The Lone Caner – Page 50 – A Solo Reviewer's Take on Rums

La Martiniquaise Rhum Pur (1940s/1950s)

Jul 072015

Rumaniacs Review 006 | 0406 This brand no longer exists, but the company (La Martiniquaise) formed in 1934, still does. My research turned up not only this photo from the 1940s/1950s edition, but an even older bottle from the 1850s (which sells for four thousand quid on oldliquors.com…ouch!). Produced by L.M. Charenton le Pont from rhum imported from Martinique, then aged and bottled in France. The Sage said it was a 1950s rhum while others suggest 1940s, I trend to the latter here. 40% Colour – Dark amber. Nose – Rich, clean, warm. Like a clear, clean cognac…nice. Earthy. Cinnamon, cloves, [Click here for the full review…]

Ocean’s Distillery

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Jul 022015

Ocean’s is a relatively new rum making outfit based in Zaragoza, Spain, beginning its life in 2012. Essentially they are an independent bottler, but with ambition: they have ageing warehouses the Ayala Valley (Basque Country, Spain) and La Palma Island in the Canaries. They have various seven year old rums, the limited editions, and some craft stocks from Jamaica, Trinidad and other places. So you can tell these boys mean business and want to be around for the long haul. Small rum companies – from independent bottlers who take favoured casks and put them out the door to actual producers [Click here for the full review…]

Prichard’s Crystal (White) Rum – Review

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Jul 012015

Neither attempt — to make an ersatz agricole (from molasses) or a white mixing agent to take on the more established brands — really works. Prichard’s is that outfit from Tennessee which has been quietly and busily putting out rums for nearly twenty years, ever since Phil Prichard decided to make rum in whiskey country. And while it is now common for new entrants to the market to sell white unaged rum from their stills to cover startup costs and provide cash flow while they wait for more favoured stocks to mature, Mr. Prichard didn’t do anything of the sort, [Click here for the full review…]

Barbancourt Reserve du Domaine 15 Year Old Rhum (1970s)

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Jun 292015

Barbancourt Reserve du Domaine 15 Year Old Rhum (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review 005 | 0405 The forerunner of the still excellent fifteen year old rhum made in Haiti to this day, this one was generated in the 1970s, and it’s a pretty good rhum even after a remove of so many years. Pot still 43%, about 15,000 bottles were issued according to The Sage, while The Whisky Exchange says 20,000…doesn’t matter, they’re rare as hen’s teeth these days anyway. I think the recipe they used then is a little different than the current iteration of the 15, but not by much. Note also the similarity of the box to today’s edition. [Click here for the full review…]

Prichard’s Fine Rum – Review

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Jun 282015

A paradox of the mid range: a pot still rum that fails at very little…except perhaps excitement. I’ve been writing and rewriting this review for almost three months: each time I came to grips with it, I thought of something else to add (or delete), or some new and interesting product eclipsed the Prichard’s and made me want to publish that first. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, maybe. Prichard’s has been in business since 1996 when they became the first new distillery in Tennessee since the 1940s and have quite a stable of output, including some interesting rum products [Click here for the full review…]

Cavalier 151 Proof Antigua Rum – Review

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Jun 092015

I just imbibed an angry blender set to “pulse”. Even now, the words of the Roman poet Horace, resound: “Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans. It is lovely to be silly at the right moment.” Every time I try one of the barking mad overproof 151 rums, these words come to me, because all I can think is that some mischievous guy in a lab somewhere is happily whipping up these rums like Professor Snape in his dungeon. Surely there is little reason for rums this powerful to exist, but exist they do, and just like all those [Click here for the full review…]

King of Diamonds Rum (1980s)

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Jun 062015

Rumaniacs Review 004 | 0404 First rum I drank back in the day. Was working in the interior of Guyana for gold exploration companies at the time; every Saturday evening, a couple of bottles of this stuff were trotted out for us to get hammered on. We drank it swiftly, continuously, copiously and without a care for quality. This one is supposedly fruit cured…not that I noticed much of that. Nose: Thin, sharp. Coconut shavings, swiftly disappearing. Faint caramel and vanilla. Nuts. Anise, but not much. Raisins, red guavas and grapes waved at me, but kept way back. Palate: Light [Click here for the full review…]

