Rhum Rhum Libération Vieux Agricole 2012 – Review

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Aug 172016
 
Rhum Rhum Libération Vieux Agricole 2012 - Review

Maybe not quite a second banana to the Integrale from the same year, but not the whole one either. In theory, the only real difference between the Libération Integrale and the one I’m looking at here is the strength (and, if you’re picky about such things, the title).  The Integrale was a quiet stunner of a rhum, one of the best agricoles for its price and age, yet it seems odd to say that its lower strength sibling falls so much shorter of the mark.  Can that really be just about proof?  I tasted them side by side, as well [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum J.M. 1845 Cuvée du Fondateur – Review

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Aug 132016
 
Rhum J.M. 1845 Cuvée du Fondateur - Review

After a tough day at work, the Cuvée 1845 is a balm to the exhausted mind. Even at 42% ABV, The Rhum J.M. Cuvée makes a statement for agricoles that is worth listening to.  It finds a balance between body, mouthfeel, taste, spiciness and warmth in a way that reminds us that agricoles should not be taken as merely a small subset of the greater rumworld, but should hold a place in the pantheon second to none. While these days my preferences run mostly towards stronger, full proof rums, I must say that there’s nothing about this lovely product that [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum Saint James (Martiniqe 1970s/1980s)

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Aug 072016
 
Rhum Saint James (Martiniqe 1970s/1980s)

Rumanicas Review 024 | 0424 Like with many old rhums one is sent or which one finds in shadowed corners of sleepy back-alley shops, it’s almost impossible to track down the provenance of rhums like this one.  I mean, do a search on “Rhum St James 47%” and see how far that gets you.  As far I know this is not a millesime (it’s not the superb 1979, or the 1976 for example), not a massively aged old rhum (in fact, its profile suggests the opposite), and was noted simply as being from the 1970s or 1980s.  Not much to [Click here for the full review…]


Companie des Indes Caraïbes – Review

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Aug 032016
 
Companie des Indes Caraïbes - Review

Lack of oomph and added sugar make it a good rum for the unadventurous general market. Your appreciation and philosophy of rum can be gauged by your reaction to Compagnie des Indes Caraïbes edition, which was one of the first rums Florent Beuchet made.  It’s still in production, garnering reviews that are across the spectrum – some like it, some don’t. Most agree it’s okay.  I think it’s one of the few missteps CDI ever made, and shows a maker still experimenting, still finding his feet.  Brutally speaking, it’s a fail compared to the glittering panoply and quality of their [Click here for the full review…]


Nine Leaves “Clear” Rum 2015 – Review

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Aug 032016
 
Nine Leaves "Clear" Rum 2015 - Review

A quite serviceable, unmessed-with white rum from Japan, steering a delicate middle course between sleaze and decorum with less than complete success. Nine Leaves, that always-interesting one man operation out of Japan, doesn’t find much favour with Serge Valentin, who has consistently scored their rums low, but I’ve always kinda liked them myself.  The 2015 edition of the “Clear” is a case in point, and showcases the move of some rum makers into white, unaged, unfiltered, full-proof, pot still products.  The aren’t for everyone, of course, and may never find broad acceptance, since they always feel a shade untamed – [Click here for the full review…]


La Favorite Cuvée Spéciale 1995 20 Year Old (La Confrérie Du Rhum) – Review

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Jul 282016
 
La Favorite Cuvée Spéciale 1995 20 Year Old (La Confrérie Du Rhum) - Review

A delectable rhum, of an age we don’t see very often these days. Anyone who thinks agricoles are an afterthought in the rum world and should only be taken when one runs out of the more common brown-based stuff, would do well to sample what La Confrérie Du Rhum and La Favorite issued last year. La Confrérie is actually not a company — translating into “The Brotherhood of Rum”, it is the largest Facebook rum group currently in existence —  its French language antecedents don’t stop it numbering nearly sixteen thousand members when last I looked (for comparison, Ed Hamilton’s [Click here for the full review…]


Three More Cachaças from Delicana

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Jul 252016
 
Three More Cachaças from Delicana

#290 In 2014 I looked at three very different aged cachaças from Delicana, the German maker of Brazilian rums; I had met the owner, Bert Ostermann, who has had a love affair with the country lasting many years at the Berlin Rumfest and we had a long and pleasant conversation.  The central theme of his work was to age his rums in local woods, which gave them a piquant, off-base profile that at the time I didn’t care for – indeed, I scored the youngest of these rums the best, because I felt that the peculiar tastes of the wood had not had [Click here for the full review…]


