Old Lahaina Premium Gold Rum – Review

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Nov 022012
 
Old Lahaina Premium Gold Rum - Review

Light gold rumlet, lightweight in what counts, with an oddly discombobulated flavour. Some time ago I reviewed an intriguing product out of Hawaii, the Kōloa Gold Rum, which impressed me by having some interesting (if thinner than average) flavours emerging out of an utterly unaged rum. The Old Lahaina “Original Formula” Premium Gold Rum is another in this vein, with a similar taste profile, yet somehow it failed to come up to snuff, where the Kōloa succeeded (both companies produced their first rums in 2009). Maui Distillers began construction of their distillery in 2003 around Maui’s plantation town of Paia, where [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Millonario Solera 15 – Review

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Oct 232012
 
Ron Millonario Solera 15 - Review

Like Bernadette from “The Big Bang Theory” – sweet, buxom, lovely…but with a slight edge as well. What a lovely, lovely rum. Is this the best solera rum currently in production? Now there’s a statement guaranteed to raise the blood-pressure of lovers of Opthimus, Cubaney, Dictador, Ron Zacapa, Vizcaya, Cartavio, Santa Teresa or others, and draw hordes of disapproving comments from people who will inevitably and disparagingly ask “Well, how many have you tried, dude?” Making a statement like that is akin to throwing a defenseless Christian virgin into the Roman lion pit, isn’t it? Soleras are a peculiar subset [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Millonario XO Reserva Especial – Review

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Oct 192012
 
Ron Millonario XO Reserva Especial - Review

The lush voluptuousnes of Raphael, captured in a bottle with a bit of Peruvian sunshine Soft. This rum is so soft. It is breezes in the warm tropical twilight, the lap of waves at low tide on a deserted Caribbean island, the first unsure, hesitant and oh-so-sweetly remembered kiss of your timid adolescence. It is your mother’s kitchen on a rainy day, fresh bread baking in the oven. It is a 40% Peruvian piece of magic, and if it costs a shade over a hundred bucks, I can only say that I believe it to be worth every penny. Want [Click here for the full review…]


Mount Gay Eclipse Black 100 Proof Rum – Review

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Oct 172012
 
Mount Gay Eclipse Black 100 Proof Rum - Review

A serious rum contender for an middleweight-overproof title, but loses out due to a lack of polish and a glass jaw. The Cabot Town got this one by a TKO. Much as I appreciate really good top tier, expensive and very old rums, I equally enjoy taking up what some might term lower ranked offerings: single digit rums, blends and hormonally unbalanced raging overproofs of any kind. In fact, as I’ve said on more than one occasion, I wish we could see more established distillers move away from 40% spirits, and exercise their muscles a bit with higher strength products. [Click here for the full review…]


Raucous Rums Tasting (04 October 2012)

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Oct 042012
 
Raucous Rums Tasting (04 October 2012)

As has now become a pleasant routine every six months or so, I attended the second Kensington Wine Market Raucous Rums tasting of 2012 on Thursday 4th October, and as has also become my habit, I brought along a guest. Previously, before my rum-loving friend The Bear bailed for the Maritimes (for his health and a better job he claims, but I think he was just tired of Calgary weather), he and I made it a point to always go together. What has happened since his departure is that I always buy two tickets, and ask someone to come along [Click here for the full review…]


Opthimus 25 Solera Whisky Cask Rum – Review

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Oct 042012
 
Opthimus 25 Solera Whisky Cask Rum - Review

Smooth, soft, voluptuous Tomatin-cask-finished solera rum that expresses its admiration for your awesomeness without coyness or complexity, just unalloyed, warm affection. And a bit of a quirky side. You are entirely within your rights to ask what the number actually means in the context of a solera’s given “age”. Generally accepted useage holds that it does not mean the oldest or youngest component of the blend, but the average of them all: which is no more than proper given that the solera process is based on a percentage of the rums in one level of barrels being progressively poured (and [Click here for the full review…]


Appleton Estate 21 Year Old Rum – Review

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Oct 042012
 
Appleton Estate 21 Year Old Rum - Review

Though not as in your face as its older brother, it’s still too oaky for me. It’ll be the bees knees for anyone who prefers a rum with a drier mouthfeel, less sugar and more tannins in their rums than I do. This one’s all about opinion. The Appleton Estate 21 year old rum has been around long enough for most reviewers to have had a chance to check it out…in my case, I simply never got around to it, having been less than enthused about the Master Blender’s Legacy, the blend of which it said the 21 forms the backbone. [Click here for the full review…]