Rum Nation Barbados 2003 10 Year Old – Review

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Jun 032015

Rum Nation Barbados 2003 10 Year Old - Review

*** Sweet enough to appeal, smooth enough to enjoy, complex enough to admire. Solid, succulent Bajan rum from 2003, a cut above the ordinary, just like its 2001 brother. Why Fabio Rossi, the gentleman behind Rum Nation, keeps referring to his Bajan offerings as “entry level” is beyond me. ‘Cause like Mr. Gump, I may not be a smart man, but I know what entry level is. This is a few notches higher, and that it can do what it does with what for me is a relative anemic 40% strength, is no mean achievement in a pantheon dominated by [Click here for the full review…]

Barbancourt 1977 >25 Year Old Rhum (Veronelli)

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May 282015

Barbancourt 1977 >25 Year Old Rhum (Veronelli)

Rumaniacs Review 003 | 0403 A craft bottling from 1977, made by Luigi Veronelli of Milan, who had visited Haiti and was so impressed with the Big B, he was granted permission to take a few barrels. Outturn 1196 bottles, 43%. Note the age statement…greater than 25 years. One can only sigh with envy. Nowadays, fresh pressed cane juice is no longer used to make Barbancourt rums, but reduced syrup; and the old Charentaise still is gone, replaced by more modern apparatus. This allows greater volume, but perhaps some of the older taste profile has been sacrificed, as this rum [Click here for the full review…]

New Grove Old Tradition 8 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 272015

New Grove Old Tradition 8 Year Old Rum - Review

A little too thin and out of balance for my palate, though the tastes are intriguing. A few words about Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean to the east of Madagascar, which has been at varying times composed of more islands and fewer, and either Dutch, English or French…though Arabs and Portuguese both made landfall there before initial failed colonization (by the Dutch) in 1638. However, its strategic position in the Indian Ocean made both French and British fight for it during the Age of Empires, and both remain represented on the island to this day, melding with [Click here for the full review…]

Velier Skeldon 1973 32 Year Old Rum

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May 242015

*** Rumaniacs Review 002 | 0402 I looked at the Skeldon 1973 in detail a while back. Since an extra sample came my way I re-tasted and have added it to the Rumaniacs lineup. Still a fantastic rum, just about unavailable now except to the fortunate few with very deep pockets. Distilled in the Skeldon estate on the Corentyne coast in Guyana in April 2005 from a Coffey still. 4 barrels, outturn 544 bottles. Nose: Pungent and rich to a fault; coffee, burnt sugar cane fields, brown sugar, tons of licorice, fleshy fruit (peaches, prunes, black grapes), honey. Mocha, walnuts, [Click here for the full review…]

Velier Albion 1989 Full Proof 19 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 212015

Velier Albion 1989 Full Proof 19 Year Old Rum - Review

When you drink full proof and overproof rums for a long time, many forty percenters can seem, well…a shade pusillanimous. No such issue afflicts the 62.7% full proof of Albion 1989, ‘cause that thing looks and feels and samples like it’s about to father a nation. The Albion 1994 was power and passion and style all wedded together in a remarkable fusion, and my only regret has always been that I couldn’t get more. It was preceded by a version from 1983, 1986, and this one from 1989. These days, the only place you’ll find either is from a collector [Click here for the full review…]

Trois Rivières 1977 Rhum Vieux Agricole Millèsime

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May 202015

Trois Rivières 1977 Rhum Vieux Agricole Millèsime

*** Rumaniacs Review 001 | 0401 Not entirely sure how old this is…I think it was bottled in 2000 or so, making it at least a twenty three year old. AOC controlled from Martinique, pot-still-made from cane juice (of course). Nose: Bright, flowery, quite spicy, but also very clean. Cinnamon, breakfast spices, cloves, some dried fruits (banana, fleshy pears just starting to go). All this is shouldered aside by a rather startling brininess and musty vegetal pungency after a while…y’know, like cardboard in an old, unaired cellar. Not unpleasant, but not your standard fare either Taste: Oh, nice, very well [Click here for the full review…]

