Velier Caroni 1983-2008 25 Year Old Heavy Trinidad Rum

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Dec 152017
 
Velier Caroni 1983-2008 25 Year Old Heavy Trinidad Rum

Rumaniacs Review #064 | 0469 When sampling yet another Caroni from the glory years of the 1980s, it’s something like opening a long-shut box redolent of the past, and maybe one can be forgiven for – in these times – rhapsodizing about the way hard honest rums were supposedly made by sweaty proles who had no patience for fancy finishes, plate manipulation or barrel strategy.  So in a way it’s ironic that Caroni was not considered a particularly good rum back then – it was not that well known, it certainly wasn’t the estate’s prime focus, its signature taste was [Click here for the full review…]


Habitation Velier “Last Ward” Barbados 2007 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Dec 132017
 
Habitation Velier "Last Ward" Barbados 2007 10 Year Old Rum - Review

#468 Velier’s Last Ward is an elegaic and haunting rum that evokes memories of old times and old places, yet is brought smack bang up to date for the modern connoisseur and rum lover.  It is a summing up of all things Mount Gay that matter if you’re in tune with it, just a really good rum if you’re not, and is one to savour and appreciate and enjoy no matter what your state of mind or preference in rum.  One can only wonder, with all the great distilleries that are represented in the independent bottlers’ more popular and better-known [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Caroni 1982-2005 23 Year Old Heavy Trinidad Rum

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Dec 102017
 
Velier Caroni 1982-2005 23 Year Old Heavy Trinidad Rum

Rumaniacs Review #063 | 0467 Having tried several of the ur-proofed rums of the rumiverse (Sunset Very Strong 84.5% and Marienburg 90% come to mind) I must confess that while stronger stuff exists, trying high-test like this makes me think I’ve run out of steroidal fortitude. It’s a shattering experience, not just because of its strength but because somehow it pushes all the boundaries of a very precise Caroni profile – it’s like getting hit with the spirituous equivalent of a fully boosted luxury freight train (assuming Louis Vuitton made one).  And it is to its credit that it not [Click here for the full review…]


Dictador Best of 1977 Solera Aged Rum – Review

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Dec 072017
 
Dictador Best of 1977 Solera Aged Rum - Review

#466 “Sample #18 reminds me of a Don Papa,” grumbled a Philippine friend of mine, who was blind tasting some samples I had sent over to Quezon City. “Hot distillate on the nose, very sweet.” In those few words he encapsulated something of my own unease about the Dictador rums out of Colombia, because while hydrometer tests reveal no adulteration for the 12 and 20 year soleras, and probably none for the Insolent and Perpetual (they measure 3-4 g/L which is within the margin of error), the plain fact is that they simply taste too damned sweet…a characteristic of most [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Caroni 1983-2005 22 Year Old Heavy Trinidad Rum

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Dec 052017
 
Velier Caroni 1983-2005 22 Year Old Heavy Trinidad Rum

Rumaniacs Review #062 | 0465 It’s a mind game that never gets old – how many Caroni bottles are there?  I speculated that Velier alone likely has around a million in circulation and when one sees an outturn like this – 20,986 bottles! – I think that even though the long-closed distillery’s rums are now becoming must-haves on par with the Demeraras, there’s no danger of running out of possibilities in the near future.  Though as I remarked once, when we start to see Caronis being issued from the post-2000 era, the end will be near. Be that as it [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World: El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum

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Dec 022017
 
Key Rums of the World: El Dorado 15 Year Old Rum

#464 Seen over a span of decades, it is more clear than ever that the El Dorado 15 year old is a seminal rum of our time. “It is a bridge” I wrote back in 2010 in my unscored review, remarking that it straddles the territory between the lower end twelve year old and the 21 year old, and represents a sort of intermediary in value and price and age. The best of all worlds for El Dorado, you might say, and indeed it remains, even twenty five years after its introduction in 1992, one of the most popular rums [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Caroni 1982-2006 24 Year Old Light Trinidad Rum

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Nov 292017
 
Velier Caroni 1982-2006 24 Year Old Light Trinidad Rum

Rumaniacs Review #061 | 0463 So here’s a Caroni marked ‘Light’which supposedly means somewhat less esters than the one we looked at last week (the ‘Heavy’) but let me assure you that even though it’s a shade less proofed than that one (and less esters, supposedly), it in no way lacks for really deep tastes. If I had to chose I honestly think I would select this one for the buy…always assuming I could find it at all.  The 12 and 15 and 23 year old Veliers from the closed distillery are issued in the thousands of bottles, which is [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation 1986 30 Year Old Blended Jamaican Rum – Review

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Nov 272017
 
Rum Nation 1986 30 Year Old Blended Jamaican Rum - Review

#462 For almost two decades, Rum Nation issued very special 20+ year old Jamaican Rums in the Supreme Lord series, always at a relatively quaffable 40-45% and with that oh-so-cool retro wooden box and jute packing that has now been discontinued; then a year or two back they decided to go with a new line, the “Small Batch Rare Rums” – this was to differentiate the cask strength line of more limited bottlings from the blended products with larger outturns, which Fabio sometimes refers to as “entry level” and which I always thought were quite good (ever since I bought [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Caroni 1982-2006 24 Year Old Heavy Trinidad Rum

