Rhum des Plantations Saint-James 1885 – Review

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Sep 242018
 
Rhum des Plantations Saint-James 1885 - Review

By now just about anyone in touch with the rum blogosphere on social media is aware of the add-on to the Hampden Rums launch hosted by La Maison-Velier in September 2018: the “Rum Tasting of the Century” — though I believe the words “…so far” were were silently tacked on by some of us participants, hoping against hope for another (better, older) one before we get laid to rest like Nelson in a cask of DOK. Nor are many unaware of the four aged unicorn rums we were privileged to try as part of the Tasting – Skeldon 1978, Bally [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Skeldon 1978 27 YO Full Proof Old Demerara Rum – Review

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Sep 192018
 
Velier Skeldon 1978 27 YO Full Proof Old Demerara Rum - Review

Every rum drinker who’s been at it for a while has a personal unicorn. It might not always be some hoary old grandfather of a rum, forgotten by all but barking-mad rum nerds, or the miniscule output of a distillery no-one now remembers (like the Heisenberg Distillery) — sometimes it’s just a rum that’s hard to get and isn’t for sale in local markets. Occasionally it’s even one they possess already but which evokes strong positive memories. One of mine has always been the Skeldon 1978, which was too rare or too expensive (usually both) for me to acquire. It [Click here for the full review…]


The “Harewood House” 1780 Barbados Rum (“Light”) – Review

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Sep 162018
 
The "Harewood House" 1780 Barbados Rum ("Light") - Review

The Harewood Barbados rum from 1780 which was trotted out with a tantara of trumpets and a choir of angels at the Tasting of the Century held in London on September 13th, 2018, will probably stand the test of time as the oldest rum that any reviewer or rum aficionado will ever be able to try – not old in terms of ageing (which in this case is unknown), just with respect to how very long ago it was made. It was exceptional in so many respects that it even eclipsed the launch of the Hampden rums which (together with [Click here for the full review…]


J. Bally Rhum Agricole Blanc – Review

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Sep 102018
 
J. Bally Rhum Agricole Blanc - Review

How this blanc J. Bally succeeds as well as it does is a source of wonder. I tried it and was left blinking in appreciation at its overall quality. Like all Bally rums made these days, it’s AOC certified, half pure alcohol (50% ABV), and unaged (rested for a few months in stainless steel tanks before bottling), and I honestly expected something a lot more aggressive than it actually was. In that ability it had to walk the tightrope between ageing and no aging, between too strong or too weak, between jagged edges and smooth gentling lies a lot of [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado Rare Collection Enmore 1996-2017 20YO Rum – Review

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Sep 082018
 
El Dorado Rare Collection Enmore 1996-2017 20YO Rum - Review

The Enmore wooden coffey still is one of the most famous in the rumiverse, and is linked indelibly with Guyana and DDL. Somewhat subtler than the Port Mourant double wooden pot still and more elegant than the Versailles single wooden pot, rums deriving from it don’t always succeed – I believe it takes real skill to make a top-end 90-point rum from its output. But when it works well and is done well — as this one does and is — then it shines. It’s an unfortunate thing that DDL did such low key marketing for the Rares 2.0, because [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado Rare Collection – Port Mourant 1997-2017 20 YO Rum – Review

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Sep 052018
 
El Dorado Rare Collection - Port Mourant 1997-2017 20 YO Rum - Review

DDL kinda snuck behind our backs and released another set of rums from the Rare Collection back in 2017, and the mere fact that I would have to mention this fact in my opening remarks shows how quietly the whole thing was handled, to the probable mystification of many. The DDL and El Dorado Facebook pages don’t mention them, the El Dorado web page is out of action (either by itself or as a redirect from the DDL page) and even the big FB rumclubs hardly make mention of it – except a couple of days ago when some questions [Click here for the full review…]


Mount Gay XO Cask Stength Limited Edition Rum – Review

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Sep 022018
 
Mount Gay XO Cask Stength Limited Edition Rum - Review

Back in early 2018, when I wrote about the Mount Gay Black Barrel rum, Ivar de Laat, one of the rum chums in Toronto, grumbled “I wish Mount Gay would be a little bolder. I find it all too friendly and not daring enough.” Were he to try this one — at the time he had not — he might possibly reconsider the first part of that statement….but not necessarily the second. Because the XO Cask Strength is equally friendly as its lesser proofed predecessor…and definitely bolder. Much bolder. And in that lies its attraction – that and its limited-edition [Click here for the full review…]


Doorly’s 5 YO Fine Old Barbados Rum (1980s)

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Aug 292018
 
Doorly's 5 YO Fine Old Barbados Rum (1980s)

Rumaniacs Review #083 | 0544 Here’s a Doorly’s five year old rum that predates their acquisition by Foursquare in 1992. Note the Alleyne, Arthur & Hunte script at the bottom – they were also a merchant bottler in Barbados (they made the original Old Brigand and the Special Barbados Rum), who acquired Doorly’s in the 1970s and were themselves taken over by Foursquare in 1993. So the best we can date this specific Doorly’s rum is within that period (I’ll place it in the 1980s). The fascination is, of course, in how the product from back then compares against the [Click here for the full review…]


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…]


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