The Lone Caner – Page 42 – A Solo Reviewer's Take on Rums

Rum Fire “Velvet” Jamaican White Rum – Review

Mar 152017

#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

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)

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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)

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Mar 112017

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)

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Mar 102017

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

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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

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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

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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

#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

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Feb 212017

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

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Feb 092017

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 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…]

Cachaça Thoquino – Review

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Feb 032017

#340 Cachaças are, as any rum pundit is aware, those cane juice based rums that are not called agricoles because they are made in Brazil rather than the French Caribbean islands. Geography aside, they have two major points of difference – one, they are often age in Brazilian woods of one kind or another, and two, those that are available outside Brazil are almost all made to be mixed in a caipirinha, not to be had neat. I’ve heard that over a thousand varieties made domestically, and the best of them are sold only there, and many top end aged [Click here for the full review…]

El Dorado 25 Year Old Rum (1980)

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Jan 312017

Rumaniacs Review #028 | 0428 In the beginning DDL made the El Dorado 1980 25 year old and it was good. The rum pundits looked upon it with favour, tasted and smiled and pronounced it great. For it was greatly aged and unique and well presented and the people were pleased and parted willingly with their hard-earned coin. But then, lo, the world around it moved and changed, and darkness moved upon the face of the cognoscenti, for as the stars turned overhead, other rums were made, better rums, stronger rums, purer rums — and the El Dorado 25 was [Click here for the full review…]

Habitation Velier Foursquare 2013 2 Year Old Pure Single Rum – Review

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Jan 292017

Habitation Velier Foursquare 2013 2 Year Old Pure Single Rum - Review

Two year old fire in a bottle #339 You’d think that after running through a set of Foursquare products over the last few months (here, here, here and here), that I’ve more or less covered what I wanted to and moved on. Yeah…but no such luck. Still got a few more to come, starting with a representative of one of the most hotly anticipated rum “series” in recent memory: the Habitation Velier outturns of very young (even unaged) rums, you remember the ones, those with the cool pics of the stills of origin on the labels. They are pot still [Click here for the full review…]

Blackadder “Raw Cask” Nicaraguan 2002 12 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jan 252017

Blackadder "Raw Cask" Nicaraguan 2002 12 Year Old Rum - Review

Unique in its own way, but not precisely exceptional. #338 It’s been quite some time since I’ve tried a Nicaraguan rum. That’s partly because I was unenthusiastic (even indifferent) to the more recent Flor de Caña range of rums where the age statement, through a miraculous stroke of legerdemain, suddenly disappeared; and having gone through a goodly part of their lineup once, I had other interests (and rums) with which to occupy my reviewing time. Still, just as the islanders have their variations taken to new extremes by independent bottlers, so does Nicaragua, and when I got the chance to [Click here for the full review…]

Charley’s J.B. Overproof Jamaican White Rum – Review

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Jan 192017

Charley's J.B. Overproof Jamaican White Rum - Review

#337 Just about every rum junkie has heard of the J. Wray & Nephew 63% Overproof, Appleton’s flagship white lightning and that’s likely the variation that most people know about and have tried. But since the 1990s, there’s been a local hooch, the Charley’s J.B. White Overproof (made by the Trelawny Rum Company which Appleton controls), primarily marketed in the backcountry…at that time it was aimed at rural farmers and considered a sort of 2nd tier tipple. In 2015 the company decided to issue it to the urban market perhaps because people in the cities were getting annoyed at those [Click here for the full review…]

Nine Leaves “Encrypted” I 2016 Edition – Review

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Jan 172017

Nine Leaves "Encrypted" I 2016 Edition - Review

A new direction for the Japanese rum-maker, which has some flaws but is an interesting rum nevertheless. #336 When researching the background for the Encrypted, I came across the website RumRatings, which is a place where people rate and comment on rums they have tried without going through the effort of, say, creating a website or putting their thoughts on a more formal basis (the way one sees on the /r/rum forum on reddit, for example, a site where fans can be even more rabid than on Facebook but where the discussion tends to be both more civil and certainly [Click here for the full review…]

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