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Nov 232017
 
Velier Caroni 1982-2006 24 Year Old Heavy Trinidad Rum

Rumaniacs Review #060 | 0461 If there is ever a rum to compete with Foursquare’s latest drool-worthy offerings, it surely must be Velier’s Caroni rums.  Who would have thought that a rum many thought was over-tarred and phenol-ly back in the day would have ascended to become one of the must-haves of the rumiverse?  About four years ago I saw an Italian listing for some thirty or more Caronis which he was letting go for €2000 altogether…and we all thought was batsh**t crazy expensive, smirked and moved on, which goes to show how much we knew. Nowadays, can you imagine that [Click here for the full review…]


Bielle Rhum Vieux Agricole Brut de Fût 2007 7 Year Old – Review

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Nov 212017
 
Bielle Rhum Vieux Agricole Brut de Fût 2007 7 Year Old - Review

#460 The nose of the seven year old 57.3% Bielle is deceptive in the extreme, quiet and camouflaged, and sneaks up on you like a spec ops team on dawn patrol through a foggy jungle.  At first there’s not much…vague hints of grass, sap and sweet honey. Maybe some herbs, an earthy sort of musk. A flower or two.  It’s all very commonplace for a Guadeloupe rhum and you might think after a few seconds of careful sniffing, “What, is this all there is?” …before it opens up and then it’s like Major T.J. Kong cheerfully went on the offensive [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Caroni 1984-2006 22 Year Old Heavy Trinidad Rum

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Nov 182017
 
Velier Caroni 1984-2006 22 Year Old Heavy Trinidad Rum

Rumaniacs Review #059 | 0459 If we assume Luca found four thousand barrels at that legendary Caroni warehouse, and the average outturn from each was 250 bottles, a simplistic calculation suggests somewhere in the neighborhood of one million bottles of the Trini juice from Velier alone is waiting to be bought, and that doesn’t even count the other independents out there who are releasing their own.  Figuring out which Velier Caroni to buy is complicated by the bewildering array of aged expressions that have been released, some differing only by the proof point (years and age being the same) – but the [Click here for the full review…]


Dillon Rhum Vieux Agricole XO 12 Year Old – Review

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Nov 152017
 
Dillon Rhum Vieux Agricole XO 12 Year Old - Review

#400 Not enough has been written about the rhums of Dillon, a rum-maker in central Martinique whose origins stretch back many centuries and at the time when I was in Paris in 2016 I not unnaturally went for one of the better ones available (recommended by the estimable Jerry Gitany, who hosted me for a very pleasant three hour session in Christian de Montaguère’s shop, while the Little Caner concealed his boredom upstairs). I tried it twice, once there, and once at home and can confirm that it’s quite an interesting rhum. Dillon traces its history way back to 1690 [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World: Mount Gay XO Rum

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Nov 122017
 
Key Rums of the World: Mount Gay XO Rum

#399 For decades Mount Gay was considered the premium rum of Barbados, and rested its claim to fame, among other things, on being the oldest rum distillery in the Caribbean (there are papers stating its antecedents going back to the mid 1600s).  Its flagship 1703 was the halo rum of the island and the XO was perhaps the standard mid-priced high-quality Barbados rum with which everyone was familiar – and certainly Sir Scrotimus’s hating on anyone who didn’t champion that rum didn’t hurt (after all, why else would he be such a dick about it if it wasn’t good, right?). [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Caroni 1982-2005 23 Year Old Light Trinidad Rum

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Nov 082017
 
Velier Caroni 1982-2005 23 Year Old Light Trinidad Rum

Rumaniacs Review #058 | 0458 If there ever was a rival to the famed and fabled Demerara rums issued by Velier, it is surely the Trinidadian Caroni line, which is wept over by aficionados and considered the Port Ellen of rum (my personal belief is that Port Ellen is the Caroni of whisky, but anyway…).  They hail from the long-shuttered Trinidadian distillery which closed in 2002, and it has now passed into legend how Luca Gargano found thousands of barrels of ageing rum on the estate in a forgotten warehouse, and managed to buy most of them. Points have to [Click here for the full review…]


Foursquare “Criterion” (ECS Mark V) 2007 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 062017
 
Foursquare "Criterion" (ECS Mark V) 2007 10 Year Old Rum - Review

#398 Everyone has a favourite Foursquare rum and the nice thing is, like most large large brands, there’s something for everyone in the lineup, which spans the entire gamut of price and strength and quality. For some it’s the less-proofed rums still issued for the mass market, like Rum 66 or Doorly’s; for others it’s the halo-rums such as the Triptych and 2006 ten year old.  However, it my considered opinion that when you come down to the intersection of value for money and reasonable availability, you’re going to walk far to beat the Exceptional Cask series. And when Forbes [Click here for the full review…]


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

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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

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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…]


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