J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1960

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May 302017
 
J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1960

Rumaniacs Review #047 | 0447 Unless I start springing a few grand for ancient rums from the 1920s and 1930s, this is likely to be the oldest Bally rum I’ll ever see, or try.  I suppose I could take a stab a guessing how truly old it is – who knows, maybe it’s in the fifteen year range too? – but for the moment I think I’ll just revel in the fact that it was made almost sixty years ago, way before I was born, by Jacques Bally’s boys before the estate shut down in the late 1980s and the [Click here for the full review…]


J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1975

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May 292017
 
J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1975

Rumaniacs Review #046 | 0446 We’re going back down memory lane now, to a point where the AOC designation is a dream on the horizon, and for once we have an age: this rum is sixteen years old (based on the bottom of the bottle where it says “Bottled February 1991” in French).  This of course leads us to puzzle our way through all the others we’ve looked at already, because if here they can call a 16YO a “rhum vieux” then the other Bally rhums are in all likelihood similarly aged – we just have no proof of the matter. In [Click here for the full review…]


J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1979

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May 282017
 
J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1979

Rumaniacs Review #045 | 0445 By now two things are clear about these older Bally rhums – aside from some educated guesswork, we don’t know how old they are, and by this time, 1979, the AOC noted on the label is somewhat of a puzzler, unless the thing is seventeen years old, in which case it would hardly be labelled a mere “rhum vieux” but an “XO”.  So maybe after the initial ageing they stored it in tanks or flagons and only bottled it after 1996…or, more likely, it came under a previous version of the official 1996 AOC designation.  At [Click here for the full review…]


Neisson L’Esprit 70⁰ Blanc Rum – Review

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May 252017
 
Neisson L'Esprit 70⁰ Blanc Rum - Review

#367 In my own limited experience, Neisson has been one of the most distinctive Martinique agricole makers I’ve come across.  There’s something salty, oily, tequila-ish and musky in those of their rums I’ve tried, and while this might not always be to my liking, the quality of their work could never be denied.  To date, I’ve stuck with their aged rums, but back in 2016 L’homme à la Poussette (I’m thinking his poussette should be retired soon as his kids grow up but I hope he never changes the name of his site) passed along this ferocious white rhino, perhaps [Click here for the full review…]


J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1982

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May 242017
 
J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1982

Rumaniacs Review #044 | 0444 We’re slowly moving past the more recent vintages of the Bally rums and into something not necessarily older, but bottled from longer ago.  Hopefully they’ll throw some light into the development of the profile over the years.  The quality of the older expressions is not necessarily or always better just because it was made thirty five years ago…but yeah, perhaps in this case it is. The 1982 is certainly one fine piece of work, made at the original Bally site before the distillery closed in 1989 and production was shifted over to Simon. Colour – Dark Amber [Click here for the full review…]


J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1992

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May 232017
 
J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1992

Rumaniacs Review #043 | 0443 Leaving aside the independent bottlers, the agricolistas from Guadeloupe and Martinique seem to like producing a specific year’s output with much more enthusiasm than most molasses based rum producers, who (until recently) preferred to release specific “recipe-style” blends that changed little from year to year.  There’s something to say for both ideas – consistency of taste over time, versus the individualism of specific date points – which just supports my thesis that even in writing about a social spirit, larger philosophical issues about our world can be discussed using them as an example. In this case, we’re [Click here for the full review…]


Nine Leaves “Almost Spring” (Cabernet Sauvignon) Rum – Review

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May 232017
 
Nine Leaves "Almost Spring" (Cabernet Sauvignon) Rum - Review

#366 Nine Leaves, for whose intriguing rums I have always retained a real fondness, remains a one man operation in Japan, and while I have not written much about them of late, they continue their regular six month release regimen without pause, and have become must-stop booths at the various festivals they exhibit at on the Circuit.  Every now and then they issue an expression somewhat at right angles to their regular “six-month-aged” line, such as the Velier 70th Anniversary edition from 2017, the two-year-old “Encrypted” from 2016 and this one-year-old from 2015, which was the commercial 48% variation of [Click here for the full review…]


