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…]


Longueteau Très Vieux Grande Réserve 2004 Rhum – Review

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Jun 072016
 
Longueteau Très Vieux Grande Réserve 2004 Rhum - Review

Strong beginning, fine development, chokes on the backstretch There are many things about agricoles that I slowly learned to appreciate: the clear profiles, the subtleties of their ageing, the differences and similarities with the molasses based rums that some almost indifferently dismiss as ‘industrials.’ So far I seem to be leaning more towards Guadeloupe rhums than those from Martinique, and while the Grande Reserve I sampled in Paris in April 2016 wasn’t one of the shining stars of the firmament, it wasn’t all that bad either and I had several hours to come to grips with it properly Longueteau distillery [Click here for the full review…]


Professor Cornelius Ampleforth Rumbullion – Review

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May 312016
 
Professor Cornelius Ampleforth Rumbullion - Review

Too much spice, too much sugar, too little interest. The name is almost Dickensian in its imagery.  Professor Cornelius Ampleforth could be straight out of the Pickwick Papers…you know, some chubby, benevolent older fellow in half-specs and a faded waistcoat, with rather limited mental capacity, down on his heels, but possessing a good heart. Whatever – the name evokes a certain good humour and indulgence from us, and at the very least is evocative.  That, unfortunately, doesn’t make the Professor’s Rumbullion a rum worth drinking, unless you are into spiced rums and like to have that in your drink (which [Click here for the full review…]


Navy Neaters 95.5º Proof (Guyana-Barbados Blended) Rum – Review

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May 252016
 
Navy Neaters 95.5º Proof (Guyana-Barbados Blended) Rum - Review

A blue-water rum for the Navy men of yore. This may be one of the best out-of-production independent bottlings from Ago that I’ve had.  It’s heavy but no too much, tasty without excess, and flavourful without too many offbeat notes.  That’s quite an achievement for a rum made in the 1970s, even more so when you understand that it’s actually a blend of Guyanese and Bajan rums, a marriage not always made in heaven. I’ve trawled around the various blogs and fora and articles looking for references to it, but about all I can find is that (a) Jolly Jack [Click here for the full review…]


Nine Leaves Angel’s Half Rum (French Oak Cask)(2015) – Review

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May 182016
 
Nine Leaves Angel's Half Rum (French Oak Cask)(2015) - Review

A love note to the concept of kaizen It’s an old joke of mine that Nine Leaves’ staff consists of  a master blender, office assistant, purchasing agent, bottler, General Manager, brand ambassador and sales office, and still only has one employee.  This was and remains Mr. Yoshiharu Takeuchi, who single-handedly runs his company in the Shiga Prefecture of Japan, and basically issues some very young rums (none are older than six months) on to the world market. The unaged whites in particular are getting all sorts of acclaim, and I have one to write about in the near future. Back [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Bacardi Superior “Carta de Oro” Añejo – 1970s

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May 162016
 
Ron Bacardi Superior "Carta de Oro" Añejo - 1970s

Rumaniacs Review 022 | 0422 On the surface, rums like this one remind one how long Bacardi has been around (as if we could forget);  the Superior has also had a long history – I found a photo dating back to the 1930s.  This one is of more recent vintage, the 1970s, and made in the Bahamas (and that’s where I’ll tag it).  Other versions of this rum were made in Trinidad and Cuba, some white, some not.  The labelling of “Carta de Oro” and “Añejo” and the colour, however, makes this a lightly aged product, less than five years [Click here for the full review…]


Neisson Rhum Agricole 2005 Vieux – Review

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May 152016
 
Neisson Rhum Agricole 2005 Vieux - Review

There are few (if any) weaknesses here: conversely, not many stellar individual components either.  It’s just an all-round solidly assembled product that missed being greater by a whisker. So here we are, gradually inching up the scale of the Neissons, with a rum I felt was slightly better than the Tatanka I looked at some weeks ago.  Now, that one had a bright, colourful label to catch the eye (Cyril from DuRhum did a review of the lineup, here), and yet appearance aside, this one was, in my estimation, a smidgen better. It’s a subtle kind of thing, having to [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum J.M. Vieux Millesime 2002 10 Year Old

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May 112016
 
Rhum J.M. Vieux Millesime 2002 10 Year Old

A wonderfully sippable AOC agricole from J.M. in Martinique The unquantifiable quality of the J.M. 1995 Très Vieux 15 Year Old has stayed with me ever since I first tried it.  Some aspects of the rhum did not entirely succeed, but I could never entirely rid my memory of its overall worth, and so deliberately sought out others from the stable of the company to see if the experience was a unique one.  And I am happy to report that the Millesime 2002 10 year old is a sterling product in its own way, and perhaps slightly exceeds the 1995…though [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes 1998 Guadeloupe 16 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 082016
 
