Three Italian Rhum Fantasias

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Mar 192014
 
Three Italian Rhum Fantasias

  These three rums are aged curiosities. There’s one from the 60s, and two from the 70s. Information on their origins is maddeningly obscure. The labels are crap, and the corks aged and faded and cracked by decades of rough handling. There’s never been a review of any that I was able to find, and their makers are likely long gone. Yet these three bottles exist, and if for no reason than their history, I review them here, make what remarks I can, score them as best I’m able. Italy in these days is no stranger to rums, of course. [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Blairmont 1991 Full Proof 15 Year Old Rum – Review

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Feb 252014
 
Velier Blairmont 1991 Full Proof 15 Year Old Rum - Review

  A paradox of rum, marrying a lighter than expected profile with a stunningly intense full proof taste, compliments of the House of Luca When I first poured a shot of the Velier Blairmont 1991 15 year old rum into my glass (after having waited over a year and a half for the privilege), I immediately remarked its colour: a straw coloured light amber rum. After sampling five other Veliers in the past year, all of which were dark, brawny, bearded beefcakes, this came as something of a surprise. According to the literature on the bottle, seven barrels of the [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Barceló Imperial – Review

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Sep 062013
 
Ron Barceló Imperial - Review

  A subtle, supple rum, undone by a lack of courage and strength Consider for a moment my score on the Barceló Imperial. A 78 rating for me is a decent rum, if nothing to write home about. For a premium product, it’s something of a surprise – so here I should state straight out that that score reflects primarily its lesser proof and maybe excessive ladling in of sugar, not any other intrinsic quality. Frankly, it could have been higher. When I originally read the Barceló Imperial review from Josh Miller at Inu A Kena, I immediately fired off [Click here for the full review…]


DDL Superior High Wine – Review

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Aug 092013
 
DDL Superior High Wine - Review

The DDL Superior High Wine is not superior and not a wine, but will get you high without breaking a sweat. One of the first rums I ever had as a young man was this one, and the last time I drank was it nearly thirty years ago, when I was thinking of dropping out of University, depressed about my future, and downing a whole raft of shooters in a small beer garden one still, hot afternoon, with a bowl ’ice and my one-armed friend Greg from UG. A few weeks later my life got upended and put me on [Click here for the full review…]


Wood’s 100 Old Navy Rum – Review

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Aug 052013
 
Wood's 100 Old Navy Rum - Review

  Rich, simply flavoured, overproofed Navy-style rum that has a skinnier corpus than expected There’s nothing much I can tell you about Wood’s Rum Distillery itself because (a) it’s not a distillery and (b) there’s not much online about it, even on their own website (and my books barely speak to the big names so what hope is there for the small ones?), but the brand did exist for over a century before being acquired by William Grant in 2002 – these are the boys who also own Sailor Jerry and the OVD rum brands and supposedly dabble in minor [Click here for the full review…]


Berry Bros. & Rudd Barbados 13 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jul 292013
 
Berry Bros. & Rudd Barbados 13 Year Old Rum - Review

Good all round Bajan rum from Berry Brothers & Rudd, that’s worth its price and is a good note on which to close your day. What a relief it was to try this well-aged rum, and to find that its Fijian 8 year old cousin which I had tried some weeks back was indeed something of an iconoclastic aberration. There’s not much I could say about a line of rums of which I have only ever sampled three, and it would have been wrong to extrapolate based on such a small sample size. So it’s a happy matter that I [Click here for the full review…]


SMWS R3.4 Barbados 2002 10 Year Old Rum (“Makes You Strong Like A Lion”) – Review

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Jul 142013
 
SMWS R3.4 Barbados 2002 10 Year Old Rum ("Makes You Strong Like A Lion") - Review

  This feels and tastes mean, largely because it is. But just because it treats you like life on Keith Richards’s face isn’t an automatic disqualification…I just call it inspired insanity, and have (much to my own surprise) given it the highest rating I’ve ever awarded to a 75% overproof. “Makes you strong like a lion”, the label remarks, in one of those tongue-in cheek references with which the SMWS likes to charm its buyers. After being battered into near insensibility (on more than one occasion) by the raging yak that was the SMWS R5.1 Longpond 9 year old 81.3%, you’ll [Click here for the full review…]


