The Lone Caner – Page 56 – A Solo Reviewer's Take on Rums

The Fifties

Mar 202013

The Pulitzer-prize winning author David Halberstam’s study of the 1950s remains, after three readings, one of the most enjoyable works of history I ever picked up by accident. I was in a small bookstore on Yonge Street in Toronto and needed two more books to round out the $25 I was spending. The other one has long since been relegated to a shelf somewhere, but I keep picking this one up every year or two to go through it again. Halberstam’s central thesis is that while the sixties was a seminal decade in American life – Vietnam, the counterculture, birth [Click here for the full review…]

The Epic of Gilgamesh

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Mar 202013

Then came the flood, sent by gods’ intent… And Ea [gave] this advice to me: “Arise and hear my words: Abandon your home and build a boat Choose to live and choose to love… Be moderate as you flee for survival In a boat that has no place for riches Take the seed of all you need aboard…” Tablet XI, Column i, The Epic of Gilgamesh Aside from historical and biblical scholars, not many people know about The Epic of Gilgamesh, though my research suggests that the character seems to be somewhat of a subterrannean cultural icon and is referenced quite often in [Click here for the full review…]

Shogun

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Mar 202013

Book Review: Shogun – James Clavell James Clavell was the real thing. A prisoner of war in Changi (source of the inspiration of his first novel, King Rat) he somehow managed to rise above his experiences in war to write perhaps the definitive fictional account of pre-Tokugawa Japan in Shogun. Sure Christopher Nicole wrote a truer account in his novel Lord of the Golden Fan, but it lacked the snap and punch of Clavell’s creation, lacked the in-depth research, the feeling, the entire mentality of Japan. Let me put it this way: at the end of Shogun, you spoke some Japanese and had more than an inkling [Click here for the full review…]

On The Road

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Mar 202013

On the Road was the shot across the bow of an older generation, and heralded a new direction in American letters. Jack Kerouac pioneered the ‘stream of consciousness’ narrative style and dream worlds made flesh, flashbacks, flashforwards, plot departures and side trips, meandering soliloquies and sounded the first thrum of the counterculture. It is the Star Trek of the hippie sixties, presaging much of what came later, its uniqueness seen mostly in retrospect At all times biographical, On the Road is a journey into the mental state and physical surroundings of Sal and his friends, who disdain the middle class existence they have (and about [Click here for the full review…]

Wizard’s First Rule

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Mar 202013

A young woodsman called Richard Cypher (hint hint) is out in the woods, pondering the murder of his father, when he sees a beautiful woman (is there any other kind?) being stalked by four men. He intervenes, and rescues her from death. From this rather quick beginning, Terry Goodkind has spun the tale of “Wizard’s First Rule.” “When writing a short story,” Chekhov supposedly said, “Finish it, then chop the first three paragraphs.” We get dropped into the action so rapidly in “Wizard’s First Rule”, that one suspects Goodkind may have known the quote. WFR (I’m a little too lazy [Click here for the full review…]

The Catcher In The Rye

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Mar 202013

“Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger, seems to be one of those books one either loves or hates. Ostensibly the sory of one bored, directionless rich kid’s sojourn in New York, this short novel presaged the counterculture of the 1960s by over a decade, and arguably fired the imagination of an entire generation of post-war Americans like no other novel since. The reclusiveness of the author, and its being found in the effects of two high-profile American assassins, have merely raised public awareness of the book and enhanced the reputation surrounding it. People either despise its antihero or [Click here for the full review…]

The Namesake

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Mar 202013

The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri The Namesake is a family drama that illuminates the author’s signature themes: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the tangled ties between generations. The novel takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of an arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ashoke does his best to adapt while his wife pines for home. When their son, Gogol, is born, the task of naming him betrays their hope of respecting old ways in a new world. And we watch as [Click here for the full review…]

Red Mars

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Mar 202013

“Red Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson is probably the best hard science fiction tale of planetary colonization ever written, and is followed by two sequels, neither of which rise to the greatness of this first novel. It harks back to the Golden Age of science fiction in the forties and fifties, when John W. Campbell edited Astounding Stories and pioneered similar types of narrative, where real men and women dealt with the universe in logical, almost engineering-like ways. “Red Mars” spans a period of some fifty years, and has elements of utopionaism, dystopianism, politics, engineering, technological futurism and interpersonal dynamics [Click here for the full review…]

A.D.Rattray Barbados (Foursquare) 2003 9 year old rum – Review

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Mar 142013

A.D.Rattray Barbados (Foursquare) 2003 9 year old rum - Review

To date, the only A.D. Rattray rum I’ve tried was the excellent Caroni 1997, which was quite impressive, if no longer readily available. To this is now added their Barbados 9 year old, also bottled at 46%, non chill filtered, with exactly zero additives, very much in line with the puritan, zen-like production ethic that so characterizes, oh, Cadenhead. This one was taken from a single barrel for the likker establishment “Wine & Beyond” in Edmonton (they have a few others as well, but my slender purse ran out and Mrs. Caner was watching). I must say that after decanting this [Click here for the full review…]

Film vs Digital

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Mar 132013

Later this year (2010), a milestone in photographic history will be reached: the last produced roll of kodachrome print film and ektachrome slide film – Kodak’s famous workhorse of pro-photographers for three-quarters of a century – will be developed in the last lab still to process its demanding Ex chemistry (for those who are interested, it’s Dwayne’s Photo Service, in Parsons, Kansas). Appropriately enough, that last roll will be shot by veteran National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry, who made that famous “Afghan Girl” photo. Some herald it as a final nail in digital’s ascendancy over film. As an enthusiastic amateur, [Click here for the full review…]

