21 Great Whites

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Nov 012017
 
21 Great Whites

* All apologies to those who like the Bacardi Superior, Lamb’s White and other filtered, smooth, bland (dare I say boring?) 40% white rums in their cocktails, or who just like to get hammered on whatever is cheap to get and easily available – but you can do better.  For anyone who likes a massive white rum reeking of esters and funk and God only knows what else, one of the great emergent trends in the last decade has surely been the new selection and quality of white rums from around the world.  Almost all are unaged, some are pot [Click here for the full review…]


Tanduay 1854 Blended Rum – Review

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Oct 282017
 
Tanduay 1854 Blended Rum - Review

#397 *Warning – This is not a 15 Year Old Rum In late 2010 an interesting rum crossed my path, one of my first from Asia, the Philippine Tanduay Superior 12 year old, which I thought was quite a nice rum at a time when double-digit aged rums were often beyond the reach of my slender purse (or the interest of importers).  Re-reading that review after a seven-year gap I wouldn’t change much…maybe the word “excellence” in the final summing-up is a bit to enthusiastic (blame it on my youth and inexperience if you wish).  What’s interesting about the review [Click here for the full review…]


Our Rum & Spirits Panama 2004 11 Year Old Rum – Review

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Oct 252017
 
Our Rum & Spirits Panama 2004 11 Year Old Rum - Review

#396 Since 2013 when I first wrote about the A.D. Rattray Panama rum from Don Jose, the lack of any real effort by Panamanian rum makers like Origines or Varela Hermanos (among others) to go full proof, issue single barrel, well-aged, or year-vintage bottlings has made me lose a lot of my initial appreciation for that country’s rums and I don’t seek them out with the enthusiasm of previous years.  There’s just too much mystery and obfuscation going on with Panamanian distillate, and other rums which crossed my path more recently, like the Malecon 1979, Canalero, and Ron Maja were [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Courcelles 1972 31 Year Old Rhum Vieux (54%) – Review

 2 Responses »
Oct 202017
 
Velier Courcelles 1972 31 Year Old Rhum Vieux (54%) - Review

#395 Velier’s star shone brightly in 2017, so much so that if you were following the October 2017 UK rumfest on Facebook, it almost seemed like they took over the joint and nothing else really mattered.  Luca’s collaboration with Richard Seale of Foursquare over the last few years resulted the vigorous promotion of a new rum classification system, as well as the spectacular 2006 ten year old and the Triptych (with more to come); and for Velier’s 70th Anniversary – marked by events throughout the year – a whole raft of rums got issued from Jamaica, Barbados, St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, [Click here for the full review…]


Smith & Cross Traditional Jamaican Rum – Review

 2 Responses »
Oct 112017
 
Smith & Cross Traditional Jamaican Rum - Review

Yeah, I’m chugging along behind the other reviewers, pulling late into the station on this one.  The Smith & Cross Jamaican rum has been on people’s radar for ages now, so it’s not as if this review will do much except to raise its profile infinitesimally.  Still, given its reputation, you can understand why, when I finally came across it – courtesy of a great bartender in Toronto who, by stocking stuff like this somehow manages to defeat the LCBO’s best attempts to dumb down the Canadian rum drinking public – both excitement and expectation warred in the cockles of [Click here for the full review…]


Gordon & MacPhail Demerara 1974-1999 25 Year Old Rum – Review

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Oct 092017
 
Gordon & MacPhail Demerara 1974-1999 25 Year Old Rum - Review

#393 By now just about everyone knows that the Gordon and MacPhail Longpond 1941 58 year old walks and talks de Jamaican like a boss.  That thing gave super-aged rums a massive boost in visibility, showing that the patient, off-the-scale ageing of rums can be done with some care in Europe and come out at the other end with a profile that zooms to the top of the charts.  I seriously doubt a tropical aged rum could survive that long without being reduced to a thimbleful, and rarely with such quality.  Alas, the feat has almost never been replicated (except [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World: El Dorado 21 Year Old Rum

 5 Responses »
Oct 052017
 
Key Rums of the World: El Dorado 21 Year Old Rum

#392 As the years roll by, I have come to the conclusion that the last decade will be regarded as the Golden Age of Rum – not just because of Velier, Silver Seal, Moon Imports, Rum Nation, Ekte, Samaroli, Compagnie des Indes, Secret Treasures (and all their cousins), but also because of the amazing writers who have emerged to chronicle their adventures with rum.  Somehow, social media and blogging software have formed a nexus with rum makers that allowed previously niche brands to simply explode onto the stage, raising awareness and knowledge to unprecedented heights. However, an unanticipated side effect [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum Barik Premiere Cuvée ESB Brut de Fût – Review

