

Kill Devil is the rum brand of the whiskey blender Hunter Laing, who’ve been around since 1949 when Frederick Laing founded a whisky blending company in Glasgow. In 2013 the company created an umbrella organization called Hunter Laing & Co, into which they folded all their various companies (like Edition Spirits and the Premier Bonding bottling company). The first rums they released to the market – with all the now-standard provisos like being unadulterated, unfiltered and 46% – arrived for consumers in 2016, which meant that this rum from the South Pacific Distillery on Fiji, was issued as part of [Click here for the full review…]


Stade’s White Rum (E.S.A. Field, Barbados 1980s/1990s)

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Aug 142018
 
Stade's White Rum (E.S.A. Field, Barbados 1980s/1990s)

Rumaniacs Review #081 | 0538 In Barbados, back in the early 1900s, distillers and bottlers were by a 1906 law, separate, and since the distilleries couldn’t bottle rum, many spirits shops and merchants did — Martin Doorly, E.S.A. Field and R.L. Seale were examples of this in action. On the other side, in the early 1900s a pair of immigrant German brothers, the Stades, set up the West Indies Rum Refinery (now known as WIRD) and all distillate from there carried the mark of their name. In 1909 Mr Edward Samuel Allison Field established E.S.A. Field as a trading company in [Click here for the full review…]


Don Papa Rare Cask Rum – Review

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Aug 122018
 
Don Papa Rare Cask Rum - Review

Given my despite and disdain for the overhyped, oversold and over-sugared spiced-alcoholic waters that were the Phillipine Don Papa 7YO and 10YO, you’d be within your rights to ask if I either had a screw loose or was a glutton for punishment, for going ahead and trying this one. Maybe both, I’d answer, but come on, gotta give each rum a break on its own merits, right? If we only write about stuff we like or know is good, then we’re not pushing the boundaries of discovery very much now, are we? All this sounds nice, but part of the [Click here for the full review…]


Appleton Estate “Joy” Anniversary Blend 25 Year Old Rum – Review

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Aug 082018
 
Appleton Estate "Joy" Anniversary Blend 25 Year Old Rum - Review

You will rarely find two rums of the same age from the same island more unalike than the Samaroli 1992 25 YO and the Appleton “Joy” 25 year old Anniversary Blend. One is a fierce, cask strength rum, tightly focused, furiously tasty, with a complexity and balance that nearly broke my chart. The other is a blended rum brought into being utilizing every ounce of more than two decades of experience which Joy Spence, Appleton’s Master Blender, brings to the the table. And yet, under the bare statistics that ostensibly set them apart, in both there runs the blood and [Click here for the full review…]


Samaroli Jamaican 1992-2017 25 Year Old Rum – Review

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Aug 062018
 
Samaroli Jamaican 1992-2017 25 Year Old Rum - Review

There’s a story I heard years ago, that of the many rums from his company, Silvano Samaroli’s own personal favourite was one of the first ones he bottled, the West Indies 1948. Who am I to rain on a story like that, speaking as it does of a man currently residing in the Great Distillery in the Sky, and a rum from so far back in time that most of us weren’t even a twinkle in our Daddy’s eyes, made when the world was an utterly different place? But for my money, of all the rums I’ve tried from this [Click here for the full review…]


The El Dorado 15 YO “Wine Finished” Series – Summing Up

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Aug 032018
 
The El Dorado 15 YO "Wine Finished" Series - Summing Up

Over the years, there has developed a sort of clear understanding of what the El Dorado 15 YO is, deriving from the wooden stills that make up its core profile – that tastes are well known, consistently made and the rum is famed for that specific reason. Therefore, the reasoning for expanding the range in 2016 to include a series of finished versions of the 15YO remains unclear. DDL may have felt they might capitalize on the fashion to have multiple finishes of beloved rums, or dipping their toes into the waters already colonized by others with double or multiple [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (Sauternes Finish) – Review

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Aug 032018
 
El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (Sauternes Finish) - Review

This is the sixth and last short form review of the six “finished” variations of the 15 year old El Dorado rums. Because they’re all based on the standard 15 year old which is very well known, I’ll be briefer than usual in my descriptions, rather than provide an essay in each case. Tomorrow I’ll wrap them all up with a summary and such observations as seem relevant. The rums were all tasted together, blind, in a four-hour session, using the original (retasted) El Dorado 15 with a non-blind score of 82, as a control baseline. All point scores relate [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (Madeira Sweet Finish) – Review

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Aug 022018
 
El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (Madeira Sweet Finish) - Review

This is the fifth short form review of the six “finished” variations of the 15 year old El Dorado rums. Because they’re all based on the standard 15 year old which is very well known, I’ll be briefer than usual in my descriptions, rather than provide an essay in each case; and then wrap them all up with a summary on the last day. The rums were all tasted together, blind, in a four-hour session, using the original (retasted) El Dorado 15 with a non-blind score of 82, as a control baseline. All point scores relate to that rum. As [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (Madeira Dry Finish) – Review

