The Lone Caner – Page 52 – A Solo Reviewer's Take on Rums

J. Bally Rhum Ambrè Agricole – Review

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…]

Ron Maja 12 Year Old Rum – Review

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Mar 182015

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

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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

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

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

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Mar 052015

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

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Mar 042015

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…]

How to Start Reviewing Rums – Part 1

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Mar 032015

Introduction There are a lot of people who write engagingly and have an interest in rum, and some of them, not unnaturally, want to start their own website regarding matters of the cane. Some want to review rums; others want to blog about cocktails; in other cases the new bloggers address themselves to spirits in general. After a while, hits go up, production goes up, and the site takes off. And then, in some cases, it slides into a moribund state of somnolescence. It’s because I wish we had more rummies out there that I decided to put together some [Click here for the full review…]

Rhum J.M. 1995 Très Vieux 15 Year Old – Review

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Mar 032015

Rhum J.M. 1995 Très Vieux 15 Year Old - Review

A unique fifteen year old agricole that lacks something of the deep dark depth of the Damoiseau 1980 I so liked, but is a great and tasty example of the style nevertheless…as long as your tastes run that way. As adolescents, among our most fervent wishes was to have coitus without interruptus the way a hobbit has breakfast: whenever possible, preferably all the time, twice daily if we could manage it (well, what teenager hasn’t?) But as the years wound on, some reality entered that little fantasy: the truth is that unlimited anything gets boring after a while. One does [Click here for the full review…]

Alt-Enderle “India” Rum – Review

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Feb 232015

An entry level rum with some unusual and remarkably pleasant flavours that one has to work too hard to find in the raw scrape of underaged alcohol. One of the things I noted when nosing this dark mahogany-red rum from the German outfit Alt-Enderle, was the baking spices that presented themselves almost immediately. At 43% strength there was no real savagery here, and I didn’t bother letting it rest before trying it (when you practice on cask-strength muscle-twitching bodybuilders, anything under 50% seems easy), and all I remarked on at the inception was how many different, mild, spiced up elements [Click here for the full review…]

Cavalier Rum Puncheon White Overproof – Review

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Feb 192015

Cavalier Rum Puncheon White Overproof - Review

A relatively light and sweet potent white lightning that sits square between a white agricole and full-proofed island hooch, with a charm and power all its own. The very first review ever published by The ‘Caner was written for Liquorature (the predecessor to this site) and was for the Antigua Distillers’ masterful English Harbour 25 year old 1981. In later years, I had my suspicions about it – from the similarity of profiles, I thought it was a rebranded, perhaps re-blended version of the Cavalier 1981, which was an understated and excellent rum in its own right, and the sales [Click here for the full review…]

La Favorite Cuvée Privilège 30 Year Old – Review

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Feb 152015

La Favorite Cuvée Privilège 30 Year Old - Review

This is a pricey and very good rum that should have had the guts to go higher than its issued strength; but you’ll still be extremely happy with what you get, because there’s a lot going on until it runs out of steam at the finish. Indulge my love of history for a while: La Favorite is a small family owned distillery in Martinique which has an annual rum production of around 600,000 litres (as comparative examples, Bacardi sells in the tens of millions and the craft maker Rum Nation somewhere less than 200,000). The original sugar plantation was initially called “La [Click here for the full review…]

Cadenhead Trinidad Rum TMAH Trinidad Distillery 1991 21 yr old – Review

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Feb 122015

Cadenhead Trinidad Rum TMAH Trinidad Distillery 1991 21 yr old - Review

A Spartan rum, sporting a massive codpiece, ripped eight-pack, and real attitude. Not for the lovers of softer or sweeter fare. You just gotta shake your head with appreciation when you regard Cadenhead and their commitment to muscle-bound zen machismo in rums. They’ve always had a certain retro charm and a daring to go off the reservation that I grudgingly admired, and they have continued along that path here with this monster full proof. Leaving aside the squat, glowering psycho-orange-and-yellow bottle with its cork stopper which is almost a Cadenhead signature, it should simply be noted that Cadenhead hewed to [Click here for the full review…]