Murray McDavid 1995 Nicaragua 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jul 092013
 
Murray McDavid 1995 Nicaragua 10 Year Old Rum - Review

  Butch mixed in with a bit of Ziggy Stardust. Whisky fans will know all about Murray McDavid, which is part of Bruichladdich, those fine folks who make the many inconsistent (if always interesting) Renegade Rums. It’s actually possible that this rum was a precursor to the whole Renegade line, being made somewhat earlier (mid-2000s) and adhering as it does to many of the principles of those rums: casks sourced from the Caribbean and elsewhere, aged in Scotland and finished in a wine of some kind. Nicaragua is of course the home of a very decent range of rums, the [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Demerara Solera No.14 (2010 Release) – Review

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Jul 052013
 
Rum Nation Demerara Solera No.14 (2010 Release) - Review

A Demerara rum that may not be a true solera in spite of its name. Lovely, affordable, interesting rum. With this review, I have finally, after nearly two years of getting around to it, come to the end of the Rum Nation 2010 line of rums I bought all in one fell swoop, after being introduced to the series at Kensington Wine Market’s Raucous Rums tasting back in 2011. Since that time I have become quite a fanboy of Fabio Rossi’s products, and wish I could get more of his yearly releases: largely because I have not tasted a single [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Centenario 5 Year Old “Selecto” – Review

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Jul 012013
 
Ron Centenario 5 Year Old "Selecto" - Review

Passive,easy, light, indifferent, with a finish as short as this review Put aside my issues with underproof rums in general, and the five year old rum made by Centenario Internacional SA out of Costa Rica comes off as a reasonable rum, quite soft, and in line with many of their other jelly-kneed products: which is to say, pleasant and perfectly drinkable, but ultimately uninspiring (to me). As before, I simply note that I’m unclear who the rum is made for, since it’s too weak to appeal to an aficionado or to make a mix where strength is called for, and [Click here for the full review…]


Brugal 1888 Ron Gran Reserva Familiar – Review

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Jun 252013
 
Brugal 1888 Ron Gran Reserva Familiar - Review

A subtle, complex, tasty sipping rum You don’t see many of the Brugal rums here — I’ve only ever reviewed one of them, years ago when I was starting to populate the site: that one got a review, a shrug and a meh (which in retrospect may have been a touch condescending, as was my initial scoring), and I remember it principally because of its really lovely finish. The 1888 Ron Gran Reserva Familiar is something else again, and perhaps it’s sad that we don’t get to see more shops carrying it, ‘cause it’s a pretty nifty drink, and deserves [Click here for the full review…]


Berry Bros & Rudd 8 Year Old Fijian Rum – Review

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Jun 212013
 
Berry Bros & Rudd 8 Year Old Fijian Rum - Review

  Quasimodo in a shrink-wrapped muscle-car with overlarge tyres Rums have gotten, over the decades and centuries, rather civilized. Sweaty muscular beefcakes like the SMWS Longpond 9 81.3% and the Bacardi 151 always exist, of course, accompanied by more uncouth and less cultured rums even than that, made less for export than for local consumption…but for the most part, what we get is soft, soothing, decent, well padded. This 46% rum, however, made by those genteel fellows in England, Berry Brothers & Rudd, was none of these things…which, when you recall the near-brilliant 1975 Port Mourant they also made, is [Click here for the full review…]


Traveller’s 5 Barrel Premium Gold Aged Rum – Review

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Jun 182013
 
Traveller's 5 Barrel Premium Gold Aged Rum - Review

  Ambivalence personified Ever since I sampled Traveller’s Liquors 1-barrel expression, I’ve wanted to move up the chain – that rum, for its youth and antecedents, was a pleasure to drink, and I really appreciated its ten year old cousin, the excellent Don Omarios Vintage Rum. As with the latter, it was a bottle which “Rum Balls” Tony brought back when he was on holiday over in that part of the world: he obliged his parched amigo by schlepping a bottle of this Belize-made rum back for me to try (with him in attendance, of course). So once again, big [Click here for the full review…]


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

 1 Response »
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

 4 Responses »
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…]


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