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Oct 032017
 
Rhum Barik Premiere Cuvée ESB Brut de Fût - Review

#391 When in your cups, you could argue that Haitian clairins parallel the development of rum as a whole.  Just as rum (and rhum) was ignored for a long time, so were the indigenous likkers of Haiti.  And I posit that just as rum worldwide is going through a new golden age, so are clairins (with cachacas coming on strong). So far we have met amazingly pungent, raw and tasty white lightning from the stills of Sajous, Casimir and Vaval, which were promoted and given great visibility by Luca Gargano of Velier (to his lasting credit) and I’ve been fortunate [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Barbados (Foursquare) 2006 9 Year Old Rum (Denmark) – Review

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Sep 292017
 
Compagnie des Indes Barbados (Foursquare) 2006 9 Year Old Rum (Denmark) - Review

#390 After messing round with other Bajan rums for a while, I finally came to the Compagnie des Indes FourSquare 9 year old, and had to concede that even setting aside the headline-grabbing 2006 or Triptych or Criterion releases, this was what I was looking for and which almost none of the three other caskers — the Cadenhead BMMG and 10 year old and the Isla del Ron — had not provided.  Mount Gay’s indie fullproof bruisers were certainly interesting and made powerful statements for their distillery of origin, but either Florent picked more judiciously than Cadenhead or the Isla [Click here for the full review…]


Ron White Cat Caribbean Light White Rum

 3 Responses »
Sep 262017
 
Ron White Cat Caribbean Light White Rum

Rumaniacs Review #057 | 0457 Behind the please-don’t-hurt-me facade of this sadly underproofed excuse for a rum (or ron) lie some fascinating snippets of company and rum history which is a bit long for a Rumaniacs review, so I’ll add it at the bottom.  Short version, this is a German made rum from the past, distributed from Flensburg, which was a major rum emporium in north Germany that refined sugar from the Danish West Indies until 1864 when they switched to Jamaican rum. But as for this brand, little is known, not even from which country the distillate originates (assuming [Click here for the full review…]


Isla del Ron 2000 12 Year Old Barbados Rum – Review

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Sep 242017
 
Isla del Ron 2000 12 Year Old Barbados Rum - Review

#389 Based in Germany, Isla del Ron is not a very well known indie, and as of this writing seem to have only done 17 different single cask rum bottlings, from as wide afield as Barbados, Jamaica, Panama, Fiji, Brazil, Guyana, Cuba, Martinique, Nicaragua, and Reunion. Initially founded in 2009 by Thomas Ewer, it concentrated on bottling small quantities of Scotch whiskies, and began with rums in 2013. In the paucity of their history and selections, and their slim-pickin’s website, I get the impression they have a small operation going, something a bit bigger than, oh, Spirits of Old Man [Click here for the full review…]


Cadenhead Green Label Barbados 2000 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Sep 212017
 
Cadenhead Green Label Barbados 2000 10 Year Old Rum - Review

#388 Marco Freyr, in between his densely researched articles on Barrel-Aged-Mind, indulges himself with tasting independent bottlers’ wares, all at cask strength.  Marco does not waste time with the featherweight Bacardis of this world – he goes straight for the brass ring, and analyzes his rums like he was a Swiss watchmaker looking for flaws in the Vacheron Constantin Reference 57260.  Some time back he shipped me some Bajan fullproofs – being amused, perhaps, at my earlier work on Mount Gay’s XO, and feeling I should see what others did with their juice, both now and in the past.  This [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum Negresco “First Quality” Very Old

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Sep 172017
 
Rhum Negresco "First Quality" Very Old

Rumaniacs Review #056 | 0456 I got this curious thing through separate channels from the usual Rumaniacs (a trend I foresee continuing) and it’s a mini-bottle insufficient to allow me to share it to everyone…so, sorry mes amis.  Still, it’s one of these delightful mystery rhums about which just about nothing turns up on a search, except an old French eBay listing which suggests this is a French West Indian rhum from 1953 (unconfirmed, but how cool is that year, right?) bottled at 44% ABV, so in that sense it conforms to all the reasons the ‘Maniacs exist in the [Click here for the full review…]


