HSE Extra Vieux Small Cask 2004 9 Year Old Rum – Review

 1 Response »
Apr 042017
 
HSE Extra Vieux Small Cask 2004 9 Year Old Rum – Review

#353 Particular attention should be paid to the “small cask” moniker in the title here, because what it means is that this sterling and near-outstanding little rum was matured in small French Limousin oak casks called “octaves” that hold fifty-five liters, not a couple hundred or more as in the “standard” (and it not a single cask, by the way).  Combine both the tropical maturation and the smaller cask size, and what we can expect with such a product, then, is a rum of some intensity of flavour.  Which it is, and it delivers, in spades.  In the blind tasting [Click here for the full review…]


The Caputo 1973 Full Proof Old Demerara Rum – Review

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Apr 012017
 
The Caputo 1973 Full Proof Old Demerara Rum - Review

#352 After the near riot caused by the emergence of the Caputo 1973 last year, when (my distant relative) Ruminsky van Drunkenberg was mobbed in Berlin by the horde of reviewers demanding their samples (local police nearly had to declare a state of emergency), they lapsed into silence, and none of them published any review after the fact.  It was only after sampling it myself that I understood the reason for their malfunction: they weren’t being reticent, they weren’t holding off out of some semblance of courtesy — they were recovering from the near catatonic shock of actually having tried [Click here for the full review…]


Velier La Bonne Intention (LBI) 1985 15 Year Old Rum – Review

 1 Response »
Mar 282017
 
Velier La Bonne Intention (LBI) 1985 15 Year Old Rum - Review

One of Velier’s initial expressions, and somewhat of an exception to their rule of excellence. #351 The amber-coloured Velier La Bonne Intention (LBI) Old Demerara Rum 1985 15 year old rum is not for everyone, and is rather more an artifact than a must-have. For aficionados who are used to the fullproof bruisers with which Luca made his bones, it is more a historical relic than truly representative of his ideas, very much as the Enmore 1987 was (perhaps that’s because both rums were bottled by Breitenstein* in Holland in 2000 and imported by Velier, so it’s possible that Luca [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Caney Añejo Superior 1960s/1970s

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Mar 272017
 
Ron Caney Añejo Superior 1960s/1970s

Rumaniacs Review #032 | 0432 Over and above the skimpy details of the company provided in the notes written for the Carta Oro (Rumaniacs-031) there’s nothing new here, except to note that this rum is definitely better, and I enjoyed it a lot more.  So let’s dive right in and be briefer than usual Nose – Very Spanish in its lightness.  Cornflakes, cereal, lemon peel, vanilla and salted butter come to the fore.  It’s a little spicy and tart for 40%, something like a lemon meringue pie, very nice actually, if a little gentle. Opens up to smoke and leather [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Caney Carta Oro Superior 1960s/1970s

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Mar 272017
 
Ron Caney Carta Oro Superior 1960s/1970s

Rumaniacs Review #031 | 0431 This is a Cuban rum from a company that still exists in Santiago de Cuba and now called Ron Caney: the holding company was (and may still be) called Combinado de Bebidas de Santiago de Cuba and was supposedly formed around 1862…however, it is also noted to be operating out of a former Bacardi factory, so my take is that it’s using expropriated facilities, which is confirmed by Tom Gjelten’s book, Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba.  This rum is from the late 1960s or early 1970s, is also known as “Gold,” and for sure is no [Click here for the full review…]


Savanna HERR Millésime 2006 10 Year Old Rum – Review

 1 Response »
Mar 262017
 
Savanna HERR Millésime 2006 10 Year Old Rum - Review

#350 The Savanna Millésime 2006 High Ester Rum from Réunion (or HERR, as it is labelled) is a steroid-infused Guadeloupe rum mixing it up with a Caroni and a Bajan. It may the closest one will ever come to one of Worthy Park or Hampden’s Jamaican taste bombs without buying one, betters them in sheer olfactory badassery and is possibly one of the best of its kind currently in production, or the craziest.  It’s very likely that once you try it you’ll wonder where it was hiding all this time. It emphatically puts Réunion on the map of must-have rum [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Fire “Velvet” Jamaican White Rum – Review

 2 Responses »
Mar 152017
 
Rum Fire "Velvet" Jamaican White Rum - Review

#349 If I didn’t know better, I’d almost suggest this was a clairin.  It was so potent and pungent, so powerful in taste and profile, that I had to double up the amount of controls I was tasting it with, just to make sure it really was a Jamaican rum and not some uncured white lightning out of Haiti.  If you ever thought that Jamaicans were getting too easy, or you were getting bored with the regular run of Appletons, allow me to recommend (cautiously) this amazing white popskull from Hampden estate, which was gifted to me by Gregers and [Click here for the full review…]


