The Lone Caner – Page 59 – A Solo Reviewer's Take on Rums

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

Aug 282012

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

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

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…]

Rum Nation Panama 21 Year Old – Review

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Jun 152012

Drink this and marvel. Who would have thought the El Dorado 21 or the Juan Santos 21 might have serious competition? For a whisker over $100, Rum Nation’s Panama 21 year old rum will titillate your palate, lift your spirits and be your best friend for life. We are always wrestling – philosophically speaking – with change. And as we get older, we who instituted change, embraced it, championed it…we regret the passing of the old ways which we once loved, but perhaps not well enough to preserve, and now can only remember. I think this way on occasion, and [Click here for the full review…]

Raucous Rum Tasting (05 June 2012)

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Jun 052012

The latest KWM’s Raucous Rums tasting was held in the KWM shop tasting room in Calgary on June 5th, and as usual I squirreled myself (and on this occasion, my grown-up daughter) off into a back corner – she had evinced an interest in the tasting process and I wanted to show her what it was I was interested in and why (though my own feeling is she might have more wanted to cross something off her personal bucket list or something). We nibbled a bit and watched the Scotchguy do his intro. Note that I have given up [Click here for the full review…]

Santa Teresa Bicentenario Rum – Review

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Jun 022012

A good, and very pricey ultra-premium solera, the top of the food chain from Santa Teresa A.J. Vollmer in Venezuela. I’m going to go on record as thinking it’s too much price for too little premium. The $315 Santa Teresa Bicentenario solera rum is made by the privately owned Venezuelan outfit A. J. Vollmer, who also produce the 1796 rum (also a solera, and about which I was unenthused at the time…it may be due for a revisit). It’s a rum I have avoided for over two years in spite of its premium cachet, and because of its price. Every time I’ve [Click here for the full review…]

Cruzan Single Barrel Estate Rum – Review

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Jun 022012

A solid and well put together rum of intriguing complexity and excellent overall quality. More should not be said, and, indeed, need not be said. It’s good as a sipper or a mixer, over ice or neat. Enjoy. Cruzan is that distillery from St Croix in the West Indies which makes one of my favourite under-$50 rums, the single barrel dark rum, written about and appreciated before I started assigning scores to my reviews. Unlike that somewhat more commercial rum, this one, clearly noted as an estate rum, was also marked as being bottle #344,450 of barrel 86158 and certified by a [Click here for the full review…]

Cabot Tower 100 Proof Demerara Rum – Review

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May 262012

Cabot Tower 100 Proof Demerara Rum - Review

A better than expected, overproof: smoother, tastier, more engaging. Should be tried neat before you bastardize it with a mix, ’cause it may just surprise you too. Yeah. Smell that sucker. That whap you feel in your schnozz is a hundred proof hitting you in da face. This is a rum which indulges in a level of unapologetic phallocentrism that would make Ron Jeremy weep with envy This is what they would serve in Buxton’s Tipperary Hall to my squaddies Biggers and Evan, if they could ever get it. I mean, a hundred proof, wow – sure, his is a [Click here for the full review…]

Mekhong Thai Rum – Review

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May 152012

A gentle, easygoing underproof rum-wannabe. There’s nothing really outstanding about it, and it’s too weak to appeal to me personally: like other Asian rums, however, it does have a taste all its own, and for those who don’t like forty-or-greater percenters, this one will satisfy. Is this a rum at all? Liquorature is littered with comments from both the purists (who disdain any additions) and the tolerant (who don’t mind), and the bone of contention between them is always the same: can a spirit be made from less than 100% cane juice, with additives for taste and profile, and still [Click here for the full review…]

