Don Q “Cristal” Puerto Rican Rum (1980s/1990s)

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Nov 252023
 
Don Q "Cristal" Puerto Rican Rum (1980s/1990s)

Rumaniacs Review R-160 | #1041 Few rum aficionados need me to elaborate either on Don Q, the “other” major distillery on the island of Puerto Rico which makes it, Puerto Rico itself and it’s peculiar status vis-a-vis the USA, or indeed, this rum. Any one of them is an essay in itself and can lead to any number of rabbit holes, Let’s just stick to the basics, then. In brief: like Bacardi, Destilería Serrallés was founded by a Catalan emigre in the 1860s (the sugar plantation the Serrallés family first bought goes back three decades before that), though they lacked [Click here for the full review…]


Clement 2002 9 YO Trés Vieux Rhum Agricole – Review

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Nov 202023
 
Clement 2002 9 YO Trés Vieux Rhum Agricole - Review

The Martinique distillery Clement has, since 1989, ceased making rhum — the brand’s juice has been distilled up the road at the facilities of Distillerie Simon, and from 2017 also and increasingly from Fonds-Preville (both are owned by the Hayot Group). The original premises, however, are still used for ageing, blending and bottling Clement rhums, and they still maintain the AOC designation. Depending on who you speak to then, it supposedly has at least some terroire harkening back to what old Homere Clement made on his plantation of Domaine de l’Acajou, the progenitor of the brand. Clement was among the [Click here for the full review…]


Capricorn Distilling “Dumpster Diver” Unaged White Rum (Australia) – Review

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Nov 152023
 
Capricorn Distilling "Dumpster Diver" Unaged White Rum (Australia) - Review

Brisbane’s Rum Revolution in Down Under has just ended last weekend, and among the many excited questions of “were you there?” and “did you drink this?” posted on social media, were a surprising number of accolades given to Capricorn, the little distillery run by Warren Brewer (also and variously called Walter, Wal, Wally, Warren and Wally Walter, depending on how he’s feeling on the day), south of Brisbane. People were getting all gobsmacked over the High Ester rum (rightfully so methinks) and I’m hoping we’ll see it at a rumfest in Europe next year, so we can see how others [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World – Plantation OFTD Overproof Rum

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Nov 102023
 
Key Rums of the World - Plantation OFTD Overproof Rum

In 2015 an up and coming small rum maker called Plantation wanted to make a bar mixer to go beyond its decently regarded and well-selling Original Dark, which back then was primarily Trinidad distillate. The company had already made a name for itself in the bartending circuit with its blends like the Three Star, and its initial attempts at becoming an indie bottler got some decent reviews (mine among them). People liked them. The secondary maturation abroad and dosage, had not yet become issues. Their rums were deemed pretty good.  To the end of filling a gap in the overproof [Click here for the full review…]


Piccadily Distillers Camikara 2009 12YO Rum (India) – Review

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Nov 062023
 
Piccadily Distillers Camikara 2009 12YO Rum (India) - Review

A few months ago I posted a picture of what I was tasting that week on Instagram which included the Camikara 12 YO: I was surprised and pleased at the responses which said how much people had liked it — most of these came from those who had sampled it at that year’s UK rum festival. This is an export rum from India which has two younger siblings (a 3YO and an 8YO) and remains a rather unknown quantity to many, perhaps because they have all been issued quietly and without the serious social media fanfare as attends so many [Click here for the full review…]


Costa y Montserrat Ron Marina Blanco (Spain)(1960s)

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Oct 292023
 
Costa y Montserrat Ron Marina Blanco (Spain)(1960s)

Rumaniacs Review R-159 | #1036 Few references exist to track down this aged bottle with stained yellow label and a description remarkably thin even for the Days of Ago when nobody cared.  There is no distillery of make, no strength, no country of origin we can evaluate, nothing.  It is a white rum, has pictures of several medals on it (or maybe those are those coins, like pieces of eight?) and the implication of the words “The Spanish Town – Jamaica” is that it hails from there. One does not even get the strength, though my hydrometer tested it out [Click here for the full review…]


Key Rums of the World – Old Monk Vatted 7 YO Blended Rum (India)

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Oct 232023
 
Key Rums of the World - Old Monk Vatted 7 YO Blended Rum (India)

  Originally published as a standalone review in October 2023; revised and extended to Key Rums series in January 2024 Few rums from India make a splash in the western world, and that’s a peculiar thing since it’s entirely possible they were among the first people to actually make any kind of spirit from sugar cane (although it’s likely the crown goes to the Iranians whose “good wine of sugar” Marco Polo supposedly enjoyed on his travels) and for sure have some of the best selling rum brands on the planet. We may not hear of them very often but [Click here for the full review…]


