Don Omario’s Vintage 15 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jun 152013
 
Don Omario's Vintage 15 Year Old Rum - Review

Sedate, but not quite docile. Urbane with just a hint of bad boy. An excellent fifteen year old out of Belize. The humourist in me likes to think that Travellers – that excellent rum house out of Belize which also makes the 1-barrel, 3-barrel and 5-barrel rums – has a resident Irishman on the payroll, and he changed his name, and was instrumental in making a left field product with his name on it (I had a similar feeling when I ran into an Irish pub in Kazakhstan many years ago). The reality is different, of course, but it tickled [Click here for the full review…]


Plantation Grand Reserve Barbados 5 Year Old – Review

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Jun 042013
 
Plantation Grand Reserve Barbados 5 Year Old – Review

Among the best of the five year olds, and may actually be the best 5 I’ve had to date. One of the surprising things about the Plantation Barbados 5 year old is the fact that it is bottled at what, for Plantation, is a relatively mild 40%. Still, for all my whining about wanting rums to be stronger, I can’t deny the overall quality of what many would dismiss as a mixer’s rum, because it’s a quietly impressive product that is the equal of the El Dorado 5 year old in every way, and exceeds it in others. Cognac Ferrand [Click here for the full review…]


Velier DDL 1985 UF30E 27 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 302013
 
Velier DDL 1985 UF30E 27 Year Old Rum - Review

    Concentrated black cake. Uitvlugt East Field #30 takes its place as the source of one of the best rums I’ve had this year. In my rather tiny world, sourcing a rum like the Uitvlugt 1985 27 year old 60.7% is quite an experience. A rum limited enough, rare enough and old enough that to use a single appellation like “aged” to describe it is akin to saying Tolstoy wrote rather long books. The series of rums imported to Europe by Velier (these are DDL products selected by them in Guyana, not Europe) answers every beef I ever had [Click here for the full review…]


A.D. Rattray Panama (Don Jose) 2000-2012 12 Year old Rum – Review

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May 252013
 
A.D. Rattray Panama (Don Jose) 2000-2012 12 Year old Rum - Review

Offbeat Panamanian rum which makes a virtue out being different. People will like it or hate it for the same reasons. I come down on the side of the former. There’s something about Panamanian rums I really like. They are not as heavy and dark and growly as Demerara rums, nor as occasionally oaky and citrus-laden as the Jamaicans, or for that matter as soft and plummy and banana-like as I’ve often noted in the Bajans. You would never imagine a Panama rum being vulgar, overbearing or obnoxious, like a cinema-goer behind you who chucks your seat, won’t shut up [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Centenario 20 Años “Fundacion” Solera – Review

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May 212013
 
Ron Centenario 20 Años "Fundacion" Solera - Review

    If rums were animals, this would be a faithful, doe-eyed spaniel with slippers in his mouth, who only wants to express his adoration of Master. The Costa Rican Ron Centenario “Fundacion” solera rum is a poster child for rums which could easily be a bit more torqued up, and become better. Right now, this quietly excellent solera is cuddly, a bit pudgy, and is like soft velvet on the tongue – I think it could just as effortlessly go on a Charles Atlas program and beef itself up to something a lot more interesting, good as it is [Click here for the full review…]


Bristol Spirits Port Mourant 1980 30 Year Old Demerara Rum – Review

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May 162013
 
Bristol Spirits Port Mourant 1980 30 Year Old Demerara Rum - Review

  The PM 30 year old by Bristol Spirits is to El Dorados as fish wasabi is to a green salad. Both are nutritious, both are tasty, both are good to have…but only one is a work of art. This one. This is what happens when a rum maker throws caution to the winds, takes a standard table tipple, ages it to within a whisker of falling down dead of old age, and then torques it up to a grin-inducing, tonsil-tickling 51%. You get a rum that’s redolent of bat-bleep-hydrophobia. If this was a photo of a sports car, you’d [Click here for the full review…]


Renegade 2003 Barbados (Foursquare) 6 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 122013
 
