The Lone Caner – Page 43 – A Solo Reviewer's Take on Rums

Ron Aldea Familia 15 Year Old Rum – Review

Dec 052016

A decent fifteen year old faux-agricole trying to move away from its origins. #323 Sorry, but “Chairman’s Select Hidden Treasure,” “Special Top Brass Only Reserve,” “Family Laid Away” casks, you know the kind of special rums to which I refer…stuff like this just makes me smile. Largely because I see it as nothing more than a name applied so as to move product. Of course, in the old days of landed estates run by the plantocracy, such special hooch really was made, exclusively for the caudillos and the nobility, for the chairman, business titans, princes, presidents, political hacks, Government apparatchiks, [Click here for the full review…]

Ron Aldea Superior 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Dec 042016

Ron Aldea Superior 10 Year Old Rum - Review

#322 With respect to companies which don’t want to make (or be seen to make) spiced or flavoured sugar bombs, it’s always instructive to observe the techniques that they use to avoid the dreaded “A” word. Some play with ageing or blends, some with finishing (the new El Dorado 15 year old series comes to mind), some with unorthodox schemes (like Lost Spirits or 7 Fathoms), some with toasting, but all are trying to do the same thing – impart an extra smidgen of taste to their rum, without actually adding anything to it, which I’m sure makes any rum [Click here for the full review…]

Mauritius Club Rum 2014 (Sherry Finish) – Review

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Dec 012016

Mauritius Club Rum 2014 (Sherry Finish) - Review

Too young, too dressed up, when it didn’t need to be #321 The Mauritius Club Rum 2014 (Sherry Finish) is an interesting essay in the craft, and for my money, slightly better than the Gold of Mauritius Dark rum I looked before. The sherry finishing makes its own statement and adds that extra fillip of flavour which elevates the whole experience in a way that drowning the Gold in port casks for a year did not. Note that there’s a strange disconnect between what I was told in 2015 by the brand rep, who informed me it was aged three [Click here for the full review…]

Gold of Mauritius Dark Rum – Review

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Nov 302016

Good with dessert. #320 You’d think that with the various encomiums the rum has gotten that it’s some kind of diamond in the rough, an undiscovered masterpiece of the blender’s art. “Incredibly rich…mouth watering…a cracker,” enthused Drinks Enthusiast; and the comments of Master of Malt (which one should take with a pinch of salt), are almost all four- and five-star hosannas. Me, I think that although it has a nifty squared off bottle and a cool simple label, beyond that there’s not much to shout about, though admittedly it has its points of originality in simplicity that must be acknowledged. [Click here for the full review…]

Berry Bros. & Rudd 1975 Demerara Rum

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Nov 272016

Rumaniacs Review 026 | 0426 While the 1975 30-year old rum issued by Berry Bros isn’t actually one of their “Exceptional Cask” series, it remains one in all but name and is one of the best of the Demeraras coming out of the 1970s, taking its place in my estimation somewhere in between the Norse Cask 1975 and the Cadenhead 1975, maybe a shade behind the Velier PM 1974 and the Bristol Spirits PM 1980. It could have been even better, I think, if it had been a tad stronger, but that in no way makes it a lesser rum, [Click here for the full review…]

Velier Enmore 1987 13 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 222016

Velier Enmore 1987 13 Year Old Rum - Review

Among the first Velier Demerara rums, eclipsed by its better-made brothers in the years that followed #319 It’s become almost a game to ferret out the initial issuings of rums made by companies whose names are made famous by the passing of time. Back in 2000, who had ever heard of Velier outside of Italy? Yet even then, the company was forging into the future by issuing rums defiantly called full proof, although there could have been few who were entirely sure what the term meant. 40% ruled the roost, “cask strength” was for whiskies, and only the occasional Demerara [Click here for the full review…]

Marienburg White Overproof 90% Rum – Review

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Nov 202016

Marienburg White Overproof 90% Rum - Review

To the extent that a shot of this rum is all sound and fury signifying nothing, it achieves its objective. The history is perhaps more interesting than the rum. #318 Regular readers of the meanderings of the ‘Caner in the rumiverse know something of the near obsessive (some say masochistic) search for the most powerful rums in the world that peppers these pages. Back in the day, the 151s had my awe. Then I tried the SMWS Longpond 9 year old 81.3% and thought appreciatively, “Dat ting wuz a proppah stink bukta.” Lo and behold I spotted the Sunset Very [Click here for the full review…]