The 200th Review

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Feb 052015

*** Who would have thought, that when Liquorature first started as a small club in 2009, that the rum reviews portion of its website would split off into its own, let alone ever surpass a hundred reviews? With the review of Rivière du Mât Rhum Vieux Traditionnel Millésime 2004, some three years after passing the 100th write-up and more than five years into it, I have reached the next milestone, the 200th, and I have to admit, it would have been faster if I had not stopped writing for a year when I moved to the Middle East. It’s [Click here for the full review…]

Rivière du Mât Rhum Vieux Traditionnel Millésime 2004 8 YO – Review

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Feb 042015

Rivière du Mât Rhum Vieux Traditionnel Millésime 2004 8 YO - Review

The XO is more expensive, and slightly older, yet I feel this one is better in every way that counts: I’m going to take a deep breath, go out on a limb…and say I think this is among the best rums Rivière du Mât have yet created. Full of beans and enthusiasm after the frothing delight that was the Rivière du Mât XO, I decided to dump the previous subject of my 200th review, and go immediately to the Millésime 2004, which is close to the top of their range, and one of the better rums I had in 2014. [Click here for the full review…]

Rivière du Mât Rhum Vieux XO – Review

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Feb 012015

Soft, firm, tasty and an all ‘round excellent rum. It could have been stronger, but that doesn’t invalidate the quality of what you do get. Sometimes a positive review leaves me glumpish. This is a great rum, older cousin to the also interesting Grande Réserve, well put together, subtle, classy, soft, and possessing a real good taste…yet I guarantee that my inbox will be filled with grumbling queries as to why I bother writing about rums many can’t get. In fact, the majority of people reading this will ask variations of “So?”, “From where wuz dat again?” and the final resigned snort of annoyance, [Click here for the full review…]

The RumWorld’s Movers & Shakers, Past & Present

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Jan 292015

The RumWorld's Movers & Shakers, Past & Present

In December 2014, Ian Burrell put a survey up on FB’s The Global Rum Club Page. It read: “If you had to pick 5 people who have been a major influence for the rum category, who would you pick ? It can be brand founder, distiller, blender, brand ambassador, bartender, promoter, blogger, marketer, etc. Vote for your pick or add your own major influence. I’ll throw 5 (pre 1950’s) into the mix (in no order) Don Facundo Bacardi Massó ; Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt AKA Don the Beachcomer; Admiral Edward Vernon aka Old Grog; Constantino Ribalaigua Vert and James Man [Click here for the full review…]

Rhum Depaz (Hors D’Age) Cuvée Prestige – Review

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Jan 242015

Rhum Depaz (Hors D'Age) Cuvée Prestige - Review

Clean, clear, dry and old, with a lackluster finish that detracts from the excellent front end. When I reviewed the Depaz Reserve Speciale a while back, I thought that the flavours seemed a shade sharp, too vague, and departed the scene with all the hurry of a street cur at which you threw a rock…or something to that effect. Most of these issues were absent from the Cuvée Prestige, which was a better rhum in almost every way. It is a blend of rhums aged between six and nine years, has a lovely outfit, and probably the top-of-the-line product from [Click here for the full review…]

Nine Leaves

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Jan 202015

There’s a aspect of Japanese culture which appeals to me a lot – the concept of kaizen, or slow, patient, incremental improvement of a thing or a task, by constant repetition and miniscule refinement, that over time can lead to spectacular results and quality. Consider Toyota’s manufacturing processes as an example. Or the master chef Jiro Ono, who has been making sushi for decades, constantly making his work simpler, more elegant…and better, much better, Michelin-3-star better. Or the filmmaker Ozu, who always seemed to make exactly the same film, until his repeated, specific observations on Japanese life became universal [Click here for the full review…]

Depaz Rhum Vieux VSOP Agricole Reserve Speciale – Review

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Jan 122015

Depaz Rhum Vieux VSOP Agricole Reserve Speciale - Review

Complex, yes. Quality, not entirely. Although the Depaz VSOP Reserve Speciale is noted as being a complex agricole, not much except perhaps the taste of the reddish brown rhum deriving from the Plantation de la Montagne Pelee really works for me as it should, which just goes to show that not every single spirit hailing from a part of the world supposedly making only top-end products can be as good as it is meant to be. Part of the issue here (I hesitate to say “problem”) is that all sensations go by too fleetingly for any real impression to be [Click here for the full review…]

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