Renegade 2003 Barbados (Foursquare) 6 Year Old Rum - Review

Schizoid, androgynous, curious rum. Too well made to ignore, but not appealing enough to collect. Right during the tasting, before I had done a single bit of research or perused the label beyond the obvious, I looked at my glass, smacked my not quite toothless gums and opined loudly and dogmatically (if not quite coherently) to an empty house that this was a rum from the Foursquare distillery in Barbados. You might well ask whether my snoot is that good (it’s not), my memory that clear (it’s not) or I knew it for sure (I didn’t). It was more a [Click here for the full review…]


Plantation 1999 Guyana Old Reserve Rum – Review

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May 072013
 
Plantation 1999 Guyana Old Reserve Rum - Review

Crackers and butter Given how much I care for Guyanese style Demerara rums (even if some of them actually originate from plantations closer to Berbice), and knowing something of the various profiles hailing from these old sugar estates, I must confess to being quite surprised at the sharp left turn this 45% ABV Plantation rum made. No really. As soon as I opened the bottle to pour the gold-amber rum into my glass, the very first scent that reached me was salt biscuits and creamy, unsalted butter.  This, to me was quite unmistakable, because in my youth I was once [Click here for the full review…]


La Occidental Guayabita del Pinar (“Seca”) – Review

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May 042013
 
La Occidental Guayabita del Pinar ("Seca") - Review

Not quite a rum, but close to a spiced or flavoured agricole, and a delicious drink for all that. Big hat-tip to Tony for this one and all the others. For those who believe Cuba makes only rums, here’s a flavoured spirit close to being one without actually stating it is. It defies easy categorization, which is perhaps why it doesn’t, even on the label, say anything about what it supposedly is (a rum with additives for taste). The issue may be its source, which is variously noted as being either a cane spirit or a guava-based distillate (it’s actually [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Vigía Gran Añejo – Review

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May 022013
 
Ron Vigía Gran Añejo - Review

Parts of this rum succeed swimmingly, others less so. This was the second of two rums brought over some days ago, by my squaddie Tony – he of the famous 151 proof rumballs guaranteed to lay you out flat under the table in labba time. I remember having about four of these alcoholic grenades a few years back, and then having a serious and lengthy conversation with a doorpost for the next ten minutes, thinking it was the Hippie. Tony had the good fortune to visit Cuba recently, and being one of the few Caners in the whole province (he [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Santiago de Cuba 12 Year Old – Review

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Apr 252013
 
Ron Santiago de Cuba 12 Year Old - Review

Very few discordant notes in this excellent 12 year old…just perhaps a little less intensity than I’m after, maybe a shade less complexity. The Cuba Rum Corporation’s 12 year old rum is a very well put together product that reaffirms my belief that if the US embargo is even lifted in part, rums should be high on the list of products allowed into the country just so those poor souls south of 49 can see what they’ve been missing. This rum is proof that Cuba remains high on the list of nations making some of the best rums out there. [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Barbados 2001 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Apr 182013
 
Rum Nation Barbados 2001 10 Year Old Rum - Review

* The Barbados 2001 from Rum Nation is a solid plate of eddoes and plantains, black pudding and cookup on a refectory table…the spirituous equivalent of comfort food. It’s a warm bosom against which one can relievedly lean after a tough day…and call it Mommy. A good, warm-hearted, undemanding rum of unexpected depth. Rummaging idly through my shelves the other day (“Jeez, what am I going to look at this week?”) I came across one of the last two unreviewed Rum Nation products I had bought back in 2011 after having been impressed as all get out by the Raucous [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Centenario Gran Legado 12 Year Old – Review

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Apr 122013
 
Ron Centenario Gran Legado 12 Year Old - Review

A set of Bata flip-flops made out of Gucci-quality leather Frankly, I just don’t get the point of underproofs. It’s like they aren’t quite sure what they want to be, and are deathly afraid of offending even one potential customer by being, I dunno, a real rum. If I wanted a light liqueur, I would have bought one, and to have a rum aged twelve years to be bottled at a strength like 35% makes little sense to me: the wussiness sinks an otherwise decent product. You can taste the underlying potential…it just doesn’t deliver. Put aside the grumbling about [Click here for the full review…]