J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1993

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May 212017
 
J. Bally Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1993

Rumaniacs Review #042 | 0442 The first of six Bally rums (no relation to me), which we’ll also post faster than usual, since they are, again, part of a series.  Let’s start with the most recent. For those who are interested in agricoles (which these assuredly are), J. Bally from Martinique has been around since 1917 or so (land prices after the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelee were low), but the sugar estate of Lajus goes back even further, to the mid-1600s.  Alas, Bally has been closed since 1989, but their stills continue.  The Simon distillery now owns them, and supposedly the original [Click here for the full review…]


Hamilton St. Lucia 2004 Pot Still 9 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 182017
 
Hamilton St. Lucia 2004 Pot Still 9 Year Old Rum - Review

#365 Just about everyone in the rum world knows the name of Ed Hamilton. He was the first person to set up a website devoted to rum (way back in 1995), and many of us writers who began our own blogs in the 2000s or early ‘teens — Tiare, Tatu, Chip, myself and others — started our online lives writing in and debating on the forums of the Ministry of Rum. He has written books about rum, ran tasting sessions for years, and is now a distributor for several brands around the USA.  A few years ago, he decided to [Click here for the full review…]


Appleton Estate 50 Year Old Rum (2012)

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May 162017
 
Appleton Estate 50 Year Old Rum (2012)

Rumaniacs Review #041 | 0441 Note: The initial full length review can be found in the main reviews section. Everyone knows about the 50 year old rum which Appleton pushed out the door a few years ago.  Not only because of the age, which they touted as “the oldest rum ever” even though that was patently untrue, but because of the stratospheric price, which even now hovers around the US$4500 mark (give or take).  I’m not sure if they still make it — it was specifically commissioned for Jamaica’s 50th anniversary of Independence in 1962, so I suspect it was [Click here for the full review…]


Appleton Reserve 20 Year Old Rum (Ceramic Jug)(1960s/1970s)

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May 152017
 
Appleton Reserve 20 Year Old Rum (Ceramic Jug)(1960s/1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #040 | 0440 As with the 12 year old ceramic jug, I don’t think that Appleton is exaggerating in the slightest when they call this a “Rare Old Jamaican Rum,” – at the time it was issued in the 1960s or 1970s they might have been hyping the product a tad, but now?  Not likely. Still, you can actually find it if you’re prepared to pay Masters of Malt, who name this a 1970s era rum, the £700 it costs.  And that’s more than the Longpond 1941 fetches these days.  I must confess that for an aged artifact bottled [Click here for the full review…]


Banks DIH XM Supreme 15 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 142017
 
Banks DIH XM Supreme 15 Year Old Rum - Review

#364 Until the release of the XM Golden Jubilee 20 year old rum in May 2016 for the occasion of Guyana’s 50th anniversary of independence, the jewel in the crown of Banks DIH’s XM line was the fifteen year old.  Over the last five years or so it suffered, in my all-seeing rearview-mirror opinion, by simply following the party line, being bottled without regard for the emerging trend of stronger rums in the minds of the tasting public, and also perhaps from being a indeterminate, mostly column-still blend without a really good barrel strategy.  This relegated it to being an [Click here for the full review…]


Wray & Nephew Private Stock (1970s)

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May 132017
 
Wray & Nephew Private Stock (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #039 | 0439 A rum like this makes me want to rend my robes and gnash my teeth with frustration because there’s no information available about it aside from what’s on the label, and that’s hardly very much.  Still, it’s Jamaican, it’s a J. Wray (Appleton) and it’s from the 1970s and that alone makes it interesting.  Imported by another one of those enterprising Italian concerns, age unknown.  From the colour I can only hope it was a real oldie. Colour – Dark red-brown Strength – 43% Nose – “Dirty” might be the est way to describe the nose. [Click here for the full review…]


Appleton Reserve 12 Year Old Jamaican Rum (Ceramic Jug)(1960s/1970s)

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May 112017
 
Appleton Reserve 12 Year Old Jamaican Rum (Ceramic Jug)(1960s/1970s)

Rumaniacs Review #038 | 0438 A “Rare Old Jamaican Rum” the ceramic jug says, and I believe it.  In all my travels around the world, I’ve never seen this kind of thing for sale (and buying beer in a glass jar at a kiosk in the Russian Far East don’t count). We’re living through an enormous upswell of interest in rums, with new indies and new bottlers popping up every time we turn around…but stuff like this shows us that even back in the day, there was some amazingly well-presented juice floating around.  Here, cool factor is off the chart. As [Click here for the full review…]