Ogasawara Japanese Rum – Review

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Mar 152017
 
Ogasawara Japanese Rum - Review

Starts off weird and then develops very nicely #348 A recent post on the reddit rum forum – perhaps the only real Q&A alternative to FB rum clubs on the net – remarked on the discovery by one person of Japanese rum, using the Ryoma 7 year old as an example.  Having written about that particular product – I thought it an interesting essay in the craft, having a profile both similar to and at odds with, more traditional rums with which we are more familiar — I remembered this other one by Ogasawara which I bought in Paris last [Click here for the full review…]


Alfred Lamb Special Reserve Rum 1949 (URM)

 3 Responses »
Mar 132017
 
Alfred Lamb Special Reserve Rum 1949 (URM)

Rumaniacs Review #30 | 0430 This rum is one of the reasons I love the spirits made so long ago – they shine a light into the way things were back in the day.  Alfred Lamb started making dark rum from West Indian bulk rum back in 1849, ageing his barrels in cellars below the Thames and laid claim to making “real” Navy rum.  These days the company seems to make supermarket rum more than any kind of serious earth-shaking popskull…but the potential remains, as this rum (almost) points out.  It’s issued by United Rum Merchants, who trace their own heritage back [Click here for the full review…]


Moscoso Distillers / Barik (Haiti)

 1 Response »
Mar 112017
 
Moscoso Distillers / Barik (Haiti)

Moscoso Distillers (also known as Barik) is a third-generation Haitian rum-maker whose klerens caught my attention as I was researching rums from there that were specifically not Barbancourt or distributed by Velier.  You’d think that some enterprising producers would extoll their family ancestry by tracing it back to Toussaint L’Ouverture’s great grandfather’s first cousin as part of the company legend, but as with many other things, Haitians do seem to enjoy confounding expectations.  In fact, the official founder of the company, Jules Moscoso, came over from the Dominican Republic in the early 1900s and settled in a small town called [Click here for the full review…]


El Dorado 25 Year Old Rum (1986)

 2 Responses »
Mar 102017
 
El Dorado 25 Year Old Rum (1986)

Rumaniacs Review #029 | 0429 Issued around 2011, the El Dorado 25 YO received an update from the original 1980 version, with the blend tweaked a little.  The enclosure and bottle remained the same, however, and unfortunately for the modern rumporn brigade of the millenial teens, not enough was done to upgrade the rum to what a current (2017) connoisseur would consider par for the course – unadulterated and cask strength.  Instead, sticking with the tried and true formula which sold so well in the past, it remained 43%, and perhaps we should consider it a favour that the reported [Click here for the full review…]


Kléren Nasyonal Traditionnel 22 Rhum Agricole Blanc – Review

 1 Response »
Mar 062017
 
Kléren Nasyonal Traditionnel 22 Rhum Agricole Blanc - Review

#347 By now, just about everyone in the rum world is aware of clairins, those indigenous crude white taste bombs out of Haiti, and once again, points have to be given to the farsightedness of Luca Gargano, who brought them to the attention of the wider world by promoting and distributing the Sajous, Vaval and the Casimir.  Unfortunately, the acclaim these three have garnered have somewhat eclipsed any other clairins – and when supposedly some 500+ small outfits make the juice on the half-island, one can only imagine what else of interest is lurking there waiting to be discovered by [Click here for the full review…]


Silver Seal Special Reserve Enmore 1986 21 Year Old Rum – Review

 3 Responses »
Mar 012017
 
Silver Seal Special Reserve Enmore 1986 21 Year Old Rum - Review

#346 One of the older independent bottlers is Silver Seal out of Italy, which has been around for longer than many other such companies; it was formed in 1979 and named “Sestante” before being renamed in 2001 after a ten year operational hiatus. It adheres to the modern ethos of regular issues, and bottles casks sourced and aged with attention to detail, from all over the world; it takes an approach more akin to Rum Nation or L’Esprit than Velier, diluting the natural strength of the cask to appeal to a broader audience….though as this Enmore demonstrates, they have no [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Guyana 18 YO 1997 Rum (Uitvlugt)(Denmark) – Review

