The Lone Caner – Page 35 – A Solo Reviewer's Take on Rums

Ron Zacapa Centenario 23 Años (Early 2000s)

Apr 292018

Rumaniacs Review #076 | 0506 Ron Zacapa from Guatemala, now owned by Diageo, has been a poster boy for adulteration, over-sweetness and confusing (misleading?) labels for the entire time I’ve been reviewing rums. The current late-2010s edition of the Centenario 23 (first introduced in 1976 and now dropping the “Años”) is still a crowd favourite…but here we have an older vintage, back when the wrapped bottle was still in vogue (Rum Nation copied it for the Millonario 15 when Zacapa discontinued it some years ago)…and if scuttlebutt is to be believed, this thing really is 23 years old, before they [Click here for the full review…]

Key Rums of the World – Rivers Royale White Overproof (Grenada)

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Apr 252018

Key Rums of the World - Rivers Royale White Overproof (Grenada)

#505 On initial inspection, Rivers Royale Grenadian Rum – a white overproof – is not one of the first rums you’d immediately think of as a representation of its country, its style, or a particular type — perhaps Westerhall or Clarke’s Court are more in your thoughts. It is made in small quantities at River Antoine on the spice island of Grenada, is rarely found outside there, and even though it can be bought on the UK site Masters of Malt, it barely registers on the main bloggers’ review sites. Yet anyone who tries it swears by it. I’ve never [Click here for the full review…]

El Dorado 50th Anniversary Grand Special Reserve 33 YO Rum – Review

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Apr 232018

El Dorado 50th Anniversary Grand Special Reserve 33 YO Rum - Review

#504 Two of my favourite metaphorical rum-terms are halo rums and unicorns, which are monikers coming to our awareness from opposing points on the spectrum. A unicorn is a desperately sought-after personal wanna-have, usually characterized by rarity and only sometimes by a high price; Examples of unicorns would be the G&M 1941 58 year old, Velier Skeldon 1973 or Port Mourant 1972, first editions of the Rum Nation line issued in 1999 and 2000, Appleton’s 1960s decanters, or aged agricoles from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s (or earlier). A halo rum on the other hand is a massively hyped special [Click here for the full review…]

Rendsburger Port Mourant 1975 32 Year Old Rum – Review

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Apr 072018

Rendsburger Port Mourant 1975 32 Year Old Rum - Review

#503 If you’re looking at this title and muttering to yourself “What the hell is Rendsburger?” you’re certainly not alone. Aside from Spirits of Old Man out of Germany or Norsk Cask from Denmark, they may be among the least known independent bottlers out there and before a bunch of samples drifted across my scope, I sure hadn’t heard about them either. Strictly speaking, Rendsburg is the north-west German town close to Flensburg in which the parent company Kruger – a small, family-run whisky and spirits specialist mainly known for its large whisky auction house – has its home. Therefore [Click here for the full review…]

Chalong Bay White Rhum – Review

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Apr 032018

#502 Asia may be the next region to discover for rummies. Some companies from there already have good visibility – think Nine Leaves or Ryoma from Japan, Tanduay from the Phillipines, Amrut from India, Laotian from Laos and so on – and we should not forget Thailand. So far I’ve only tried the Mekhong “rum” from there, and that was a while ago…but for the last few years I’ve been hearing about a new company called Chalong Bay, from the resort area of Phuket; and when John Go and I traded samples a while back, he sent me one of [Click here for the full review…]

El Dorado 3 Year Old White Rum – Review

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Mar 312018

#501 If there was ever a standard strength, filtered white rum that could drag the Bacardi Superior behind the outhouse and whale the tar out of it, this is the one. I bought the thing on a whim, tasted it with some surprise and ended up being quietly impressed with the overall quality. I know it’s made to be the base for cocktails, and when it comes to badass white-rum-bragging-rights from Mudland the local High Wine is the Big Gun – but you know, as either a trial sipping experience, a cocktail ingredient or just to have something different that [Click here for the full review…]

The 500th Review

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Mar 272018

Both of my eagle-eyed Constant Readers probably observed that I skipped the 400th review essay last year: I brought the 60+ Rumaniacs reviews into the numbering and so jumped right past it, but in any case, 500 seemed like a better number to be going on with. Am I happy to reach this milestone? Oh yes. But that I have done so is a testament less to my own efforts, than those of readers, commentators and friends who continually provide encouragement and advice (and lots of corrections and criticisms). Even Mrs. Caner graces my work with an occasional nod of [Click here for the full review…]