Plantation Nicaragua 2001 Old Reserve – Review

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Apr 112013
 
Plantation Nicaragua 2001 Old Reserve - Review

A very good double-aged Nicaraguan rum, from France.  If this is what a random selection of Plantation rums is like, then I have high hopes for all the others. Finally, I have managed to start acquiring some of the Plantation rums (long regarded by me as a major hole in the reviews of rum “series”), and if the Law of Mediocrity holds true, then this is a set of bottlings that would remedy all my bitching about the inconsistencies of the Renegade line. If it is true that the characteristic of the parts is a function of the whole, then [Click here for the full review…]


Opthimus 18 Solera Artesinal Rum – Revew

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Apr 072013
 
Opthimus 18 Solera Artesinal Rum - Revew

38% weakling, of pleasant taste approaching real complexity, but with no real assertiveness. Originating in the Dominican Republic (home of the Brugal, Bermudez and Barcelo brands), the Opthimus 18 artestinal rum is a solera rum, quite good, but too weak for me. It’s made, like the excellent Solera 25 whisky-finished version, by the firm of Oliver and Oliver, a company in existence since the mid 19th century and founded by the Cuban family of Juanillo Oliver, a Catalan/Mallorcan emigre. Abandoning Cuba in 1959, members of the family re-established the company in the early nineties in the DR after finding the [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Diamond 1996 15 Year Old Full Proof Old Demerara Rum – Review

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Apr 042013
 
Velier Diamond 1996 15 Year Old Full Proof Old Demerara Rum – Review

With this brutally elemental full-proof, Velier has tamed the beast but retained the beastliness. The makers of the Diamond Estate 1996 Full Proof must have received no end of emails and letters and online posts about how the Albion 1994 60.4% was a sissy pink cupcake of a rum meant for the weak, and how they demanded something with a tad more torque in its trousers. And so came the Diamond Estate 1996 15 year old from Velier or, as it is better known, the “please move over, delicate person.” I guess it was supposed to have a nice, genteel [Click here for the full review…]


BBC TV’s Sherlock

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Apr 012013
 
BBC TV's Sherlock

One of the pleasures of watching BBC TVs 2010/2012 show “Sherlock” is the sly, tongue in cheek references it makes to the canon of Sherlock Holmes; another is the sheer length of each episode…ninety minutes per; and a third is the precise casting of the eponymous lead and the Doctor. About the only thing I grumble about in this well-written, well-acted TV series is the fact that the Brits don’t seem to understand that a season should not be three episodes a year – even Life on Mars and its follow up had more.  And for someone as iconic as [Click here for the full review…]


Liquor Privatization in Alberta

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Apr 012013
 
Liquor Privatization in Alberta

First published in 2011 on Liqorature I complain and moan a lot about the lack of choice in Alberta’s shelves when it comes to rum, but truth to tell, we get quite a bit more than other provinces around this country, except maybe BC. Most provinces’ liquor sales in Canada are still under Government control. This is the legacy of the well-meaning, though utterly unrealistic, efforts of elected officials to implement Prohibition – yes, Canada had Prohibition – in 1918 and even before. Unlike the US, Canada came to its senses faster (you migh say they sobered up, ha ha), [Click here for the full review…]


The Short Stories of Ray Bradbury

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Apr 012013
 
The Short Stories of Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is a twisted Isaac Asimov, a literary Dali who painted with his words, a Stephen King before Stephen King was there. If King is the master of the occult, of horror, and of long novels and deep characterizations playing “what if?” with the universe, then one of the wellsprings of his imagination was surely the taut, tightly wound dystopian short stories penned by his prolific predecessor.  And indeed, how much of our subterranean mental landscape has been formed by this one man, a contemporary of the early 20th century dime novels and pulp fictions with which I am [Click here for the full review…]


Conan the Warrior

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Apr 012013
 
Conan the Warrior

“Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.” So goes the introduction to perhaps the iconic hero of all Sword and Sorcery tales, themselves a subset – or bastard cousin – of the heroic fantasy genre.  Is there a man alive who has not at some point heard of Conan the Cimmerian? Or seen the vivid paintings of Frank Frazetta and been transported into the mystical and legendary kingdoms of Hyboria?  In penning these tales of [Click here for the full review…]


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