Lost Spirits Navy Style Rum – Review

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Nov 252015
 
Lost Spirits Navy Style Rum - Review

Leave aside the hype and controversy, and try this without preconceptions. You may be surprised, intrigued and even pleased with the result.  I was, I was and I wasn’t, not entirely…but you might be. If by now you are not aware that Lost Spirits out of California has developed a “molecular reactor” that supposedly mimics the ageing of a twenty year rum in six days, then you have not been paying attention (or aren’t that deep into rum geekdom).  The idea is not itself altogether new, and detractors have sniffed that snake oil sellers have been talking forever about using [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Port Mourant 1974 33 Year Old Rum

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Nov 242015
 
Velier Port Mourant 1974 33 Year Old Rum

Rumaniacs Review 012 | 0412 The Velier retrospectives continue.  So sad they’re out of production, and that DDL aren’t letting Luca take any more barrels from their old stocks.  The dinosaurs like this one continue to be collector’s items…the good Lord only knows where the 1972 is at these days. I last looked at this lovely rum back in 2013, when I was able to get a bottle into Calgary (bought in 2012, don’t get me started on the headaches that took), and its rep has only grown since then. Colour – mahogany Strength 54.5% Nose – Just lovely, so very distinctive. The [Click here for the full review…]


Clairin Vaval Unaged White Rhum – Review

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Nov 162015
 
Clairin Vaval Unaged White Rhum - Review

Looks like water but goes down like a charge of cheerfully boosted C4. You won’t mistake it for any other rhum…except maybe its cousins. (#241 / 84.5/100) *** Full of get-up-and-go instilled by the momentous encounter that was the Sajous, I sprang for both the Casimir and the Vaval (plus a Sajous of my own) at the first available opportunity.  Because come on, originality and going off the reservation in the rum world are vanishing ideals, and it’s not often that a rhum is so amazingly, shockingly off-base that it’s in another ballpark altogether. Such a rhum was the Clairin [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Cacique Antiguo – Review

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Nov 122015
 
Ron Cacique Antiguo - Review

Supposedly more premium, but not a whole lot better than the 500. Here’s a poster child of why a rum reviewer has to have the beady-eyed practicality of a jaded streetwalker. Age, style, marketing, pamphlets, labels, word of mouth, all count for nothing, and all is evaluated without recourse to what anyone else says. After reviewing the €35 Cacique 500 as well as the Veroes Añejo from Venezuela, and checking around to see what else I could buy from that country, I felt it was only fair to pick up something a little higher up on the value chain (but [Click here for the full review…]


Velier UF30E 1985 27 Year Old Rum

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Nov 082015
 
Velier UF30E 1985 27 Year Old Rum

Rumaniacs Review 011 | 0411 Time to address the brontosaurii of Velier for a few Rumaniacs write ups, since the samples are there. UF30E is a bit “young” for inclusion into the Rumaniacs pantheon, but it is out of production, so let’s have it. The code stands for Uitvlugt Field #30 East, or some such, which would puzzle even someone from Mudland (like, umm…well, me).  Never mind.  With an outturn of 814 bottles from three barrels, it remains one of the best rums from Velier I’ve ever sampled.  And while I thought had overpraised it back in 2013, it turns out I [Click here for the full review…]


Compagnie des Indes Indonesia 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 052015
 
Compagnie des Indes Indonesia 10 Year Old Rum - Review

In Berlin in 2015, I tasted thirty or so rums at the RumFest. But I only bought one. This one. Why did I get this rum? Well, occasionally I get bored with rums that seem to go noplace special, don’t venture beyond their own self prescribed limits. I like originality, the whiff of something new. And so I go far afield and back in time, sniffing out old rums — a 30+ year old Demerara, maybe), different ones (clairins anyone?) and those from varied locations like, oh, Madagascar. I’m still looking for Swaziland; was enthralled to know that Ocean’s picked up [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum des Plantations St. James 1885

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Oct 282015
 
Rhum des Plantations St. James 1885

Rumanicas Review 010 | 0410 Yes, you read that right. 1885.  Holy molasses this thing is old. How can anyone even begin to assess a spirit that was made so incredibly long ago? I’m literally in awe. What was going on back then anyway? Sino French war in Vietnam; the Mahdist army overran Khartoum and killed General Gordon; AT&T was incorporated in New York; Gottlieb Daimler patented his engine; the North West rebellion in Canada; the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York harbour; the Third Anglo-Burmese war…and St. James began bottling its vintages that year, same year as they introduced [Click here for the full review…]