 2 Responses »
Feb 262017
 
Compagnie des Indes Guyana 18 YO 1997 Rum (Uitvlugt)(Denmark) - Review

#345 All grog-blog hoodlums and Danes know the story, and somewhere out there you can just bet the Danes are smirking.  Back when Compagnie des Indes was a new independent bottler just starting out, selling their initial 46%-or-so editions around Europe, the rum lovers from Denmark shook their heads and said they wanted cask strength rums.  Y’know, the real stuff, the ones dosed with huge quantities of whup-ass, coming with battleaxes taped to the bottle, not frilly pink cupcakes for the weak-kneed. Florent shuddered a little at the thought of a bunch of intoxicated rum-loving vikings turning up in France [Click here for the full review…]


Savanna Rhum Traditionnel Vieux 2000 “Intense” 7 Year Old – Review

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Feb 212017
 
Savanna Rhum Traditionnel Vieux 2000 "Intense" 7 Year Old - Review

#344 Our global rum travels have moved us around from Japan, Panama, Barbados, Guadeloupe, Brazil, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Antigua, Laos and Mauritius (and that’s just within the last eight weeks); so let’s do one more, and turn our attention to Île de la Réunion, where, as you might recall, three companies produce rums – Rivière du Mât, Isautier, and Savanna, with Isautier being the oldest (it was established in 1845 and is now in its sixth generation of the family).  If one wants to be picky Savanna has existed for far longer, but the company in its modern form dates back [Click here for the full review…]


Savanna

 4 Responses »
Feb 212017
 
Savanna

  Savanna, a distillery on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion (it’s east of Madagascar) was founded in 1870 as part of the drive by France to diversify sugar production after the loss of Saint Domingue (Haiti) and Ile de France (Mauritius) in the early 1800s. Distilleries had already appeared on Réunion by 1815 when Charles Desbassayns built the most sophisticated sugar cane mill of the island in the region of Chaudron, but records suggest primitive versions were in existence there for at least a hundred years before that. Rum production began to take on greater importance as a diversification [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Club Single Cask 15 Year Old Panama Rum – Review

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Feb 172017
 
Rum Club Single Cask 15 Year Old Panama Rum - Review

A very good Panamanian, with deeper flavours than usual. #343 Panamanians and other spanish-style rum makers are doing themselves serious injury in their contortions to stay “Latin” or “Cuban” or “Spanish” and justify dosing and/or the lack of provision of details behind their work as matter of course. The recent Rumporter interview with Mario Navarro where he did precisely that, lit up Facebook like the 4th of July, and is just one recent example…but it’s been coiling behind just about every major Latin American or Panamanian release dating back to, oh, the Santa Teresa Bicentenario, the Panamonte XXV and last [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Malecon 1979 “Seleccion Esplendida” – Review

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Feb 152017
 
Ron Malecon 1979 “Seleccion Esplendida” - Review

#342 Considering that the Seleccion Esplendida was pushed out as both a specific year’s production and an enormously aged near-thirty-year-old rum – a breed getting rarer all the time now that collectors, enthusiasts and rum lovers are snapping up the old 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s vintages – it’s somewhat surprising how little of a rep the brand or the rum itself actually has.  I mean, when was the last time you saw anyone rhapsodizing about it, or even giving it a casual mention, anywhere? Perhaps that’s because for something that old we kind of expect to see it issued [Click here for the full review…]


L’Esprit Bellevue 1998 12 Year Old Guadeloupe Rhum – Review

 1 Response »
Feb 092017
 
L’Esprit Bellevue 1998 12 Year Old Guadeloupe Rhum - Review

Wow… #341 The surprisingly heavy and dark Bellevue rhum made by L’Esprit purred salt and sweet caramel ice cream into my nose as I smelled it, revealing itself in so incremental a fashion, with such an odd (if excellent) profile that it almost had to be experienced to be properly appreciated, and it left me wondering whether this was a molasses rum, not one from cane juice.  It was bottled at the perfect strength for what it displayed, melding power and smoothness and warmth in a nose of uncommon quality.  Yet there was lightness and joyousness here too, a sort [Click here for the full review…]


L’Esprit

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Feb 082017
 
L'Esprit

*** L’Esprit is a small French brand founded by Tristan Prodhomme of mixed Welsh, Scottish and Breton ancestry.  His biography is about as interesting as any I’ve come across.  Strictly speaking, he and his small operation are not into rhums, but whiskies (which miffs me, because I think their relative importance should be reversed, but I can’t have everything, so…).  Somewhat like Don Jose Navarro of Havana Club who gained a degree in thermodynamics and then turned to distilled spirits, Tristan majored in Philosophy before evincing a strong interest in the obscure Scottish tipple, although to that point he had [Click here for the full review…]


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