Panama Red 108 Overproof Rum – Review

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Feb 022013
 
Panama Red 108 Overproof Rum - Review

A victory of Nurture versus Nature.  The Panama Red (named for some lady of possible legend in a story too long to go into here but which you can certainly google) is perhaps better categorized as a full proof rum, something between about 47-70%. I make the distinction in order to separate such rums from the standard strength of 38-46% which we see most often, and those we tend to think of as real overproofs, 57% or greater (the article “The Proof’s In The Drinking” goes into somewhat more detail on the topic). However, since it is termed an overproof [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Martinique Anniversary Edition 12 year old – Review

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Jan 202013
 
Rum Nation Martinique Anniversary Edition 12 year old - Review

Like an elderly doddering relative, it requires a little coaxing and care to be appreciated fully Quite aside from my laughter (and that of everyone else at the KWM tasting where it was trotted out) at the box in which the RN Martinique Anniversary Edition Rhum Agricole 12 year old reposed, the single emotion gripping me as I tasted it was respect. Respect for its bottle, the box, the rum and above all, it’s primal excellence. Here’s a rum that takes the run of the mill low-end agricoles we are all so much more used to, and equals or tops [Click here for the full review…]


Velier Albion 1994 17 Year Old Full Proof Old Demerara Rum – Review

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Jan 182013
 
Velier Albion 1994 17 Year Old Full Proof Old Demerara Rum - Review

Corentyne Thunder. Full proof rums – I like that term. There’s a desert of rum strengths between 46% and 75%, the latter of which is what is often referred to as an overproof (for my money, anything over 50% qualifies). So to use “full-proof” seems right to distinguish rums in that arid wasteland of strength. They are the closest that rums will ever get, in my opinion, to the expressions of whiskies my sadly misguided Liquorite squaddies swoon over. I hang around those scotch swilling maltsters enough to understand the hushed and trembling voices, the bared and bowed heads and [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Martinique Hors D’Age (2010) – Review

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Jan 112013
 
Rum Nation Martinique Hors D’Age (2010) - Review

  All round excellent younger agricole from the House of Fabio Rossi. Rum Nation’s agricole rum from Martinique, the Hors D’age, is not quite as sublime as the other products of the company about which I have so enthusiastically written, but this should not dissuade anyone who enjoys the French island rums from trying it, since the overall quality is quietly impressive. I tasted this in conjunction with the Karukera Millesime 15 year old which I knew was a damned good rum, and if the RN didn’t quite come up to snuff with respect to its more aged competitor, it careened across [Click here for the full review…]


The 2012 Wrap Up

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Jan 102013
 
The 2012 Wrap Up

(An abridged form of the Liquorature wrap up, posted January 2013) 2012 is drawing to a close, and many sites are beginning their top-however-many lists. The Hippie has drawn up a list of his favourite drams of the year on ATW, the Rum Howler has got his lists of top rums and whiskies he’s tried, film critics will put out their top ten lists as usual, and here I’ll join in and review how the year went from Liquorature’s perspective, including – of course! – my own discoveries of the year and my own take as a reviewer of rums. The primus [Click here for the full review…]


Renegade Cuba 1998 11 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jan 042013
 
Renegade Cuba 1998 11 Year Old Rum - Review

  Great noser, lackluster on the palate, and all-over unusually light. I think of this as an agricole, more than a “real” Cuban rum. I’ve said before that Renegade’s series of rums are occasionally squirrelly – some are pretty cool, like the St Lucia variant, while others strive for greatness and stumble at the end, like the Grenada or the Guyana 16 year old. But in few other editions of the series, is that periodically discombobulated nature more on display than in the Cuba 1998 11 year old, which was not only a leap away from what might loosely be interpreted as a Cuban rum profile, [Click here for the full review…]


Plantation 20th Anniversary Barbados Extra Old Rum – Review

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Dec 282012
 
Plantation 20th Anniversary Barbados Extra Old Rum - Review

This lovely product will always be one of the top sipping rums of my 2012 experience. The awards it has garnered since 2007 state boldly that many others think so too. Stirred by the Rum Howler’s listing of the Plantation Barbados XO in his intriguing top 30 rum list, and having brought back a bottle from the amazing Rum Depot store in Berlin back in August (yes, it was gathering dust for several months, them’s the breaks when you have a day job and a family and other interests), I resolved to check it out after finishing off the St Lucia [Click here for the full review…]


Downslope Distilling Wine Aged Rum – Review

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Dec 232012
 
Downslope Distilling Wine Aged Rum - Review

Fair warning: the wine is strong on this one. (First posted on Liquorature, December 23, 2012) I would like to wax rhapsodic on this 40% rum; spout literate encomiums to its puissance and scintillating quality, write heady metaphors with words like “ambrosia,””zoweee!” and “wtf”. I’d like to share with you, reader, the happiness of Unicaworld (“would place this alongside my good Martinique rums on my top shelf”) or the Whatsnewinbooze blog (“…a great product from a new distillery…” and “This is an absolute must try…”) or the remarks of the Big Kahuna, when he referred to this rum as one [Click here for the full review…]


