The Lone Caner – Page 58 – A Solo Reviewer's Take on Rums

Stroh 80 Austrian Overproof Rum – Review

Dec 132012

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

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

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

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

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

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…]

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