Rhum Rhum Libération 2015 Vieux Agricole “Integrale” – Review

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Nov 172016

Rhum Rhum Libération 2015 Vieux Agricole “Integrale” - Review

Not quite as good as the 2012…but damned close #317 One of the genuine pleasures to be had in the field of rum reviews is the unstinting, generous assistance given by members of the subculture. After I wrote about the Rhum Rhum Liberation 2010, Liberation 2012 and the amazing 2012 Integrale, a reader from Holland contacted me and offered to send along a sample of the 2015 Integrale, for no other reason than because he wanted to see how it stacked up against the others…and to my great good fortune, it arrived while I was still in Germany, and I [Click here for the full review…]

Don Papa 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 142016

Impossible to forget, traumatic to recall. #316 I don’t know why they bothered. This is three years’ additional ageing, pretty much wasted. It’s Don Papa 7 version 2.0, and just about the whole experience is the same, except the raspberries from the younger variation, which are now dark grapes. Everything else – and I mean everything else, mouthfeel, taste, finish, smell, the works – remains the same, without even some additional oakiness or complexity to make the extra expense worth it. All right, so by now it’s clear that I’m late to the party here and all the discussions and post mortems [Click here for the full review…]

Matugga Gold Rum – Review

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Nov 092016

A less than impressive Jamaican wannabe rum that’s actually from the UK by way of Africa #315 In one of those coincidences that occasionally crop up, one of my Gallic colleagues texted me as I was putting together the write up for the Matugga, and asked me what I thought of it. “Mediocre,” was the terse response, given the comparators I had on hand that day against which I was rating it, and the almost finished review – but in retrospect that was perhaps too dismissive, since it’s not entirely a bad rum, and both the good and the bad [Click here for the full review…]

Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 2007 7 Year Old Rum (WP) – Review

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Nov 062016

Compagnie des Indes Jamaica 2007 7 Year Old Rum (WP) - Review

A stunning fullproof Jamaican #314 When a bunch of us were dissecting the 2016 Berlin RumFest, we all noted something interesting – the rums which seemed to be making the biggest splash and gaining some of the best accolades were the Jamaicans, as if they were charging out of the gate and making up for lost time. Certainly the visibility of the island has been increasing in the last year or two what with the issuance of new rums from previously marginal distilleries (Clarendon, Hampden, Innswood, Longpond, Worthy Park), and the appearance of new variations at various festivals. And many [Click here for the full review…]

Rum Nation Jamaica 1990 23 Year Old Supreme Lord VII (Hampden) – Review

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Nov 032016

Rum Nation Jamaica 1990 23 Year Old Supreme Lord VII (Hampden) - Review

We should be grateful that some makers still have sufficient stocks to permit the issuance of rums old enough to vote – we sure won’t see many of them much longer. This one does fans of the Jamaican rums no dishonour – it’s great. #313 With the recent 2016 release of the 1991 Jamaica SL VIII, which really is just about as good as they say and maybe even better than this one, I rummaged around my bag of tasting notes and remembered I had a bottle from that island from a year or two back knocking about and gathering [Click here for the full review…]

Black Joe Jamaican Rum (1980s)

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Oct 302016

Rumaniacs Review 025 | 0425 In spite of the recent (2015-2016) resurgent charge of Jamaicans on the world rum scene, an older rum like this reminds us that for a long time they were actually rather quiescent, and exported a lot for rebottling overseas – to Italy in this case, where a small outfit named Illva Saronno produced the Black Joe in the 1980s. The company, founded in 1922, primarily produces Amaretto, bitters and Sicilian wines (“Illva” is an acronym which stands for Industria Lombarda Liquori Vini e Affini – they are located just north of Genoa). I imagine that [Click here for the full review…]

