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

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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…]


Cachaça Thoquino – Review

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Feb 032017
 
Cachaça Thoquino - Review

#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
 
El Dorado 25 Year Old Rum (1980)

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…]


English Harbour Small Batch Cask Finished Rum – Review

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Jan 152017
 
English Harbour Small Batch Cask Finished Rum - Review

Excellent young sherry-finished rum #335 There’s a special place in my heart for English Harbour rums from Antigua, and always will be. The company’s masterful 25 year old 1981, while dropping some in my estimation over the years, remains a touchstone of my reviewing experience (it was also Review #001). Their five-year- and ten year old variations were pleasing and decent drinks that were like a mix of Bajan and Spanish rums, yet distinct from either; and I’ve always felt they were good introductions to the spirit, even if I myself have moved on to purer, stronger rums, which was [Click here for the full review…]


Vientiane Laotian Agricole Rhum – Review

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Jan 112017
 
Vientiane Laotian Agricole Rhum - Review

A white rhum from Laos, which comes out punching at 56% #334 The rums we see and drink share a certain geographic commonality. On the shelves are rums from the various Caribbean islands, those old British, Spanish and French (and Dutch, and yes, Danish) colonial possessions. Next to them are South and Central Americans tipples which are the inheritors of the Spanish traditions brought over centuries ago…no shortage of their products either. Then there are those from micro-ops from Canada and the USA, few of which make any sort of big splash but which gain an audience from the communications [Click here for the full review…]


Lazy Dodo Single Estate Rum – Review

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Jan 052017
 
Lazy Dodo Single Estate Rum - Review

Laid-back, but not lazy #333 The dodo, as most of us are well aware, is the subject of such well known epigrams as being dead as one; it remains a fixture of popular culture and language, often seen as a symbol of obsolescence, stupidity and (naturally) extinction. It is therefore something of an odd emblem for a rum company to use as its name and symbol, unless it’s considered so firmly associated with Mauritius that bird and island are seen as synonymous (which I don’t believe for a moment). So aside from the officially stated purpose of the logo raising [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Foursquare 2006 10 Year Old Barbados Rum – Review

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Dec 302016
 
Velier Foursquare 2006 10 Year Old Barbados Rum - Review

A spectacular rum from Foursquare (and Velier), perhaps the best they’ve ever made to date. #332 This is a rum that screaming aficionados were waiting for like fans at a Justin Bieber or Beyonce concert (or the Rolling Stones, maybe), and no write-up of the thing could be complete without mentioning the unbelievable sales pattern it displayed…in my entire rum-purchasing experience, I’ve never seen anything like it. The Velier/Foursquare collaboration was making the rounds of various masterclasses in festivals around the world for almost a year before actually going on sale, and then, when it became available in August 2016 [Click here for the full review…]


Foursquare “Port Cask Finish” (ECS Mark II) 2005 9 Year Old Rum – Review

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Dec 282016
 
Foursquare "Port Cask Finish" (ECS Mark II) 2005 9 Year Old Rum - Review

A rum that comes together in unexpected but ultimately satisfying ways #331 Finishing remains a hit or miss proposition for rum makers. Rum Nation’s finished Demeraras are pretty good, El Dorado’s 15 year old expressions in various wine finishes kinda work (in spite of the sugar adulteration), while neither the Legendario’s muscatel reek or the Pyrat’s orange liqueur nonsense ever appealed to me (and never will). So what’s there to say about the port finished 2005 issued by Foursquare as part of their “Exceptional” series? A few good things, a few not-so-good ones. FourSquare is far too professional, too competent [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Bacardi Añejo 6 Year Old (Puerto Rico, 1980s)

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Dec 272016
 
Ron Bacardi Añejo 6 Year Old (Puerto Rico, 1980s)

Rumaniacs Review 027 | 0427 Bacardi has had so many iterations of their rums over the decades, made in Mexico, Puerto Rico or Bermuda (or wherever else they squirrel away production these days), that it’s impossible to state with precision what the genuine article actually is any longer. This version clearly states on the label it was a Puerto Rican rum, six years old, imported into Italy, and I’ve been informed its was made and acquired in the 1980s. Perhaps it was a forerunner, an experiment, to see whether aged rum sales held promise, and afterwards morphed into the current 8 year old [Click here for the full review…]