Rum Nation Demerara 1989 23 Year Old – Review

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Dec 202012
 
Rum Nation Demerara 1989 23 Year Old - Review

Desert island quality, a hardcore, tasty, subliminal man’s rum of rums. I’d ditch the mermaid for this one, no problem. Rum Nation have done it again, upping the ante on the already brilliant Demerara 1985-2008 23 year old which I so admired before, and issuing a 2012 edition which is something like, oh, the Bugatti Veyron being overtaken by the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport…just not as expensive. And look: they upped it to 45%, which regular readers would know is the area around which I am becoming convinced lurks the best proof point of top end rums. With a rum about which [Click here for the full review…]


Stroh 80 Austrian Overproof Rum – Review

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Dec 132012
 
Stroh 80 Austrian Overproof Rum - Review

A spiced Rumzilla. Interesting taste, lacking the cheer and laughter of the 151 proofers, and has nothing of the insane charm of the SMWS Longpond 81.2% Few “rums” scare me like the Stroh 80 does. It’s like a Tuzemak on steroids, with much of the same obscurely vegetal and spiced choice of flavour profile, boosted by the resident blast bunny to a massive 160 proof that’s as comfortable on the nose and tongue as a prostate exam given by Captain Hook. Stroh’s drone-delivered plastique of an overproof has always has been, to me, as self-aggrandizing as the suicide wings served with waivers I [Click here for the full review…]


St. Lucia Distillers “1931” Series 1º Edition Rum – Review

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Dec 042012
 
St. Lucia Distillers "1931" Series 1º Edition Rum - Review

Good sipper for the money: if you’re on a budget, get the Admiral Rodney Extra Old, if not, this one is a shade better for not too much extra. (This is the last entry in my four-rum review series of St Lucia Distiller’s rums, which I tasted together a few weeks ago). Rum makers occasionally issue an expression which commemorates an event or a date that has particular meaning for them and then turn that into a marketing tool (like the Angostura 1919 or the Flor de Cana “21”) – it’s always touted as being a cut above the ordinary, although I have [Click here for the full review…]


Renegade St Lucia 1999 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 232012
 
Renegade St Lucia 1999 10 Year Old Rum - Review

In my opinion, the best of the St. Lucia rums hailing from the eponymous distillery We choose friends for many reasons: in my case it’s a question of what quality they add to my overall existence and what I can contribute to theirs. I may not like everything about them, or they about me (admittedly, I occasionally piss people off, sometimes just by being in the same room breathing the air they’d rather be smoking) – yet all my friends are interesting, all have quirks and characters that are appreciated and savoured. I feel the same way about rums – [Click here for the full review…]


St. Lucia Distillers Admiral Rodney Extra Old Rum – Review

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Nov 232012
 
St. Lucia Distillers Admiral Rodney Extra Old Rum - Review

Soft, smooth, tasty. I’d rank it as a mid range sipping-quality rum. You won’t regret the purchase if what you’re after is something that lacks the relative spiciness of a Cuban or Jamaican product and trends more to the softer Bajan style. St Lucia Distillers is the only remaining distiller remaining in St Lucia after the closures of many other companies on the island in the last hundred years, and a consolidation of the last two — Barnard and Geest — in 1972. It is now owned by CLICO’s parent company CL Financial out of Trinidad , which has had [Click here for the full review…]


Chairman’s Reserve – The Forgotten Casks Limited Release – Review

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Nov 172012
 
Chairman's Reserve - The Forgotten Casks Limited Release - Review

Good rum, but overshadowed by the marketing message The ad copy reads like a dream: casks squirrelled away in 2007 when a fire ravaged St Lucia Distillers warehouses, were misplaced and then found, and when tried, evinced a more complex flavour profile than that of the standard Chairman’s Reserve (which, alas, I have yet to sample). Is it, as it is marketed, something special? I have a reason for leading in this way: the other day while Mark the Mad Rock God was receiving instruction from his guitar Yoda, Yoda’s wife and I ran four separate St Lucia distillers products [Click here for the full review…]


Gordon & MacPhail Long Pond 1941 58 Year Old Rum – Review

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Nov 042012
 
Gordon & MacPhail Long Pond 1941 58 Year Old Rum - Review

  Hardcore to the max. This thing eats bats out of hell for lunch. What a great, majestic rum. “The past is never dead” wrote William Faulkner. “It’s not even past.” Perhaps no rum I’ve ever tried proves that point more than this one. Gordon & MacPhail’s 58 yr old Long Pond 1941 is an insane, extravagant orgy of self-indulgence, a freewheeling base-jump from the preponderance of hollow rums that sell by the truckload and whose names everyone knows, to the uncharted realms of uber-expensive spirits which serve no sane purpose. Surely this thousand dollar hooch is one of the wildest [Click here for the full review…]


Appleton Estate Reserve Rum – Review

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Nov 022012
 
Appleton Estate Reserve Rum - Review

  Pretty good all rounder, marred somewhat by an excessive spiciness that lends itself well to a cocktail without enhancing the rum as a sipping spirit. Appleton’s Reserve rum from J. Wray & Nephew (in business since 1825) out of Jamaica — recently in the news for its 50 year old rum as well as a controlling stake of the main Trinidadian conglomerate being acquired by Campari — is a product that is an order of magnitude better than the entry-level V/X, assuming you use it for what I think it’s meant for: a mixer. The V/X, which is from the low end [Click here for the full review…]


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…]


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