St. Nicholas Abbey 15 Year Old Rum – Review

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Oct 262015
 
St. Nicholas Abbey 15 Year Old Rum - Review

An expensive, luxurious, silky, almost-heavy, near-masterpiece of assembly. This dethrones the $400 Panamonte XXV as maybe the best 40% rum I’ve ever tried. For half the price. It’s been just over four years since I reviewed the St. Nicholas Abbey’s 8, 10 and 12 year olds, and I liked them all, a lot. They were soft, warm, well-made Bajan rums (initial distillate provided by R. L. Seale of Four Square), redolent of much history and heritage — the plantation itself is as much of interest as the rum they make. Ever since then I’ve been trying to get my hands [Click here for the full review…]


Black Tot: Last Consignment Naval Rum – Review

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Oct 222015
 
Black Tot: Last Consignment Naval Rum - Review

Bottled history.  Nothing more, nothing less. “The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good,” remarked Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I remembered that bit of wisdom before embarking on our tryst with this rum.  And to ensure that my long anticipation for the Tot wasn’t bending my feeble mind (I bought the bottle 2014, and tasted it for the first time almost a full year later) I tempered my judgement by trying it three times, with the Skeldon 1973 32 year old, BBR 1977 36 year old, a Velier Caroni and the Samaroli Barbados 1986.  Just to be sure I wasn’t [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum J. Bally 6 Ans

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Oct 192015
 
Rhum J. Bally 6 Ans

Rumanicas Review 009 | 0409 Oh, tough one to research.  Loads of 1929 and 1930s photos out there, rien on this one. Not a millesime, because J. Bally helpfully places the year on that little smiley label at the top for those.  But with that fading old-style label, maybe pre-1980s?  Earlier? Not sure.  Still, J. Bally’s original domicile on Plantation Lajus du Carbet was closed back in 1989 (current rhums are made at a consolidated site at Plantation Simon using the original recipe), so at least we have something suitably aged here.  Whatever.  It was a neat little piece of [Click here for the full review…]


The Three Amigos – El Dorado’s Single Barrel Rums

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Oct 182015
 
The Three Amigos - El Dorado's Single Barrel Rums

(#236) The three single barrel expressions issued by DDL are a curious bunch.  Ignoring the head of steam gathered by independent bottlers in the last ten years or so, DDL has never given either prominence or real attention to what could be Demerara rum’s killer app – single barrel, cask strength expressions that are still-specific.  When one observes the raves Velier, Cadenhead, RN, Silver Seal and others have gotten for their tightly focussed expressions hewing to precisely those coordinates, one can only wonder what DDL’s malfunction is. And yet, here they are, these three, originating from the Port Mourant wooden [Click here for the full review…]


Sunset Very Strong Overproof Rum – Review

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Oct 152015
 
Sunset Very Strong Overproof Rum - Review

Hulk no like puny rum.  Hulk smash. The last and strongest of the overproof howitzers batters my glass. It’s a giant of a drink, the most powerful commercial rum ever made, a gurgling frisson of hot-snot turbo-charged proofage.  0.5% additional points of proof and the black clothes squad with silenced helicopters and full SWAT gear would be rapelling down to my apartment searching for weaponized rum. It skirts jail-time illegality by a whisker, and I can truly say the only reason I bought it was anal-retentive machismo and the desire to say I had. Like every 151 ever made (but [Click here for the full review…]


Asterix & Obelix

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Oct 022015
 
Asterix & Obelix

*** I challenge anyone to read the adventures of the two indomitable Gauls, Asterix and Obelix, and not bust out into a belly laugh at least once. Much like Herge’s Tintin, there’s a peculiar flavour to these illustrated graphic novels (for this is indeed what they are – it would be incorrect to deem them mere “comics”) which American illustrators of humour have, for the most part, lost or abandoned – the ability to write and draw a story that is more than just a four strip daily funny, and make it long, absorbing, hilarious and riveting, stocked with a [Click here for the full review…]


