DDL Diamond Reserve 151 Overproof White Rum – Review

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Jul 252023
 
DDL Diamond Reserve 151 Overproof White Rum - Review

Sometimes I get the uneasy impression that slowly the 151s are fading from common collective rumconsciousness. These long-lived, much-used and oft-feared high proof rums – bottled at what was for years almost the standard for really strong rums (75.5%) and outdone only by a few – were once the kings of the stronger drinks mixes (like the B-52 and the Zombie for example), and many cocktails called for them by number, not name or brand. Yet in my lifetime, we have seen more and more strong rums at high proof invading the market, and even some regular blends are inching [Click here for the full review…]


HSE ‘La Belle Heure Titouan Lamazou’ 2021 Rhum Agricole Blanc – Review

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Jul 192023
 
HSE 'La Belle Heure Titouan Lamazou' 2021 Rhum Agricole Blanc - Review

HSE – or Habitation Saint Etienne – is a small distillery on Martinique whose products I dally with on and off like a lovelorn swain who can’t make up his mind. They have all the usual products attendant upon Martinique’s distilling scene: unaged blancs, aged agricoles of various years with a finish or special barrrel ageing thrown in here or there, the occasional millesime, indie bottlers’ outputs and even a parcellaire or two for those who like to take apart miniscule deviations in a single distillery’s profile. All of the rhums from the distillery which I’ve tried have been very [Click here for the full review…]


Original Hana Bay Premium White Rum (1980s)

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Jul 032023
 
Original Hana Bay Premium White Rum (1980s)

Rumaniacs Review R-155 | 1010 By now we’ve looked at Hana Bay and its other incarnations like Whaler’s and Spirit of Hawaii from Hawaiian Distillers a few times (here, here, here, and here) and there’s nothing new to say abut it. It is no longer being made and the company bio is brief. Hawaiian Distillers made Hana Bay rum from around the 1980s forwards and in 2002 it switched to being made in Kentucky by the brand owners at the time, Heaven Hill, who had acquired the brand from the Levecke Corporation in that year…though they may have just tossed [Click here for the full review…]


Worthy Park 2013 5 YO Double Matured Rum (Cask Selection No.6 “Virgin Oak”) – Review

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Jun 302023
 
Worthy Park 2013 5 YO Double Matured Rum (Cask Selection No.6 "Virgin Oak") - Review

Worthy Park rums at any age just seem to go for the boundary, every single time – no matter how it turns out. The results are rums of consistently decent (or high) quality, day in and day out, and I rarely find a failure, a flea-bitten dog or an also-ran glue-factory candidate in any of them – and this goes all the way back to Rum Nation’s unaged white from 2014 (now matured into one of their regular five year old rums), or the Compagnie’s 2007 7YO and 8 YO  released in 2015. All of which, for their time, shook [Click here for the full review…]


Chalong Bay LMDW Antipodes Collection Lightly Aged Rum (Thailand) – Review

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Jun 262023
 
Chalong Bay LMDW Antipodes Collection Lightly Aged Rum (Thailand) - Review

“Asia may be the next region to discover for rummies,” I wrote back in 2018 when introducing audiences to Chalong Bay for the first time, and nothing between then and now has caused me to significantly alter that off-the-cuff prognostication. Already, back then, we were seeing interesting (if not always world-beating) rums from Tanduay from the Philippines, Mekhong from Thailand, Amrut from India, Sampan from Vietnam, and Laotian from Laos. Australia was ticking along under everyone’s radar, the Pacific islands were just getting more well known, and of course there was always Nine Leaves out of Japan.  Not long after [Click here for the full review…]


That Boutique-y Rum Co. O Reizinho Rum (Batch 3) – Review

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Jun 192023
 
That Boutique-y Rum Co. O Reizinho Rum (Batch 3) - Review

Some rum independents just have a certain…something. A kind of vibe, a sort of cool marketing pizzazz and reputational cred that sets them apart from the increasing number of such companies crowding the marketplace.  It’s a varied sort of thing: sometimes it’s a colourful and interesting owner or brand rep, like Mitch Wilson, Josh Singh, Karl Mudzamba, Eric Kaye, Luca, Fabio or Florent Beuchet. Other times it’s because of really good rums that fly under the  radar, like Velier in the old days, or Tristan Prodhomme’s L’Esprit range, the one-off release of Stolen Overproof. And at other times it’s an [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Bacardi “Select” Rum (Puerto Rico)(1990s)