Jamel Cachaça – Review

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Jul 252016
 
Jamel Cachaça - Review

Original enough to make it worth buying just to experience it.  Nose is startling, taste a lot better. (#289 / 81/100) *** In trying the Jamel, Leblon and Sagatiba cachaças together this one stood out quite markedly, even more so when ranked against the German company Delicana’s three local-wood-aged variants that I’ve also tried.  The L’Esprit Brazilian rum might have set the bar high and remains the one I prefer the most (so far) but if you stick with it, this one is pretty damned good too…and this is one of those times that if they did add something in, [Click here for the full review…]


Sagatiba Pura Cachaça – Review

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Jul 222016
 
Sagatiba Pura Cachaça - Review

Great nose. Taste and finish don’t quite measure up. This was a cachaça I bought back in 2011 or thereabouts, and never bothered to open and review because I had zero experience with the spirit beyond getting smacked on caipirinhas a few times; I lacked sufficient background to rate it properly and it seemed to be unfair to score it when there were no fitting comparators.  Several years on, nearly three hundred reviews and quite a few Brazilian spirits later, plus available comparators and controls, and I felt better equipped to write something I can put my name behind.   [Click here for the full review…]


Leblon Cachaça – Review

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Jul 202016
 
Leblon Cachaça - Review

The Rio Olympics will surely revive interest in cachaças. Let’s head into the Amazon for a few reviews, starting with this delicate but ultimately disappointing one from Leblon. Cachaças, the rhums of Brazil, remain among the most unrepresented rums in the world, both from a perspective of being written about in reviews or info-blogs, or of actual knowledge of their incredible variety outside their place of origin.  And yet supposedly some 1500 or so such rums exist (one writer says it’s 5000), far eclipsing the other cane juice minority of the agricoles, which get much more attention. Amazingly, a mere [Click here for the full review…]


Lost Spirits Polynesian Inspired Rum – Review

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Jul 172016
 
Lost Spirits Polynesian Inspired Rum - Review

Nope, this one doesn’t quite click either.  Too many clashing tastes, none enhancing any other, and overall, too untamed. Still not entirely a bad product though. Let’s just wrap up the third on in the initial rums made by Lost Spirits, the Polynesian-inspired.  For those who really are not into rums, have not been paying attention, or are wondering why this small company is gathering so much press, be it known that Bryan Davis out of California makes the claim that with his proprietary technology (a ‘molecular reactor’) he can not only emulate many years’ ageing in just a few [Click here for the full review…]


Richland Single Estate Georgia Rum – Review

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Jul 132016
 
Richland Single Estate Georgia Rum - Review

  * By itself with nothing else around, it’ll do just fine as a light and casual sipper. It chips along easy, dances pretty around your palate, and has delicate notes that are quite enjoyable. In conjunction with others, it kinda chokes. This review has been sitting, waiting, gathering dust, for many months now, and the bullet, so to speak, had to be bitten. If I had never tasted a raft of rums from around the world the day the Richland crossed my path, I might have liked it a lot more. But what did happen is that my friends [Click here for the full review…]


Neisson Rhum Agricole XO Cuvée du 3ème Millénaire – Review

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Jul 072016
 
Neisson Rhum Agricole XO Cuvée du 3ème Millénaire - Review

Trying the last of the four Neisson I bought in 2014-2015 made me happy I saved it for last, because it was, I felt, the best of them all. “The race does not always go the swift, nor the battle to the strong,” goes that old aphorism; to which some wag added “…but that’s the way to bet.” I feel the same way about older rhums versus younger ones – the best score doesn’t always go to the oldest (the Trois Rivieres 1975 and 1986 are proof of that), it’s just that more often than not that actually is the [Click here for the full review…]


Lost Spirits Cuban Inspired 151 Rum – Review

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Jul 032016
 
Lost Spirits Cuban Inspired 151 Rum - Review

Not quite there.  Yet. Lost Spirits, if you recall, is the company that produced a set of rums of varying strengths last year – polynesian, navy, colonial, and this one – which are processed by their proprietary “reactor” to emulate the taste profile of rums aged for many years, while only being days old.  This is one of the three I bought, the “Cuban Inspired” version, bottled at a growlingly powerful 75.5% and properly labelled “151”.  151s are generally mixers (unlike, say, the SMWS beefcakes), which strikes me as an odd choice to produce – because if one is trying [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indies Jamaica 2000 14 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jun 302016
 