Wives and the El Dorado Problem

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Mar 132013

The El Dorado Problem is that pitiful state of affairs reached when a truly superior rum appears on the shelf, demurely winking at you to buy it….and you don’t have the cash because it’s just outside (or way outside) your price range. It comes from yours truly, who realized he had such a problem when attempting to buy the El Dorado 25 year old a few years ago. Many of us netizens and lurkers in the rumiverse are at that stage where young families are the phase of life – children still in the single digits, a wife whose ring still has some [Click here for the full review…]

An Introduction to Rum and the Site

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Mar 132013

This introduction was first posted on the Liquorature site in January 2010, the ported to the Lone Caner in 2013 and lightly edited for updates in 2022. But it remains a product of the time I wrote it, so if it feels and reads dated, that’s because it is. Ahh, rum. The wonderful distilled product of cane. I feel the same way about it as the poor deluded souls from the Peat Clan feel about their Islays. Partly, of course, that comes from my background – almost half my life was spent in the Caribbean – and while my first [Click here for the full review…]

Single Digit Rums

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Mar 132013

(First posted on Liquorature, February 2010) Are we all a bunch of elitist wannabe snobs? I occasionally think we are. We can be as snooty as a veteran somelier at the Ritz watching a Hawaiian-shirted redneck walk in, and I say that because it ocurred to me the other day that while we — I!! — pay lip service to the “lesser rums” whose age is measured in single digits (or none at all, as if the maker were too ashamed to say how young the product is), the truth is that we all have a predilection for the older [Click here for the full review…]

Stills, Stills and More Stills

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Mar 132013

So what exactly are pot stills or columnar stills, batch vs continuous stills, steam distillation, freezing distillation or fractional distillation in the production of rum (or that other scottish drink)? And which one leads to better rum? I mean, I’ve made mention of “used the original pot stills” in my Pusser’s review, and in “Classifying rums” I noted that useage of pot- versus columnar-stills is to some extent geographic in nature and affects the output. And there’s something traditional and evocative about the terms. But what are they? All stills (the word derives from old middle english ‘distilling’) are descendants of [Click here for the full review…]

The Proof’s In the Drinking

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Mar 132013

It seems simple to say that an 80-proof rum is actually just 40% alcohol by volume based on a straightforward mathematical operation, but strictly speaking, it is not true. Actually, using the historical British method in force until 1980, a 40% ABV drink is 70 proof It has long been a problem to decide exactly how strong a given drink was (or is). From the ancient times, Archimedes’s principle was used to determine specific gravities (i.e., density) by use of hydrometers, but I can trace no records that show the consistent, state-mandated application of the principle to establishing the alcohol [Click here for the full review…]

Ron de Jeremy “Adult” Rum – Review

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Mar 132013

Come on now, be honest, why did you really buy this product? How can one ignore the advertising and marketing behind something as evocatively (or crassly) named as Ron de Jeremy, distributed by One-Eyed Spirits? There is almost nothing I can write that would not in some way be seen by the average reader as a mandingo-esque, pornographic allusion. I think the best — nay, perhaps the only — way I can approach this review is to do a full one-eighty course change, sink deep into the netherworlds of geekdom and nerd nirvana, and reference a great epos of wishful [Click here for the full review…]

Tintin in Tibet

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Mar 092013

Tintin is becoming a worldwide phenomenon (again) as a result of Jackson & Spielberg’s 2011 film adaptation (long overdue, in my opinion, and thank the Lord they didn’t do it in live action). Me, I’ve been a fan since my childhood, and have had the entire collection at several points in my life (they keep getting pinched by young friends and relatives, who are drawn to the adventures and Herge’s signature drawing style). I wanted to do a review of one of his adventures, even though, to purists, I imagine that it is not necessarily a book per se, [Click here for the full review…]

Berry Bros. & Rudd 1975 Reserve Demerara Rum (Port Mourant) – Review

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Mar 012013

Berry Bros. & Rudd 1975 Reserve Demerara Rum (Port Mourant) - Review

Tropic Thunder Building a boutique, aged superrum at the top end of the scale – whether that scale is price or power or both – is at best an uncertain business. Too expensive, nobody will buy it, too oomphed-up and too many won’t try it. Both together and you’ll scare away all but the wealthy who casually buy not one but several of the Appleton 50s. I think that this 46% rum hits all the high notes and finds a harmonious balance between age, price and proofage. It may be among the best rums I’ve tried so far, in my lonely [Click here for the full review…]

Coruba 12 year old “Cigar” Jamaican rum – Review

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Feb 242013

Coruba 12 year old "Cigar" Jamaican rum - Review

A proverbial harridan of rums, thin, dry, harsh and critical of everything you do with and to it. I call mine “Jimbo.” Coruba. That brings back memories. Remember that original shuddering bastard of a mixer I reviewed some years back? It was made in Jamaica but mostly sold in New Zealand, with a trickle going in other directions (like Alberta, or Europe, where a friend picked it up for me for about fifty Euros). It was rough and tough and a powerful inducement to give up spirits altogether. I wrote rather humourously in my original Coruba review, that one should [Click here for the full review…]

Panamonte Reserva XXV 25 Year Old Rum – Review

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Feb 132013

Panamonte Reserva XXV 25 Year Old Rum - Review

Bottled evening sunset. Among the best of all the 40% Panamanian rums I’ve tried thus far…though that is not quite what the endorsement it seems. The Panamonte XXV has, since its introduction, received such rave reviews across the board – it may be one of the most critic-proof rums ever made – that it’s led one reviewer (who I note has not done a formal write up or, perhaps, even tried it) to complain vociferously and with unbecoming language about the lemming like behavior of the bloggers who are supposedly in the pockets of the industry and who put over-the-top [Click here for the full review…]

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