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Jun 162023
 
Ron Bacardi "Select" Rum (Puerto Rico)(1990s)

Rumaniacs Review #154 | 1006 In this series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’ve been looking at a set of Bacardi rums from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and in this final review I’ll sum up what few observations that can be made. Preamble – The Select is a successor to the venerable “Black” or “Black Label” or “Premium Black.” Some of these labels were [Click here for the full review…]


Bacardi Superior “Premium Black” (Puerto Rico)(1970s/1980s)

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Jun 142023
 
Bacardi Superior "Premium Black" (Puerto Rico)(1970s/1980s)

Rumaniacs Review #153 | 1005 In this series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’re looking at a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a  series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw. Although some online references to the rum suggest a 1990s dating, the “Premium Black” is older, introduced much [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Bacardi Añejo (Mexico)(1970s)

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Jun 122023
 
Ron Bacardi Añejo (Mexico)(1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #152 | 1004 In this series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’re looking at a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a  series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw. The antecedents of the Bacardi Añejo — a word simply meaning “aged” in Spanish — are the same [Click here for the full review…]


Bacardi Gold Reserve (Puerto Rico)(1970s/1980s)

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Jun 092023
 
Bacardi Gold Reserve (Puerto Rico)(1970s/1980s)

Rumaniacs Review #151 | 1003 This series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) is a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a  series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw. Bacardi’s Gold rum (in all its iterations) is one of the oldest continuously made rums in existence, dating back to the [Click here for the full review…]


Bacardi Legendario “Carta Blanca” White Rum (Mexico)(1970s)

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Jun 072023
 
Bacardi Legendario "Carta Blanca" White Rum (Mexico)(1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #150 | 1002 This series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’ll be looking at over the next week or so, is a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a  series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw. Dating this one was interesting. The Legendario Carta Blanca brand (sometimes [Click here for the full review…]


Bacardi Superior “Silver Label” White Rum (Puerto Rico)(Early 1970s)

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Jun 052023
 
Bacardi Superior "Silver Label" White Rum (Puerto Rico)(Early 1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #149 | 1001 This series of Rumaniacs reviews (R-149 to R-154) we’ll be looking at over the next week or two, is a set of Bacardis from the 1970s to the 1990s that were all part of a small collection I picked up, spanning three decades, and made in Mexico and Puerto Rico – they display something of what rums from that bygone era was like, and the final review will have a series of notes summing up what few conclusions we may be able to draw. This Bacardi Superior noted as being “Silver Label” is the doddering [Click here for the full review…]


The Last Drop Distillers 1976 Very Old Jamaican Rum – Review

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Jun 022023
 
The Last Drop Distillers 1976 Very Old Jamaican Rum - Review

As the seasons turn and the years pass, the rumiverse edges closer and closer to the hallowed Everest of aged rums, that crowning achievement of geriatric eld grasped and never relinquished (so far) by G&M’s 58 year old rum from 1941. Alas, rums from so far back in time are now a disappearing dream, vanished into blends, collector’s vaults or the gullets of earlier connoisseurs who knew not what they had. There are few, if any, multi-decade old rums from the 1960s or 1950s to be found – these days, it’s the 1970s that is the decade we’re left with, [Click here for the full review…]


Maraska Room Domaći (Croatia) – Review

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May 262023
 
Maraska Room Domaći (Croatia) - Review

Historically speaking, and indeed even in our times, there are alcoholic spirits out there that stretch the borders, let alone the definitions, of “rum”. Yet I continue to seek out, look for and try these things, whether they are almost unknown indigenous cane juice rums, proto-rums from Asia, or the old verschnitts and spirits of their ilk made in Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th century. Such bottlings — for example the Badel Domaci (Croatia), Casino 50 (Hungary) or the Tuzemak (Czech Republic) — exert a curious fascination, a compelling kind of pull. In a way they speak to [Click here for the full review…]