Raucous Rum Tasting 27 September 2011

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Sep 272012
 
Raucous Rum Tasting 27 September 2011

The Raucous Rums of the evening Tuesday 27th September 2011 was one of those days in which I participated in an event about which, even though absolutely nothing went terrifically wrong, I have mixed feelings: of both appreciation and disappointment. I speak, of course, for the few of us who were there and know whereof I speak, of KWM’s second rum tasting event, rather euphemistically termed “Raucous Rums.” I suppose by this time I should come to terms with the fact that we Lovers of the Cane are second class citizens n the spirits world. I can’t speak for the vodka [Click here for the full review…]


Rhum Vieux Domaine de Courcelles Grande Reserve 1972 – Review

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Sep 152012
 
Rhum Vieux Domaine de Courcelles Grande Reserve 1972 - Review

I’m not an avowed fanboy of agricoles: yet this one may be the best I’ve ever tried, and certainly among the top tier of rums made anywhere, by any method. Rare, old, powerful, excellent, pricey and, well … yeah it’s worth it. Holy sweet mother of God, where has this rum been sitting? A snarling, awesome 58% beefcake of an agricole (I have my suspicions about this, see below), aged 37 years and one of the best of its kind I’ve ever tasted. This is where I get up on my soapbox and demand that rum makers start going stronger, [Click here for the full review…]


Renegade Guyana (Enmore) 1990 16 Year Old Rum – Review

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Sep 152012
 
Renegade Guyana (Enmore) 1990 16 Year Old Rum - Review

Slightly rougher than expected, but with a lovely taste all its own. You’re unlikely to get Renegade Rums anywhere in Canada unless you troll in obscure stores that may have ‘em gathering dust somewhere. In speaking to purchasing agents and spirits managers from Co-op, Liquor Depot and KWM, they all tell me the same thing – the rums are loss leaders and move off the shelves too slowly. And that’s a shame, really, for while I’ll be the first to concede that the line is uneven at best (remember my snarky comments on the Guadeloupe?), Bruichladdich does take a “cask [Click here for the full review…]


Appleton Jamaican Independence Reserve 50 Year Old Rum – Review

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Sep 082012
 
Appleton Jamaican Independence Reserve 50 Year Old Rum - Review

Publicity Photo from RumAuctioneer A truly wonderful rum which is simply too expensive for regular drinkers, in spite of its quality. It’s just too out of reach for us proles, alas. “I have left instructions in my will,” growled Kanflyer on the Ministry of Rum, echoing the sentiments of many, “For my grieving (?) widow to take the insurance settlement, find a bottle of this and toast my memory with my friends…both of them. There is no way I could spend $5k on a bottle of rum while I’m still kicking around.” In two humorously pithy sentences Kanflyer (may his [Click here for the full review…]


SMWS R5.1 Longpond 2002 9 Year Old Rum “Mint Humbugs” – Review

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Sep 082012
 
SMWS R5.1 Longpond 2002 9 Year Old Rum "Mint Humbugs" - Review

  The most searingly powerful rum you are ever likely to try. Do not simultaneously bloviate and drink this, or spontaneous combustion may occur. (#119. 81/100) [Video Review] Don’t be frightened. A rum like the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s R5.1 Longpond 9 year old, bottled at a grinningly ferocious cask-strength 81.3%, isn’t really out there to kill you: it just feels that way. I used to laugh at the way Bacardi 151 and Appleton 151 made wussie forty percenters run a hot chocolate delivery into their pants…well, here’s one that takes it a step further and indulges itself in a level of industrial overkill and outright belligerence [Click here for the full review…]


Renegade Guadeloupe 11 Year Old 1998 Rum – Review

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Aug 312012
 
Renegade Guadeloupe 11 Year Old 1998 Rum – Review

Never had a rum that tasted so much like a peated whisky. And yet….and yet…. If ever there was a rum that exemplified the inconsistency of the Renegade line, this is it. I’m not saying it was a bad rum, just one that didn’t conform to any profile of rum that people could say they recognize as a rum. And in that fact lay (in my opinion) its failure. Of course, like all Renegades, it was lovely to look at, with the now-familiar frosted glass enclosure and a label that gave as much information as one would wish. Column-distilled in [Click here for the full review…]