Romero Distilling Co. 4YO Sherry Finish Cask Strength Rum (Canada) – Review

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Oct 212023
 
Romero Distilling Co. 4YO Sherry Finish Cask Strength Rum (Canada) - Review

In the last review we looked at a product from Romero Distilling, a small and relatively new-ish distillery in Calgary which has the distinction of focusing almost exclusively on making rums (of all kinds). At first blush it seems to conform to the standards of many occasionally unfocused local distillers who are still playing around trying to find the perfect groove: their “Dark” rum left me somewhat dissatisfied and mostly indifferent (spiced rums not being my thing for reasons I went into some detail in that review), and while I didn’t mention it, the “Amber” — which I own, opened [Click here for the full review…]


Romero Distilling Co. Dark Rum (Canada) – Review

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Oct 172023
 
Romero Distilling Co. Dark Rum (Canada) - Review

So there I was walking around the impressively well organised Rocky Mountain Wine and Food Festival, which had boatloads of beers, wines and spirits and food (and precious few rums), all superbly arranged in terms of space and one’s ability to navigate. For a guy used to the tight confines and crowded booth frontage of European festivals, it was eye opening to be able to walk five abreast in any direction and join ten people in front of a display and not bump elbows. Every now and then I wandered back over to Karl Mudzamba and his compadre Ernie, who [Click here for the full review…]


Renaissance Distillery 2018 4 YO Taiwan Rum (Noble Rot) – Review

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Oct 122023
 
Renaissance Distillery 2018 4 YO Taiwan Rum (Noble Rot) - Review

This is the fifth and final review in the short series (of six – I have tried one before) where we look at some rums released by the Taiwan based Renaissance Distillery, which were on display in a 2023 TWE Rumshow masterclass dedicated to the company. It should be noted that the company has issued scores of full proof single cask releases already, so at best this scratches the surface. For all its rather off-putting connotations to those who don’t know the term, noble rot is a controlled fungus infestation of grapes that go on to produce a particularly fine [Click here for the full review…]


Highwood Distillers Aged White Caribbean Rum – Review

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Oct 062023
 
Highwood Distillers Aged White Caribbean Rum - Review

This is not the first review to be speaking to a rum made or released by the western Canadian outfit Highwood Distillers: I’ve looked at the forgettable Momento, the guilty pleasure of Potters Dark, and a completely indifferent contract throwaway called Merchant Shipping Co. white rum (made for Wine & Beyond, a large local spirits shop chain), which some readers might recall I disliked intensely when I tried it earlier this year. At that same session I sampled their own simply labelled 40% white, and was a little more impressed than with the others…but I’m afraid that’s nothing to make [Click here for the full review…]


Renaissance Distillery 2018 4 YO Taiwan Rum (Bas-Armagnac) – Review

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Oct 022023
 
Renaissance Distillery 2018 4 YO Taiwan Rum (Bas-Armagnac) – Review

This is the fourth review in the short series where we look at some rums released by the Taiwan based Renaissance Distillery, which were on display in a 2023 TWE Rumshow masterclass dedicated to the company. It should be noted that the company has issued scores of full proof single cask releases already, so at best this scratches the surface. * The consistency of quality of the Renaissance line of rums creates something of an issue for a reviewer, because while they are all different in subtle ways, so far they are also all really good (at least in the [Click here for the full review…]


Capricorn Distilling “Coastal Cane” Unaged White Rum (Australia) – Review

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Sep 302023
 
Capricorn Distilling "Coastal Cane" Unaged White Rum (Australia) - Review

Today we’ll go back Down Under, because we want to check out a starter rum from another one of those small distilleries that seem to be popping up with increasing frequency all over the map: craft, small batch, experimental, not from the Usual Countries, founded and run by one or two quasi-certifiable enthusiasts who just want to hare off and do something different, because, well, they can. Capricorn Distilling’s origins bean in 2015 or so when Warren Brewer began distilling in his backyard with friends, using an 80-liter still from Spain (where he got it from is anyone’s guess). He [Click here for the full review…]


