King of Diamonds Rum (1980s)

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Jun 062015
 
King of Diamonds Rum (1980s)

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
 
Velier Skeldon 1973 32 Year Old Rum

*** 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
 
Three Cachaças from Delicana

  (#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

 6 Responses »
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

 1 Response »
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
 
J. Bally Rhum Ambrè Agricole - Review

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…]


Ron Maja 12 Year Old Rum – Review

 2 Responses »
Mar 182015
 
Ron Maja 12 Year Old Rum - Review

  This is definitely a rum to chillax with. A solid, relaxed and very pleasant Salvadorean rum which should be given some attention…even if it’s actually from Panama. Assume you were a new outfit in a country A and were making a new rum whose brand was once owned and which was once made, by your family; you sourced distillate from another country, B; used that country B’s facilities to make and age the finished product; and hired a Master Blender, also from that B country. Now, the question is, whose rum is it? A or B? This is not [Click here for the full review…]


Velier EHPM (Enmore and Port Mourant) 1998 16 Year Old Rum – Review

 8 Responses »
Mar 112015
 
Velier EHPM (Enmore and Port Mourant) 1998 16 Year Old Rum - Review

An assembly of two rums that are great on their own, made even better by being blended before ageing. Permit me a brief box-ticking here: Velier issues cask strength monsters akin to top end whiskies (but which cost less); they hearken to individual distilleries, sometimes to individual stills within that distillery; and Luca Gargano, the maitre, has stocks of Guyanese rums and the Trini Caronis that beggar the imagination; and while occasionally there are rums that don’t quite ascend to the brilliance of others, the overall oevre is one of enormous collective quality. Here, Velier has taken something of a [Click here for the full review…]


How to Start Reviewing Rums – Part 5

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Mar 062015
 
How to Start Reviewing Rums - Part 5

Part 5 – Keeping things going So let’s sum up the preceding four parts.[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] Understand what you’re getting into, and why you’re doing it Go with a comfortable writing style that suits you Design a nice look to your site Know how to taste, score, note and write (and practice a lot) Know your rums and the larger world around them Sample around extensively (safely!!! I am not advocating rampant boozing) Be courteous Be consistent If you’ve made it to fifty or more reviews, passed a year of writing, then it’s reasonable to [Click here for the full review…]


How to Start Reviewing Rums – Part 4

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Mar 052015
 
How to Start Reviewing Rums - Part 4

    Part 4 – Which rums to start with In conceptual and generalized terms, this series has so far covered the startup philosophy, the website and postings, and added pointers on sampling and reviewing. Today I move into more familiar territory. I have a feeling quite a few people were waiting for this post. Alas, no, this isn’t entirely what you thought it would be, because making such a list is a tricky, even controversial, subject to opinions varying as widely as the Pacific. I’d suggest that you begin with what’s available to you easily and at a relatively [Click here for the full review…]


How to Start Reviewing Rums – Part 3

 7 Responses »
Mar 052015
 
How to Start Reviewing Rums - Part 3

  Part 3 – Sampling, and the review itself In the first part of this series I discussed figuring out how to get your head around what to write, and followed that up in Part 2 with some general remarks on how to deal with your actual website postings. Today I continue in a similar vein about tasting, scoring and the conceptuals of a review. *** When I taste I scribble my initial notes immediately; then I have to retaste, usually with other rums in play as controls or comparators, then score. Then I have to turn the whole thing [Click here for the full review…]


How to Start Reviewing Rums – Part 2

 1 Response »
Mar 042015
 
How to Start Reviewing Rums - Part 2

Part 2 – The Website, writing and your postings Yesterday I wrote about getting the mental philosophy of what you’re doing straight, sort of like getting your battle preparations right. In this part, I speak to your website, your writing and the attitude towards interacting with the world. In no particular order of importance, then: 1. Hardly needs to be said, but design your website for the long term, and organize your space neatly. This is one of those elementary things that is often and surprisingly overlooked. Maximize useful space at the left and right with widgets, links, categories or [Click here for the full review…]


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