Banks DIH XM Special 12 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 102017
 
Banks DIH XM Special 12 Year Old Rum - Review

Quite a good rum, which unfortunately fails to carve out a distinctive Guyanese profile of its own. #363 When one thinks of Demerara rums, Guyana and DDL immediately spring to mind.  That company has so dominated the global rum scene for such rums in the past two decades that it may come as a surprise to many that it is not the sole maker of such products, nor the only inheritor to the Guyana rum moniker, and in fact, is somewhat of a late arrival.  Before it was consolidated from the distilleries that were once the property of Bookers McConnell [Click here for the full review…]


Appleton Estate 12 Year Old Rare Jamaican Rum (1980s)

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May 092017
 
Appleton Estate 12 Year Old Rare Jamaican Rum (1980s)

Rumaniacs Review #037 | 0437 Tasting all these Appletons together and side by side is an instructive exercise.  The profile remains remarkably stable at its core, while presenting some interesting diversions from the main theme, like a James Bond movie or a Sherlock Holmes short story. We smile at and are comfortable with the similarities, know the form, and sniff around for variations. This 12 year old is from the 1980s, still retains the tinfoil screw-on cap, and its provenance can be gauged from the barroom style bottle and black label, instead of the current consistent presentation and callypigian shape (I [Click here for the full review…]


Appleton Estate V/X Jamaican Rum (1980s/1990s)

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May 082017
 
Appleton Estate V/X Jamaican Rum (1980s/1990s)

Rumaniacs Review #036 | 0436 The second in a small series on a few older Appletons. The V/X is not a sipping rum (and never was), but more of a mixing agent with just enough jagged edges, undeveloped taste and uncouth to make it shine in a cocktail (and always has been).  This may be why it was my tipple of choice in the years when I first arrived in Canada: it was clearly a cut above the boring Lamb’s and Bacardi cocktail fodder that flew off the overpriced LCBO shelves, even in those simpler times when two-ingredient hooch was [Click here for the full review…]


Cadenhead Caribbean Distilleries Ltd “PDW” 1972 Guyanese 29 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 072017
 
Cadenhead Caribbean Distilleries Ltd "PDW" 1972 Guyanese 29 Year Old Rum - Review

Think of the great and noble Demerara rum marques and a few initials come to mind. PM.  EHP. VSG. ICBU.  PDW. PDwhat? I spent days trolling around trying to find out what those initials meant and came up dry. I was left thinking that if Cadenhead doesn’t get its act together, it’s going to be a running joke that they’re clueless as to how to name their rums, and maybe I’ll solicit lottery entries for best guess what these initials represent. But that’s just me and somewhat irrelevant, so let’s just rewind to the beginning. Caribbean Distillers Limited was and [Click here for the full review…]


Appleton Estate 21 Year Old Jamaican Rum (1990s)

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May 042017
 
Appleton Estate 21 Year Old Jamaican Rum (1990s)

Rumaniacs Review #035 | 0435 This is the first of what will be seven Appleton Estate historical rums, which I’ll post faster than usual, because they’re of a series.  In going through them, what they all go to show is that while Appleton may be losing some ground to other, newer, more nimble upstarts (some even from Jamaica), their own reputation is well-deserved, and rooted in some very impressive rums…some of which are even extraordinary. My first pass at the Appleton 21 year old came around 2012, and I wasn’t entirely in love with it, for all its age.  Rereading my review (after [Click here for the full review…]


Cadenhead Sancti Spiritus “ADC” 1998 Cuban 14 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 022017
 
Cadenhead Sancti Spiritus "ADC" 1998 Cuban 14 Year Old Rum - Review

#361 The Sancti Spiritus distillery in Central Cuba, also known as Paraiso, has been making rums since 1946, and other than its history (see “other notes” below) there is remarkably little hard information about its operations, its size, volume or exports on hand. Aside from what must be substantial local production which we don’t see, they may be better known for the relatively new Ron Paraiso brand, as well as from the labels of independent bottlers like Compagnie des Indes, Kill Divil, Bristol Spirits, the Whisky Agency, and, here, W.M.Cadenhead.  Based on what one sees for sale online, barrels seem [Click here for the full review…]


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