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Aug 012018
 
El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (Madeira Dry Finish) - Review

This is the fourth short form review of the six “finished” variations of the 15 year old El Dorado rums. The 15 year old is the core of it all, and so I’ll be briefer than usual in my descriptions, rather than provide an essay in each case; and then wrap them all up with a summary on the last day. The rums were all tasted together, blind, in a four-hour session, using the original (retasted) El Dorado 15 with a non-blind score of 82, as a control baseline. All point scores relate to that rum. As for all these [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (White Port Finish) – Review

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Jul 312018
 
El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (White Port Finish) - Review

This is the third short form review of the six “finished” variations of the 15 year old El Dorado rums. Because the basic information is similar in general – the original 15 year old is the core of it all, of course – I’ll be briefer than usual in my descriptions, rather than provide an essay in each case; and then wrap them all up with a summary on the last day. The rums were all tasted together, blind, in a four-hour session, using the original (retasted) El Dorado 15 with a non-blind score of 82, as a control baseline. [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (Ruby Port Finish) – Review

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Jul 302018
 
El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (Ruby Port Finish) - Review

This is the second quick look of the six “finished” variations of the 15 year old El Dorado rums. Because the basic information is similar in general – the original 15 year old is the core of it all, of course – I’ll use the short form to describe them rather than an essay in each case, and then wrap them all up with a summary on the last day. The rums were all tasted together, blind, in a four-hour session, using the original (retasted) El Dorado 15 with a non-blind score of 82, as a control baseline. All point [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (Red Wine Finish) – Review

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Jul 282018
 
El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum (Red Wine Finish) - Review

This entire week I’ll look at the six “finished” variations of the 15 year old El Dorado rums, one per day. Because the basic information is similar in general – the 15 year old is the core of it all, of course – I’ll use the short form to describe them rather than an essay in each case, and then wrap them all up with a summary on the last day. The rums were all tasted together, blind, in a four-hour session, using the original El Dorado 15 with a non-blind score of 82, as a control baseline. All point [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Courcelles 1972 31 Year Old Rhum Vieux (42%) – Review

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Jul 122018
 
Velier Courcelles 1972 31 Year Old Rhum Vieux (42%) - Review

These days, anyone finding a rum three decades old had better hold on to it, because they’re getting rarer all the time. As prices for the 1970s and 1980s rums climb past the fourth digit, locating one can be an equally fortunate and frustrating exercise…depending on how it turns out. As to why Velier chose to issue two rums of the same distillation and aging dates, at two different strengths, well, we know he has done this before, most famously with the entire Caroni line and some of the pre-Age Demerara rums. Of course, it’s possible that Velier in this [Click here for the full review…]


Kill Devil Cuba (Sancti Spiritus) 1999 17 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jul 102018
 
Kill Devil Cuba (Sancti Spiritus) 1999 17 Year Old Rum - Review

Now that Americans can bring back Cuban booze without sanction, it’s likely that their rums will get a boost in sales, and if the Havana Club trademark war ever gets resolved – though I doubt it will happen any time soon – then we’ll see many more on the market. However, at this period in time, over and above the big names from the island like Santiago de Cuba or Havana Club, to get seriously aged juice that’s really from Cuba, we still have to look primarily at the independents for now. One of these is Kill Devil, named — [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 2000 15YO Rum (Hampden) – Review

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Jul 072018
 
Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 2000 15YO Rum (Hampden) - Review

These days Jamaican rums which were previously and mostly blending fodder are getting not only a new lease on life but a resurgence of their reputation that is so massive and enthusiast-driven that it’s led to the re-emergence of names like Longpond, Worthy Park, Clarendon, Inswood, Monymusk, New Yarmouth, Hampden Estate (and others), that might be giving Appleton some sleepless nights. Lovers of the style can’t seem to get enough of them, which goes a long way to demonstrating public boredom with pallid blended meh-rums that have suffused much of the consuming landscape for the last decades. People were and [Click here for the full review…]


Fernandes Distillers

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Jul 052018
 
Fernandes Distillers

Sometimes looking at companies that have ceased operations is interesting (Renegade was one), and the historical detail behind the Forres Park Puncheon made by Angostura was engrossing enough that some additional research was warranted, not least because the moniker “Fernandes” remains on the labels of some currently available Trinidad rums, and some might be curious as to the background The Puncheon was originally made by the Fernandes Group in Trinidad & Tobago, which had its roots in the efforts of a Madeiran (Portuguese) immigrant named Manoel Fernandes, who established an import business for wine and spirits in the late 1880s [Click here for the full review…]


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