Damoiseau 1953 31 Year Old Rhum Vieux – Review

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Mar 252018

Damoiseau 1953 31 Year Old Rhum Vieux - Review

#500 In one of those odd coincidences that crop up from time to time, I was polishing up my essay for one of Damoiseau’s ultra-premium halo rums – a 31-year-old inky bad boy from 1953 which is usually too rare or too pricey for most to bother with – when Single Cask posted his own in-depth evaluation. We had a good laugh over that one, but in a way it’s good too, because while one person’s review of a single rum is fine, a better opinion can be formed with several people putting their snoots and their pens in. Age-wise, [Click here for the full review…]

Velier Port Mourant 1997-2012 15 YO Rum – Review

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Mar 212018

Velier Port Mourant 1997-2012 15 YO Rum - Review

#499 Velier’s 1997 Port Mourant expression announces its presence with the sort of growling distant rumble of an approaching storm system, igniting emotions of awe and amazement (and maybe fear) in the unwary. It’s 65.7% of fast-moving badass, blasting into a tasting session with F5 force, flinging not just bags but whole truckloads of flavour into your face. You think I’m making this up for effect, right? Nope. The nose, right from the start, even when just cracking the bottle, is ragingly powerful, shot through with lightning flashes of licorice, blueberries, blackberries, off-colour bananas, citrus, pineapple slices in syrup. [Click here for the full review…]

El Dorado Rare Collection – Port Mourant 1999-2015 16 YO PM

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Mar 192018

El Dorado Rare Collection – Port Mourant 1999-2015 16 YO PM

#498 By the time we get to the third Rare Collection rum issued by DDL to the market in early 2016, we have to move on from our preconceived notions of how these rums were issued: okay, so they booted Luca out and us rum junkies were pissed, but from a purely business perspective, perhaps we should have seen it coming. And anyway, the world didn’t come to an end, did it? Life continued, taxes got paid, rums got drunk, and civilization endured. Time to move on. It was surely nothing personal, just business, caro amico. Lo capisci, vero? Which [Click here for the full review…]

El Dorado Rare Collection – Enmore 1993-2015 22 YO EHP

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Mar 162018

El Dorado Rare Collection - Enmore 1993-2015 22 YO EHP

#0497 “A cheap shot,” muttered Henrik, referring to DDL stopping Velier’s access to their rums in 2015, and surely channelling the feelings of many. And it was therefore perhaps unavoidable that the initial DDL Rare Collection rums issued in early 2016 were instantly compared to the Age of Demerara Veliers upon whose success they wished to capitalize and whose street cred they sought to supplant. That’s hard cheese and perhaps unfair to the rums, but it was and remains DDL’s cross to bear and they must have known that going in. The question was whether they maintained the standard and [Click here for the full review…]

El Dorado Rare Collection – Versailles 2002-2015 13 YO VSG

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Mar 142018

El Dorado Rare Collection - Versailles 2002-2015 13 YO VSG

#496 It’s been two years since the furore created by the inadvertently premature publication of the Velier catalogue entries for the El Dorado Rare Collection ignited in the minds of the Velier lovers, and I’ve been sitting on the three bottles almost since that time, waiting to get around to them. One of the reasons the reviews were not written immediately was simply that I felt the dust needed to settle down a bit, so that they could be approached with something resembling objectivity. Two years might have been just about enough for me to forget the original reviews that [Click here for the full review…]

Mount Gay Black Barrel Rum – Review

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Mar 112018

#495 Some time ago I called Mount Gay XO one of the Key Rums of the World, and observed that it longevity, decency and general all-purpose usefulness created a shadow in which all subsequently issued Bajan rums to some extent had to live. Times moved on and other profiles started to take precedence in the rumiverse, but Mount Gay, however delinquent in moving into the limited edition or cask strength landscape so effectively colonized by Foursquare, did not entirely rest on its laurels, and did try to experiment here and there to see what else they could pull out of [Click here for the full review…]