Cadenhead’s Barbados Rum “BMMG” Mount Gay 2000 8 Year Old – Review

 2 Responses »
Sep 142017
 
Cadenhead's Barbados Rum "BMMG" Mount Gay 2000 8 Year Old - Review

  #387 Mount Gay out of Barbados is somewhat in the background of Bajan rum-making these days, maybe feeling like Huzur in Satyajit Ray’s 1958 classic “The Music Room”.  Understandable, since all the headlines these days are about the 2006 ten year old, the Criterion, Triptych and all the other amazing Foursquare releases.  And that’s a shame because there are some interesting indie bottlings out there from the island, as well as Mount Gay’s own recent cask strength work which I’ll get to one of these days. Today, then, let’s discuss the mastodon of the Cadenhead BMMG 66.3% which was [Click here for the full review…]


Saint-James Cuvée 250 Ans

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Sep 102017
 
Saint-James Cuvée 250 Ans

*** Rumaniacs Review #055 | 0455 About the only place this rhum falls down is that for all the information we have on it, it leaves us begging for more.  It is a heritage (or “halo”) edition rhum, a bland of six millésimes, those years considered to be of exceptional quality – the legendary 1885 (R-010, remember that?), 1934, 1952, 1976, 1998 and 2000, and yeah, what else could we possibly want? Well, how much of each was in the blend, for one, and how old each of those components was, and further, how much (if at all) the final [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Small Batch Collection – Port Mourant 1999 17 Year Old – Review

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Sep 062017
 
Rum Nation Small Batch Collection - Port Mourant 1999 17 Year Old - Review

#386 Let’s be honest – 2017 is the year of FourSquare.  No other company since Velier’s post-2012 explosion on the popular rum scene, has had remotely like this kind of impact, and if you doubt that, just swim around the sea of social media and see how many references there are to Triptych and Criterion in the last six months.  Which is admittedly an odd way to begin a review of a competing product, but I wanted to mention that for all the (deservedly) amazing press surrounding the latest hot juice in the rumiverse, there remain equally solid names as [Click here for the full review…]


Neisson L’Esprit 70º Blanc

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Sep 042017
 
Neisson L'Esprit 70º Blanc

Rumaniacs Review #54 | 0454 The fourth in the Rumaniacs Neisson lineup (though I’m sure they will be more), this thing is a massive falling anvil of oomph, and takes Le Rhum Par Neisson (R-053), also a blanc, out behind the schoolyard and whomps it with an extra twenty degrees of proof…and while the previous blanc elicited strong opinions for and against its quality, thus far I think the general consensus of this one is that it it one hell of a white rhum, to be had with a mixture of caution and enjoyment. Colour – white Strength – 70% [Click here for the full review…]


Mombacho 1989 19 Year Old Central American Rum – Review

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Aug 312017
 
Mombacho 1989 19 Year Old Central American Rum - Review

#385 Perhaps it would be better to start with the straightforward tasting, lest my snark bend your mind were I to lead in with the commentary instead of finishing with it. The Mombacho 1989 Central American rum does, admittedly, boast and flourish some impressive chops on the label: 19 year old rum (1989-2008), finishing for the final two years in armagnac casks, reasonable strength of 43% (I said ‘reasonable’, not ‘outstanding’). Looking at other bottles of their range it seems within the bounds of reason to assume it’s from Nicaragua, though the ‘Central American’ noted on the label might suggest [Click here for the full review…]


Le Rhum Par Neisson (Blanc)

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Aug 272017
 
Le Rhum Par Neisson (Blanc)

Rumaniacs Review #053 | 0453 Another Neisson in the series, one to leave a drinker scratching his head in bafflement.  It’s not a bad rum, just an odd one, exhibiting some of  the characteristics of other unaged whites, then going off to check out some side roads…not always to its advantage Colour – White Strength – 52.5% Nose – Hello Sajous…I mean Neisson, sorry. Whew, quite a bite here – salty, briny, and then…labneh, or fresh yoghurt. And sugar, so weird, like sucking tea through a white sugar cube. Some tar, herbals, iodine and medicine, and light (very light) florals [Click here for the full review…]


Chantal Comte L’Arbre du Voyageur 2001 Reserve Speciale – Review

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Aug 242017
 
Chantal Comte L'Arbre du Voyageur 2001 Reserve Speciale - Review

#384 The rhums of Chantal Comte have been of consistently high quality throughout my relatively brief acquaintanceship with her brand.  Mme Comte, you may recall, is an independent bottler with the twin advantages of having a long association with spirits (she is the owner of a wine making chateau in France) as well as a boatload of familial connections and wasta in Martinique.  The La Tour L’Or HSE, the 1980 Trois Rivieres and the 1977 Trois Rivieres rhums were all products that impressed, and I had thought so even when my experience with agricoles was more limited.  There was something [Click here for the full review…]


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