Lemon Hart Demerara 151 Rum – Review

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May 032012

This review was posted first on RumConnection in two parts in May 2012. Thanks to Mike Streeter who lends his site to such occasional contributions that exceed his normal article length. My own, slightly edited (and scored) review which corrected some minor issues and changed the wording a bit, is below. Suffice to say, this is one of those overproofs I really enjoyed. I tried it by itself to write the review, but it’s as a mixer and base that this strong, dark Demerara rum really shines. It’s big, it’s bad, and it’s tougher than a Brickdam jailbird’s meat ration. [Click here for the full review…]

Karukera Rhum Vieux Millesime 1997

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Apr 222012

An excellent agricole for which it is worth splashing out some extra francs: lovely nose, deeper flavours, better body, and in all ways exceeds the cheaper Reserve Speciale from the same company. Unimpressed by the blah of the Karukera Rhum Vieux Reserve Speciale, I then decided to take the hundred dollar Cask Strength 1997 off the shelf where I had hidden it from the prying eyes of my parsimonious wife (she who can spot a shredded receipt from a hundred paces). We don’t see many Guadeloupe rums in Calgary, yet Ralf’s Rum Pages out of Germany lists no less than 12 [Click here for the full review…]

Eight Rums I Will Never Buy Again

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Mar 312012

I really don’t like the rums listed here. It’s appreciated that if there ever was a list to piss people off, this is it. Maltsters will snicker into their sporrans to see one of their pet peeves taken down a few notches. Rum pundits will in turns be offended or delighted, depending on their viewpoint and their own predilections for rums. Others will nod (I hope). We do ten best lists, or top ten lists or “best of whatever” lists – not often that you see a list of the bottom feeders (although I’m definitely not the first). The genesis [Click here for the full review…]

Ten Decent Rums (Roughly) Under $100

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Mar 312012

* In late 2010, for Christmas, I posted a list of my favourite rums under fifty dollars. It’s proved to be quite a hit: for a modest little site like ours, that list keeps getting decent hits. I’ll probably put out another one this year. My intention here is to drift into more expensive waters. Oh, I know that when one talks about whiskies worth this kind of money, you’re still in crap territory – every time I go into KGM or WP or any of the boutique-wannabes, the really nice stuff is almost always north of three figures. I see [Click here for the full review…]

Karukera Rhum Vieux Reserve Speciale – Review

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Mar 242012

Karukera Rhum Vieux Reserve Speciale - Review

A generally unimpressive agricole aged five years, better as a mixer than a sipping rum. I imagine its older brothers will be better (if I can ever lay my hands on one). Karukera strikes me, from the dearth of any kind of hard information on it (even on its own website), as a boutique wannabe rum, something made on an relatively limited basis by an outfit seeking to build a more international sales on the back of its appeal to connoisseurs appreciating its limited production (and based on the unique characteristics of the terroire). This should, however, not dissuade you [Click here for the full review…]

Dos Maderas PX 5+5 Rum – Review

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Mar 232012

First posted March 23, 2012 on Liquorature. Dos Maderas 5+5 follows on from the middling 5+3 underproofed variation, and is in all ways a better rum. Better body, better nose, better taste, better finish. It takes everything the former did and takes such a sharp left turn on it, that you might be forgiven for thinking it’s an utterly different product, made by another company that stole part of the recipe and then ran off the reservation with it. Just sitting there on your table top and opening up in your glass, the 5+5 is a thudding smack of cheery [Click here for the full review…]

Rum Nation Demerara 1985 23 Year Old Rum – Review

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Mar 172012

Rum Nation Demerara 1985 23 Year Old Rum - Review

First published March 17th, 2012 on Liquorature This rum fits on my collection like an expensive Italian suit. I don’t really need it, but bought it just the same. For how could I not? It’s actually better than the RN Jamaican 25 year old. To let my humour and attitude slip just a bit: I gotta be honest, people, and admit that every now and then I get bored with rums. Another day, another dollar, another new rum to dissect. “The Cussmander Distillery’s new Rambunctious Rum has a standard proofing of 40% topped by a (yawn) rubber cap, and a [Click here for the full review…]

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