Rum 66 Family Reserve 12 Year Old Barbados Rum – Review

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Dec 262016
 
Rum 66 Family Reserve 12 Year Old Barbados Rum - Review

When a rum makes you want to try its stronger brother, you are left asking whether it has failed or succeeded. #330 It must be a preference thing. My son the Little Caner (rapidly becoming the Big Caner) loves chocolate ice cream but detests the salted caramel Haagen-Dasz I scarf by the bucketload (before being noisily sick in the outhouse). My father (Grampy Caner) can’t get enough of El Dorado 15 year old yet I can’t get him to touch a full proof without shuddering. As for me, while I enjoy rums from around the Caribbean, have never been able [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Small Batch Collection – Port Mourant 1995 21 Year Old – Review

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Dec 222016
 
Rum Nation Small Batch Collection - Port Mourant 1995 21 Year Old - Review

  *** A grand old PM. Best of the three Small Batch selections from 2016. #329 It’s reasonable to wonder whether there isn’t some self-cannibalization going on here. Since their inception back in 1999, Rum Nation’s flagship products were always the old-enough-to-vote Jamaicans and Demeraras, all issued at around 43-45%. The old wooden box and jute packing gave way to sleeker, modernist boxes, but the ethos remained the same, and happily for the aficionados, there were always several thousand of these floating around, as Fabio Rossi never bottled just one cask, but several. (As an aside, something of the evolution [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Small Batch Collection – Enmore 2002 14 Year Old – Review

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Dec 202016
 
Rum Nation Small Batch Collection - Enmore 2002 14 Year Old - Review

*** #328 It really is amazing how many different ways there are to express the outturn from a single Guyanese still, Enmore or Port Mourant or any of the others We might have to approach them like James Bond movies (or Sherlock Holmes short stories)…enjoying the similarities while searching for points of variation, which gives us the rare rum equivalents of masterpieces like Skyfall versus occasionally indifferent efforts like A View to a Kill. Rum Nation’s first serious foray into multiple-edition small-batch cask strength rums probably deserve to be tried as a trio, the way, for example, DDL’s three amigos [Click here for the full review…]


A History of the Heisenberg Distillery and the Caputo 1973

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Dec 192016
 
A History of the Heisenberg Distillery and the Caputo 1973

It is a little known fact that in the 1800s, several small families whose names were to become intertwined with the history of unknown, unspeakable and unmentionable rum, started to arrive in what was then British Guiana. The Heisens may have been the first; and from this line descended the Heisenberg Distillery, as well as the all but disappeared Alban estate run by a branch of the family begun by Grogger Heisen, later to become the Banban marque; and coiling among them all were the Fagnants, illegitimate, piratical rum makers of ill-repute who claimed without justification or evidence, to be [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Small Batch Collection – Diamond 2005 11 Year Old – Review

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Dec 182016
 
Rum Nation Small Batch Collection - Diamond 2005 11 Year Old - Review

#327 What a change just a few years have wrought. Back in 2009-2010, cask strength rums were hardly on the horizon, “full proof” drinks were primarily Renegade at 46% with a few dust-gatherers from independent bottlers like Secret Treasures, Cadenhead, Berry Bros., or Samaroli making exactly zero waves in North America, and Velier’s superlative rums issued almost a decade earlier known to few outside Italy. Rum Nation took two years to sell a pair of 1974 and a 1975 25 year old Jamaican rums bottled at 45%….and they were around since 1999! As 2016 comes to a close, observe the [Click here for the full review…]


Ryoma Japanese 7 Year Old Rum – Review

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Dec 142016
 
Ryoma Japanese 7 Year Old Rum - Review

An essay in Oriental and Caribbean fusion #326 Outside the cognoscenti, the rabid fanbase or deep-field researchers, few know (or care) much about rums from outside the Western hemisphere. Yet rums from India and Thailand and Australia are massive sellers in the East, to say nothing of the emergent makers from Japan. Nine Leaves is the newest outfit from the Land of the Rising Sun to garner major accolades in the larger rumiverse, but rum has been made from locally grown sugar for a very long time, and it’s no surprise that other companies have been quietly doing business in [Click here for the full review…]


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