Renaissance Distillery 2018 4 YO Taiwan Rum (Cognac) – Review

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Sep 262023
 
Renaissance Distillery 2018 4 YO Taiwan Rum (Cognac) - Review

This is the third review in the short series where we look at some rums released by the Taiwan based Renaissance Distillery, which were on display in a 2023 TWE Rumshow masterclass dedicated to the company. It should be noted that the company has issued scores of full proof single cask releases already, so at best this scratches the surface. Although the little Renaissance Distillery on Taiwan was officially founded in 2017, many years of small-scale under-the-radar tinkering and experimentation preceded that. The husband and wife team of Linya Chiou and Olivier Caen started a small spirits import company on [Click here for the full review…]


Don Q “Cristal” White Rum – Review

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Sep 222023
 
Don Q "Cristal" White Rum - Review

Don Q is the other big brand from Puerto Rico that many believe has bragging rights over the Big Bad Bat when it comes to quality, yet somehow does not inhabit as a deep a mindspace as Bacardi does. The brand is very well known in the US and Canada (though I don’t see it for sale out west very often) but I get the impression it’s somewhat less of a thing in Europe or Asia – probably because they have plenty of brands of their own and so don’t exist in the same spirituous desert. Don Q is the [Click here for the full review…]


Renaissance Distillery 2019 3 YO Taiwan Rum (Deuxième Cru Classé) – Review

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Sep 182023
 
Renaissance Distillery 2019 3 YO Taiwan Rum (Deuxième Cru Classé) - Review

This is the second review in the short series where we look at some rums released by the Taiwan-based Renaissance Distillery, which were on display in a 2023 TWE Rumshow masterclass dedicated to the company. It should be noted that the company has issued dozens of full proof single cask releases already, so at best this scratches the surface. For a rum younger than three years to give such a good account of itself is no mean feat, yet Renaissance Distillery out of Taiwan has done just that with this 2½ YO rum that in most other circumstances would be [Click here for the full review…]


Woods Old Charlie Jamaica Rum 70° Proof (1970s)

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Sep 152023
 
Woods Old Charlie Jamaica Rum 70° Proof (1970s)

Rumaniacs Review R-158 | #1025 Most people in the UK are familiar with the Woods brand and the rise of online auctions over the last years spread knowledge further, so it’s become reasonably common knowledge that Woods was founded in 1887 and bought by William Grant & Sons from Diageo in 2002 along with OVD and Vat 19. However, Diageo’s ownership seems to have been rather recent – they acquired the Woods brand from Seagram in 2000 when that company merged with Vivendi and divested some of its properties. Seagram’s acquisition of Woods was much earlier, though: there is a [Click here for the full review…]


Renaissance Distillery 2018 4 YO Taiwan Rum (Limousin Cask) Rum – Review

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Sep 102023
 
Renaissance Distillery 2018 4 YO Taiwan Rum (Limousin Cask) Rum - Review

Over the next few weeks I’ll issue a set of reviews of the rums released by the Taiwan-based Renaissance Distillery, which were on display in a 2023 TWE Rumshow masterclass dedicated to the company. One rum of the six that were demonstrated that afternoon — the #18260 “Fino” — has already been reviewed, so this short series will concentrate on the remaining five. It has taken almost a decade for the small distillery called Renaissance to become a presence on the global rum stage, and four of those years were spent essentially operating as an unlicensed, near-illegal moonshinery. Olivier Caen [Click here for the full review…]


Bristol Spirits Guyana-Guadeloupe Overproof Rum – Review

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Sep 062023
 
Bristol Spirits Guyana-Guadeloupe Overproof Rum - Review

Bristol Spirits – also known as Bristol Classic Rum — holds the distinction of being one of the earlier independent UK bottlers who was and remains specifically not a distillery or a whisky bottler, such as the ones which held sway in the 1980s and 1990s. While Gordon & MacPhail, A.D. Rattray, Cadenhead and a few other companies from Scotland occasionally amused themselves by issuing a rum, few took it seriously, and even the indie Italians like Samaroli and Moon Imports and Rum Nation took a while to get in on the act. Of course, the worm is turning and [Click here for the full review…]


St. Nicholas Abbey 5 YO Single Cask Overproof Barbados Rum – Review

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Sep 012023
 
St. Nicholas Abbey 5 YO Single Cask Overproof Barbados Rum - Review

Foursquare and WIRD and Mount Gay grab the lion’s share of social media attention from which originates so much of our news from Barbados, and so we sometimes overlook the fourth rum maker on the island, St. Nicholas Abbey.  They are a small boutique distillery that became famous a decade ago for their lovely etched squarish bottles which you could once get refilled at a discount if you presented it at the distillery (maybe no longer now, alas). SNA remains tiny in comparison with the other distilleries, run as part of a heritage site of the same name, and managed [Click here for the full review…]


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