Secret Treasures Single Cask Old Demerara Rum – Enmore 1989 14 year old

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Aug 282012
 
Secret Treasures Single Cask Old Demerara Rum – Enmore 1989 14 year old

I had to go to Germany to pick up this rum, and the greatest surprise for me was the fact that it’s a Swiss concern that makes it. Swiss? I can hear you say…what the hell are the cantons doing making what is culturally seen as a tropical (Caribbean, let’s be honest) tipple? Fassbind AG is taking a leaf out of the book of those dour Scots of Cadenhead and Bruichladdich et al, and have taken rum deriving from the Enmore distillery in Guyana, and bottled it after slumbering for fourteen years down there in Mudland. This rum reinforces my [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Palma Mulata de Cuba 12 Años – Review

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Aug 072012
 
Ron Palma Mulata de Cuba 12 Años - Review

Strong beginning is marred by a disappointing failure on the back end stretch. This rum will one day (hopefully) be a good one…right now it’s merely serviceable. For a 12 year old, that’s quite a disappointment. Stuart and Mary, two very good friends of mine, had the decency to leave behind an excessively hefty portion of their newly purchased Mulata upon their return from Cuba the other day. This was one of those occasions when I had to do the tasting and evaluation right away, which was perfectly fine, of course. We get Cuban rums around here – Canadians lack [Click here for the full review…]


Flor de Caña 5 year old Black Label rum – Review

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Jul 272012
 
Flor de Caña 5 year old Black Label rum - Review

A deep and relatively dark medium bodied rum that isn’t quite sure what it wants to be. Decent mixing agent, a shade too uncouth to sip…springing for the seven year old sibling might be a better idea. I must have squirrelled the Flor de Caña 5 year old so far behind all the other bottles of hooch in the casa that it simply drifted out of sight and memory. Not too difficult when you consider my house is packed with piles of books, DVDs, computer gear, cameras and photo equipment, children’s toys (and children), camping gear, extra stuff for visitors [Click here for the full review…]


A Tale of Four Fives

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Jul 232012
 
A Tale of Four Fives

Inspired by the amazingly refreshing (and original) website andabattleofrum which has a world cup of rums – well worth a look for sheer inventiveness and style – I decided to implement an idea that both that site and the ongoing whisky range tastings on allthingswhisky.com have done so well. Having sampled the Flor de Cana 5 and the Juan Santos 5 at the same time, I resolved to make a go of two other five year olds in the larder, and run all four through their paces to see how they stacked up against each other: after all, trying them individually was [Click here for the full review…]


Ron Zacapa 23 Anos Solera – Review

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Jul 182012
 
Ron Zacapa 23 Anos Solera - Review

First posted 18 July 2012 on Liquorature. The Zacapa 23 is some kind of touchstone for rum drinkers as a tribe. It consistently appears on Ministry members’ rum lists as a favourite, and garners high points across the spectrum of whole populations, has received unbelievable ratings from international panels and is a perennial reviewers’ favourite. When I was over at the Arctic Wolf’s lair some months ago and he offered me a try from his collection, it was the Zacapa 23 I asked for. Some see it as the benchmark by which all soleras are measured. I’m not one of [Click here for the full review…]


Juan Santos Ron Añejo “Oro” 5 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jul 142012
 
Juan Santos Ron Añejo "Oro" 5 Year Old Rum - Review

  Too light for a five year old, and almost too delicate to be a rum at all. It says a lot for my collection and where I store it that occasionally, in pawing around searching for a possible Friday night sundowner, I run across a bottle I forgot was there and which is not even opened, let alone reviewed. Such is the case with the Juan Santos 5 year old, which is the last of the Colombian rums from this lineup yet to be addressed (the others are the Café, the 9 year old, 12 and 21). Five year old rums can be considered [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Panama 18 Year Old Rum (2010 Edition) – Review

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Jul 042012
 
Rum Nation Panama 18 Year Old Rum (2010 Edition) - Review

A more rambunctious, slightly less cultured younger brother of the same company’s 21 year old rum – complex, hearty, smooth and a full-out tonsil-pleaser. If the Rum Nation Panama 18 year old had been released on its own without further statement, as it first was in 2000 (I got the 2010 release), it would have been a success by any yardstick, and indeed I make no bones about this – it’s damned good. It does not fail next to its older sibling…it’s simply a shade different. And though the 21 year old is better (yes it is), this should not diminish the [Click here for the full review…]


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