El Destilado Wild Fermented Oaxaca Unaged White Rum – Review

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May 222023
 
El Destilado Wild Fermented Oaxaca Unaged White Rum - Review

Few even within the rum world and almost nobody outside it, will remember the small UK indie bottler El Destilado about which I and a couple of others wrote in our reviews of the fascinating, off-the-reservation Aguardiente de Panela, a rum from a tiny back-country distillery in Mexico. The three British guys who run El Destilado are unabashed agave lovers and dabble with rums only as a kind of sideshow; yet so enormous was the impact that that single limited edition artisanal rum made, that not only did I immediately try to buy all available rums which the little indie [Click here for the full review…]


Bira! South Pacific 2008 12 YO Rum – Review

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May 192023
 
Bira! South Pacific 2008 12 YO Rum - Review

If the author of some fictional novel that somehow included rum were to make mention of a South Sea island hooch made in Fiji, sourced from the Pacific island directly by an African expatriate living in Western Canada (by way of New Zealand), who gave it to a nomadic, vagrant, itinerant (and occasionally fragrant) West Indian to try, he would probably be sneered at for having an overactive imagination and told to stick with something more realistic. And yet, that’s exactly what this product is, and that’s exactly what happened. To set the stage, I tried the rum (and its [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Añejo Pampero Deluxe Venezuelan Rum (1980s)

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May 152023
 
Ron Añejo Pampero Deluxe Venezuelan Rum (1980s)

Rumaniacs Review R-148 | 0996 Pampero is a lesser known Venezuelan rum brand founded in 1938 by two friends, Alejandro Hernández and Luis Toro, who established their distillery in Caracas, and soon became one of the more popular brands in the country with their light, golden rums.  In keeping with the times they eschewed really serious long term ageing, and stuck with the mid range, producing various youngish rons like the Añejo “Extra”, “Dorado”, “White”, “Especial”, “Premium Gold” and so on. These various brands have gone through several name changes over the years and nowadays the line is made up [Click here for the full review…]


Plantation “Original Dark” Rum – Review

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May 122023
 
Plantation "Original Dark" Rum - Review

For all the bad press Plantation gets, it is, as I remarked in the Rumcast interview back in 2021, in no danger of going out of business any time soon. Its stable of rums, whatever their provenance, is simply too wide ranging and useful — and often affordable — to ignore, and many of them have become reliable workhorses of backbars the world around. Not the high end stuff, of course, like the single cask bottlings  of the Extreme Series which are regarded with desire or despite in any representative rumdork population…but the modest and less ambitious rums of the [Click here for the full review…]


J. Gow “Fading Light” Pure Single Rum (Scotland) – Review

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May 072023
 
J. Gow "Fading Light" Pure Single Rum (Scotland) - Review

If I enjoyed the naming J. Gow’s growling salvo across the rum world’s bows, the “Revenge,” then as a lover of language and an avid amateur photographer, I must confess to liking and appreciating the quiet romanticism the “Fading Light” title even more. And since that wasn’t enough for VS Distillers (the company behind the brand), it was also a more distinctive, even better rum than the “Revenge”…which as you may recall from last week’s review, was no slouch itself. I won’t rehash the background of this new Scottish distillery ensconced on a tiny island in the Orkneys, so far [Click here for the full review…]


J. Gow “Revenge” 3 YO Pure Single Rum (Scotland) – Review

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May 022023
 
J. Gow "Revenge" 3 YO Pure Single Rum (Scotland) - Review

More and more we are ceasing to regard rum as being the province of just the great geographical areas which have long stratified the spirit into styles which promoted – and are limited by – the regional perceptions of old colonial empires. British (Jamaican, Barbadian, Guyanese), Spanish/Latin and French are the best known of course, and Matt Petrek has long argued (correctly, in my view) that they are best seen as production classifiers than true regional markers — but ultimately the one thing that that particular series of classification did was that it centred our minds in the western hemisphere, [Click here for the full review…]


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