Compagnie des Indes 1998 Guadeloupe 16 Year Old Rum - Review

A lovely, light rum , as elegant as a Viennese waltz: it’s missing something at the back end, but nothing that would make me consider telling anyone to steer clear.  Compagnie des Indes so intrigued me when I first came across their Cuban rum back in early 2015, that I’ve already looked at two of their more offbeat products (from Fiji and Indonesia), and have detailed notes on five more commercially minded ones, which I’ll try to deal with in the next weeks and months (in between every other rum I want to write about).  This one hails from Guadeloupe [Click here for the full review…]


Mana’o Jus de Canne Rhum Blanc – Review

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May 042016
 
Mana'o Jus de Canne Rhum Blanc - Review

Cool stoicism and subdued power, all in one rhum. Standard “table” white rums have always been around, and perhaps appeal more to those mix them into gentle cocktails and go on to play Doom II  on “Please Don’t Hurt Me” difficulty.  In the main, the best known ones were — and are — filtered, light mixing agents which made to adhere to a philosophy best described as “We aim not to piss you off.” They excite a “ho-hum” rather than a “wtf?” Not so the current crop of clear, unaged rums which have been making  an increasing splash in our [Click here for the full review…]


GDL El Dorado Bonded Reserve Rum – Review

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Apr 282016
 
GDL El Dorado Bonded Reserve Rum - Review

A rum from Ago.  Perhaps only a Guyanese or a retired British Navy man could truly love it. For the most part, over the last months I’ve concentrated on fairly well known rums, made by bottlers with whom we’re all reasonably familiar. Today, I’m going to reach into the past a bit, to the Guyana Distillers El Dorado Bonded Reserve. Sorry, what? I can hear you say, You mean DDL don’t you, Mr. Caner? Yeah…and no.  This rum was made in the early 1980s before DDL changed its name, and in it was one of those hooches like the King [Click here for the full review…]


Banks DIH XM Royal Gold 10 Year Old – Review

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Apr 252016
 
Banks DIH XM Royal Gold 10 Year Old - Review

For me this is a rum that evokes real nostalgia, even though I’ve mostly moved past it. I enjoy storytelling, but if rambling background notes and local anecdotes are not your thing, skip three paragraphs. It was a fact of life in Guyana in the 1980s and 1990s that as one moved up the income scale from poor to less poor, one upgraded from Lighthouse matches to bic lighters to zippos; from leaky, loosely packed Bristol cigarettes to Benson & Hedges (gold pack, preferably made in the UK, not Barbados), and stopped swilling the pestilential King of Diamonds (which nowadays [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Enmore (Versailles Still) 1988 19 Year Old Rum – Review

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Apr 222016
 
Velier Enmore (Versailles Still) 1988 19 Year Old Rum - Review

It is a rum of enormous taste and great breadth of profile…and if it had been a little less serious, a little more forceful, I would have called mine Falstaff. In spite of its light blonde colour, there has always been something dark and dour, almost Heathcliff-ish, about the Enmore rums, including this 1988 variation (maybe it’s the bottle design of black-on-dark-red). It’s a brilliantly done piece of work, a drone-quality delivery system for ensuring your taste buds get every bit of nuance that can be squeezed out.  And that, let me tell you, is quite a bit. So many people [Click here for the full review…]


St. Nicholas Abbey White Rum – Review

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Apr 132016
 
St. Nicholas Abbey White Rum - Review

A tasty, unaged, pot-still white rum, which St. Nicholas Abbey seems to have made while in a playfully experimental phase. So there I was last week, reading through my notes and writing unenthusiastically about the 3 year old “Real McCoy” white rum from Barbados, which found little favour with me.  But consider this unaged counterpart made right up the road from St. Nicholas Abbey, also issued at 40%, also a white and in just about every way a superior product.  What could account for such a difference? Well, part of it is the lack of filtration, another is the source [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum Barbancourt Réserve Spéciale (1970s)

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Apr 102016
 
Rhum Barbancourt Réserve Spéciale (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review 021 | 0421 Here’s a pretty decent, if somewhat anorexic, rhum from Haiti, courtesy of the House of Barbancourt.  The name “Réserve Spéciale” is still in use, and refers these days to an eight year old, but so scarce is any kind of information on the sample I was provided (even getting a photo was problematic hence the lousy quality of the one you see here), that for me to say it was an eight year old back then is an educated guess, not a fact.  Still, info or no info, a sample was sent, and there it is and [Click here for the full review…]


The Real McCoy 3 Year Old White Rum – Review

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Apr 092016
 
The Real McCoy 3 Year Old White Rum - Review

Bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts will get more out of this than I ever will. It redefines the word “understated.” Knowing how I have never been entirely satisfied with rums from Barbados, I decided to buy a few about which many have waxed rhapsodic, followed that up with trying as many as I could at the 2015 Berlin rumfest, and continued on the theme by begging my friends in Europe for samples of their personal stocks of independent bottlers’ Bajans.  Let’s see if I can’t get to the bottom of why — with just a few exceptions — they don’t titillate [Click here for the full review…]


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