R. L. Seale’s Finest Barbados 10 YO Rum (Foursquare) – Review

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Oct 292016

R. L. Seale's Finest Barbados 10 YO Rum (Foursquare) - Review

Overrated. Apologies to lovers of the rum, but it’s a mediocre ten year old in a cool bottle. #312 The R.L. Seale 10 year old is a sort of old stalwart in the pantheon of Barbados hooch. Sooner or later everyone passes by it, and it’s considered a benchmark against which, in the past, many Barbadian rums were rated, one of the basket of rums that defined the entire Bajan style. In this day of independent bottlers and full proof offerings, to say nothing of Foursquare’s own tinkering and varied expressions, it starts to show something of its age. And [Click here for the full review…]

Don Papa 7 Year Old Rum – Review

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Oct 242016

Caner’s Rum Quality Inverse Square Conjecture: quality of rum is inversely proportional to the square of the sum of [ glitziness of website plus design of the label ]. #311 The presentation and advertising and marketing of this rum is all about fancy bottle and label design, gorgeous visuals, and words to make you giddy with anticipation. It nails all aspects of those. Everything else is secondary, except the rum itself, which is tertiary. Just to set the stage: I honestly thought my amigo Henrik, in his savage takedown of the rum, was exaggerating his despite. However, intrigued, I begged [Click here for the full review…]

Ron Aldea Caña Pura White Rum – Review

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Oct 092016

The confusion as to what this white is meant for – a soft mixing rum, or an intro to individualistic macho – makes it, paradoxically enough, falter at both. #310 You can imagine my surprise when I ran through the Ron Aldea line of rums from the Canary Islands last year, and after talking to the genial guy at the booth at my usual inordinate length, realized with astonishment that here was Santiago Bronchales, who previously was deeply involved with Ocean’s Atlantic, a rum I had thought was perhaps too overambitious for its own good, if reasonably drinkable. Once he realized [Click here for the full review…]

Traveller’s “Parrot” 3-Barrel 3 YO Rum – Review

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Oct 042016

Traveller's "Parrot" 3-Barrel 3 YO Rum - Review

A light, easygoing, tasty three year old that’s better than average. #309 Located in Belmopan (capital of Belize), Travellers is a distillery which traces its origins to 1953 when Master Blender Senor Omario Jaime Pedomo opened a bar he named Traveller’s as a nod to the rum sales made to people travelling to and from Belize City. The company currently uses molasses with natural fermentation (both source of the former and duration of the latter are unknown to me at this time) and double distills the result in a triple column continuous still, for a supposedly smoother, lighter taste. [Click here for the full review…]

Rhum Rhum Libération 2010 Vieux Agricole – Review

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Oct 022016

Rhum Rhum Libération 2010 Vieux Agricole - Review

Not quite on the level of either of the 2012 editions #308 *** When trying many rums of similar antecedents – year, maker, style – what we are doing is examining all the ways they are similar, or not. The underlying structure is always the same, and we search for points of difference, positive or negative, much in the way we review wines, or James Bond movies. Velier’s own Caronis and Demeraras are examples of this, as is this collaboration with Gianni Capovilla from Bielle on Marie Galante (Guadeloupe). Some reviewers take this to the extremes of delving into the [Click here for the full review…]

La Confrérie du Rhum Millésime 2014 Cuvée Speciale Rhum Blanc – Review

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Sep 282016

La Confrérie du Rhum Millésime 2014 Cuvée Speciale Rhum Blanc - Review

#307 Inhaling the powerful scents of this rhum is to be reminded of all the reasons why white unaged agricoles should be taken seriously as drinks in their own right. Not for Longueteau and La Confrérie the fierce, untamed — almost savage — attack of the clairins; and also not for them the snore-fests of the North American whites which is all that far too many have tried. When analyzing the aromas billowing out from my tasting glass, what I realized was that this thing steered a left-of-middle course between either of those extremes, while tilting more towards the backwoods [Click here for the full review…]

Seven Fathoms Premium Rum – Review

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Sep 262016

* The rum that Pyrat’s could have been #306 A trend I see gathering more and more steam these days is that of snazzy marketing campaigns for (mostly) new rums, bugling their lovingly preserved family recipes, boasting slick webpages oddly short on facts but long on eye candy, trumpeting old traditions made new (but respectfully adhered to), or new and innovative production methods which enhance the final product. Words like “artisan”, “premium”, “handcrafted”, “traditional”, “every single drop” are tossed around with the insouciant carelessness of hormonal teenagers with their chastity. This kind of folderol just irritates me, not least because [Click here for the full review…]

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