Three Cachaças from Delicana

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May 132015

(#214) Although a huge market for cachaça exists in Brazil where it is the national tipple they sometimes call pinga, very little of it makes it to other countries in comparison to agricoles (let alone more popular molasses based rums). For rummies, it’s something like an undiscovered country. A cane-juice-based spirit, it has certain basic similarities to agricoles and has been referred to as a type of brandy, of the aguardente family. Cachaças are often unaged and like clairins in Haiti, run the gamut from underproof to overproof drinks, and are often bottled clear. I should mention, however, that [Click here for the full review…]

J. Bally Rhum Vieux “Pyramide” 7 Year Old – Review

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May 072015

J. Bally Rhum Vieux "Pyramide" 7 Year Old - Review

Cool bottle, great product. Almost the perfect mid-range rhum, not too young to be raw, not too old to be over-pricey, or unavailable. The zippy, funky young J. Bally Ambrè agricole was an interesting rhum from Martinique, and I enjoyed it, simply feeling it had some growing up to do – which is perhaps natural for a rhum aged less than five years. The Vieux 7 year old certainly addressed many of these concerns, and was a better rhum in almost every way. Ageing may not always confer quality (neither does price) I’ve heard it said, but I think the [Click here for the full review…]

Clairin Sajous Unaged White Rhum – Review

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Apr 302015

Clairin Sajous Unaged White Rhum - Review

Drinking this rum is knowing what harpooning Moby Dick felt like. A wild-haired full-proof bodybuilder of a rhum, so absolutely unique in taste that it it defied easy description. I sampled it and knew I wanted to write about it immediately. So there I was in Paris at La Maison du Whiskey in April 2015, with some fellow rummies. Hundreds of bottles of rhum and rum beckoned from groaning shelves. Samples from years past – decades past! – winked in their little bottles, inviting us to get started. Straight-out rumporn, honestly. Our hands were itching to start the pours, but [Click here for the full review…]

Velier Caroni 1994 Heavy Trinidad Rum – Review

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Apr 172015

Velier Caroni 1994 Heavy Trinidad Rum - Review

This Caroni isn’t the strongest one in the rumosphere but it conforms to most of the expectations taste-wise – a shade more dark and it could probably be used to surface a road somewhere. A good to great exemplar from the closed distillery. This is one of five or six rums I bought in an effort to raise the profile of the now-defunct Caroni Distillery from Trinidad. That it was made by Velier didn’t hurt either, of course, because almost alone among the rums makers out there, Luca Gargano has the distinction of making just about all of his rums [Click here for the full review…]

Bristol Spirits Caroni 1989 19 Year Old Rum – Review

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Apr 082015

Bristol Spirits Caroni 1989 19 Year Old Rum - Review

Another, slightly lesser brother from the same mother. It stands in the shadow of the company’s magnificent 34 Year Old. It’s possible that Bristol Spirits decided to play it safe (again) with the 43% expression from the closed Caroni Distillery of Trinidad…y’know, give it a wider audience than the drop-down-dead-of-old-age 34 year old 1974 variation which would dig a deep hole in both your wallet and your marriage. Or maybe that’s how the barrel played out when it came time to bottle the liquor (notice that 2008 was the same year they produced the 1974, so both were issued simultaneously). [Click here for the full review…]

Bristol Spirits Reserve Rum of Peru 8 Years Old – Review

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Mar 312015

Bristol Spirits Reserve Rum of Peru 8 Years Old - Review

A clean, warm and smooth rum from Peru, which is extremely accessible to anyone who doesn’t like cask strength rums. Into the shadowed world of dronish and often-boring label design, the screaming green of the Peruano stands out like a neon tarantula on a wedding cake. It’s an assault on the visual cortex that can’t help but make you catch your breath, mutter an amused “wtf?” and move in for a closer look. Not that this has anything to do with the quality of the rum inside, of course. I merely bring up the point to remark on the fact [Click here for the full review…]

J. Bally Rhum Ambrè Agricole – Review

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Mar 242015

Young, rambunctious, uncoordinated, somewhat raw, and a riot in a mix of any kind. Even neat it has a funky, raw charm all its own. In that, it’s an agricole all the way through. The J Bally Ambrè Agricole is a young rhum that is still finding its legs, and places its origins in an estate on Martinique that stretches back to 1670, when the Lajus sugar plantation was founded. It was one of those rhums from a company that has long had its place in the roll call of honour of the French West Indies – HSE, Trois Rivieres, [Click here for the full review…]

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