Compagnie des Indies Jamaica 2000 14 Year Old Rum - Review

  A rum that’s frisk to a fault. Ever notice how many new Jamaicans are on the market these days?  At one point you’d be lucky to see a few Appleton V/Xs chatting boredly on the shelf with an occasional dusty Coruba, and if your shop was a good one, maybe an indie or two.  For over a decade, few knew better.  Now, it’s not just J. Wray stuff that one can find with some diligent trawling: one can’t go online without banging into rums from Hampden, Monymusk, Worthy Park, Clarendon, Longpond…which is all great. The rum resurgence is a [Click here for the full review…]


Saint James Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1986

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Jun 232016
 
Saint James Rhum Vieux Agricole Millésime 1986

Rumaniacs Review 023 | 0423 Supposedly the 1970s and 1980s are the rarest vintages of many Martinique rhums – nearly thirty years later, that’s as little as makes no difference, since any and all rhums from that era are now collector’s items, irrespective of the country.  Many have been lost forever and aren’t even remembered.  This one from 1986 deserves to be rescued from the pit, however, because it’s pretty good. Saint James on the north east coast of Martinique has been around since 1765 when Father LeFebure of the Brothers of Charity first devised a cane spirit, which he [Click here for the full review…]


SMWS R3.5 Barbados 2002 11 Year Old Rum (“Marmite XO”) – Review

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Jun 222016
 
SMWS R3.5 Barbados 2002 11 Year Old Rum ("Marmite XO") - Review

A big ‘n’ badass Bajan rum, brutal enough to be banished to Netflix, where Jessica Jones and Daredevil occasionally stop by Luke Cage’s bar to have some. “They may be more throwaway efforts than serious exemplars of the blenders’ arcane arts,” I remarked once of one of the 151s with which I amused myself.  The SMWS on the other hand, does this overproof stuff with the dead seriousness of a committed jailbird in his break for freedom.  They have no time to muck around, and produce mean, torqued-up rum beefcakes, every time. So be warned, the “Marmite” isn’t a rum with [Click here for the full review…]


Kirk and Sweeney 12 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jun 192016
 
Kirk and Sweeney 12 Year Old Rum - Review

Not a bah-humbug rum…more like something of a “meh”. I have an opinion on larger issues raised by this rum and others like it, but for the moment let’s just concentrate on the review before further bloviating occurs. Kirk and Sweeney is a Dominican Republic originating rum distilled and aged in the DR by Bermudez (one of the three Big Bs of Barcelo, Bermudez and Brugal) before being shipped off to California for bottling by 35 Maple Street, the spirits division of The Other Guy (a wine company).  And what a bottle it is – an onion bulb design, short [Click here for the full review…]


Bristol Spirits Enmore 1988 20 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jun 152016
 
Bristol Spirits Enmore 1988 20 Year Old Rum - Review

A slightly discombobulated Enmore from the year Feynman died and Rihanna was born.  I wonder if that says anything about it? Bristol Spirits is a UK independent bottler formed in 1995, and so can no longer be considered a new kid on the block. Its label design has gone through several  iterations before settling on the current wildly coloured labels that so kidnap your eyes when you spot them on the shelf, and unlike some other indie bottlers, they pretty much issue all their rums at what they consider the appropriate strength, usually between 43%-55% with outliers at 40% in [Click here for the full review…]


Damoiseau Rhum Vieux Millésimé 1989 20 Year Old – Review

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Jun 122016
 
Damoiseau Rhum Vieux Millésimé 1989 20 Year Old - Review

The 1980 Damoiseau was no fluke, as this 1989 forcefully demonstrates. Last week I wrote about the Longueteau Grande Reserve which I tasted in tandem with this excellent Damoiseau (and five or six others), and wow, did this one ever stand out. At the risk of offending that actually rather pleasant and inoffensive Grande Reserve, I think the Damoiseau shows what it could have been with some egging on.  (Actually, this is what the Pyrat’s XO could have been had they ever found their cojones, lost the oranges and dialled the whole thing up to “12”, but never mind). Because [Click here for the full review…]


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