Avuá Prata Cachaça – Review

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Mar 072018

#494 The Avuá brand of cachaça has a slightly different pedigree from independents in Europe who buy from brokers, and is closer to that of small new rum companies who buy selected stock direct from distilleries (e.g. Whisper, Toucan, and Real McCoy, for example). Two New Yorkers – one a former brand manager for Red Bull, Pete Nevenglosky, the other a businessman and lawyer, Nate Whitehouse – developed a liking for the spirit and sensed (or thought they could exploit) a rising appreciation for craft spirits in the US – rum generally, cachaça specifically. After some searching and sampling around, [Click here for the full review…]

Avuá Amburana Cachaça – Review

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Mar 042018

#493 The other day I read that there are supposedly forty thousand cachaça producers in Brazil ¹ — if that statistic is actually true, then most are probably from small ops like the 500+ or so in Haiti – backyard moonshineries, rather than medium to large commercial operations. But there is no doubting that they represent a significant slice of the global volume of cane-derived spirits and it’s too bad that so few reviews of them exist (perhaps the lack of exports is to blame – most is drunk in-country; or maybe we need some Brazilian spirits bloggers). A major characteristic of [Click here for the full review…]

Neisson Rhum Agricole Vieux 2005-2014 43%

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Mar 032018

Rumaniacs Review #075 | 0492 Revisited over nearly three years, the seemingly underproofed 43% 2005 Neisson has grown in my estimation; indeed, it wasn’t until I was doing up my tasting notes that I recalled the initial review (R0273 / 86 points) done back in 2015, and realized that it was even better than I recalled, back when Neisson was still too strange, too new to my agricole experience, for its qualities to shine through. Good thing the Sage sent us some more to try, then, because perhaps now I can be more enthusiastic about it. Colour – Amber Strength [Click here for the full review…]

Velier Guadeloupe Rhum Vieux “Basseterre” 1997 – Review

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Feb 262018

Velier Guadeloupe Rhum Vieux "Basseterre" 1997 - Review

#0491 Don’t get so caught up in the Velier’s 70th Anniversary bottlings, their dwindling Demeraras or the now flavour-of-the-month Caronis, that you forget the one-offs, the small stuff, the ones that don’t make waves any longer (if they ever did). Just because the Damoiseau 1980, Courcelles 1972, Basseterre and Rhum Rhum lines don’t make headlines while the aforementioned series do, is actually a good reason to try and find them, for they remain undiscovered treasures in the history of Velier and are often undervalued, or even (gasp!) underpriced. One of these delightful short form works by La Casa di Gargano [Click here for the full review…]

A Velier Port Mourant Tasting Blowout

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Feb 232018

Some days are just harder than others, especially when we put our lives and livers and family time on hold, just say f**kit and do a deep dive into rums that are insanely expensive, excrutiatingly rare and that makes ethanol leak from the eyes of every Velier fan and exiled Mudlander who ever lived. While I would not go so far as to say we suffer for our art (drinking rum unicorns like this? are you kidding?), there is no question that when two of the cool kids in the rumworld – Gregers and Nicolai – managed to put together [Click here for the full review…]

Neisson Rhum Agricole Vieux Brut de Fût 2005-2012

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Feb 202018

Neisson Rhum Agricole Vieux Brut de Fût 2005-2012

Rumaniacs Review #074 | 0490 Almost the last of the Neissons in the current Rumaniacs lineup – and nothing at all wrong with this one either, because Neisson’s overall quality has been remarkably consistent throughout the various samples, and while there are variations in minor points throughout, the bottom line is that aged or young, strong or easy, they are all – all – of a high standard. My love for French Island rums trends more towards Guadeloupe, but if I ever saw a Neisson from Martinique sitting on the shelf, it would always be one I gave serious consideration to [Click here for the full review…]

Banks DIH

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Feb 172018

It is appreciated that the lion’s share of the credit for Guyanese rums goes to Demerara Distillers Limited, who have the spirituous equivalent of a killer app in the famed stills and have capitalized on that big time. In fact, their rums are so unique and well known that they have become stand ins for the entire class of “Demerara Rums”. However, DDL is in fact something of a late entrant to the field, formed in the 1970s by the consolidation of older sugar estates held by departing UK companies like Bookers or Sandbach Parker. A far older brewing company [Click here for the full review…]

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