L’Esprit Epris 13 Year Old Brazilian Rum – Review

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Sep 272015
 
L'Esprit Epris 13 Year Old Brazilian Rum - Review

If originality and straying off the beaten path of the rumworld is your thing, wander no further.  The thing is just a few stops short of being stunning. This is one of the rare occasions where I tasted a rum blind, knowing absolutely nothing at all about it before I started…really, absolutely zilch. Not the country, not the company, not the distillate. I blame this on the pad I crash at in Berlin which has no wi-fi, no internet, no elevator, and what passes for hi-tech is an East-German era rotary dial phone.  So the situation when I tasted this [Click here for the full review…]


Chantal Comte La Tour de L’Or Martinique Rhum (HSE) – Review

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Sep 202015
 
Chantal Comte La Tour de L'Or Martinique Rhum (HSE) - Review

An agricole that bends the rules just enough to be original, without dishonouring its antecedents. What a remarkable rhum. In between the larger and more well known independent bottlers lurk smaller operators pursuing their own vision. Some, like Old Man Spirits, or Delicana, fight the good fight without undue recognition or perhaps even real commercial success.  Others seem to find a more workable middle road. Chantal Comte is one of these, an eponymous company run by a bright and vivacious lady who Cyril of DuRhum interviewed earlier in 2015.  I first saw some of her products in 2014, bought some [Click here for the full review…]


Cuvée Homère Clément Rhum Vieux Agricole Hors d’Âge – Review

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Sep 142015
 
Cuvée Homère Clément Rhum Vieux Agricole Hors d'Âge - Review

An unaggressive, bright and clear, sipping-quality rhum agricole that can serve as a bridge between traditional molasses rum and agricoles. Clément holds the dubious distinction of providing one of the first agricoles I ever tried.  That was five years (and some change) ago. At the time when I tried that Tres Vieux XO, just about the top of their range, I remember the clarity and smooth brightness of it, and how it flirted with a molasses profile without ever stepping over the  line.  That rhum was a blend of three exceptional years’ production…the Hors D’Age I was trying this time [Click here for the full review…]


Samaroli Nicaragua 1995 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Sep 072015
 
Samaroli Nicaragua 1995 10 Year Old Rum - Review

This is a rum that reaffirms my faith in the Nicaraguan rums.  Nothing need be added to it, nothing can be taken away. There’s a purity and minimalism of construction here that is almost zen. The sheer range  of flavours emanating from the glass that held the Samaroli Nicaragua 1995 tickled my nose and astonished my mind.  Few light coloured rums I’ve tried in the last six years were ever this rich right out of the gate.  For a person whose background in Nicaraguan rum trends more to the Flor de Caña range (of which the 21 remains my favourite), [Click here for the full review…]


Bristol Spirits Port Mourant 1999 14 Year Old Rum – Review

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Sep 032015
 
Bristol Spirits Port Mourant 1999 14 Year Old Rum - Review

It’s all a little bit, well, funky.  There’s an element of crazy about, it, perhaps deliberately created, perhaps not, which is almost in defiant contrast to more traditional PMs.  All things considered, this rum raises my ire and hurts my heart, both at the same time.  In it I see all that craft makers aspire to, while somehow failing to realize both its and their own potential. Last time around I looked at the quietly impressive Bristol Spirits PM 1990 17 YO, which I tasted in conjunction with this younger 1999 iteration.  You’d think that with core distillate being the same, and [Click here for the full review…]


Bristol Spirits Port Mourant 1990 17 Year Old Rum – Review

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Aug 272015
 
Bristol Spirits Port Mourant 1990 17 Year Old Rum - Review

A love note from Bristol to lovers of Guyanese PM-still rums Bristol Spirits is that independent bottler out of the UK which started life in 1993. Their barrel selection from the various countries around the Caribbean has created an enviable track record of limited bottlings; I’ll always have good memories of the Bristol Spirits PM 1980, and the subsequent editions of the 1990 and 1999 were rums I’ve been keeping an eye out for on the basis of that positive experience. All of these were made, of course, using the Port Mourant distillate – in this particular instance they didn’t [Click here for the full review…]


Opinion: In Defense of Rum Bloggers

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Aug 252015
 
Opinion: In Defense of Rum Bloggers

  “I don’t read a lot of blogs because, well, most of them are written by people who aren’t qualified to piss in the ocean,” remarked Ed Hamilton on his blog The Ministry of Rum on July 7th 2015.  To say I was surprised at such a blanket indictment of the majority of the rum blogging community would be an understatement.  He’s not the only one to make such a statement in the recent past: when I wrote a five part series on how to start reviewing rums earlier this year, in an effort to provide some advice on new [Click here for the full review…]


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