The Lone Caner – Page 62 – A Solo Reviewer's Take on Rums

Mount Gay Old Cask 1703 – Review

Aug 282010

Stunning. Strong marriage of well balanced flavours, terrific nose and a silky finish marred ever so slightly by a slight bitterness at the tail end. A damned worthy entry at the top-end, showing Mount Gay is still a force to be reckoned with in the premium lines. First posted 28 August 2010 on Liquorature. Mount Gay. The premier house of rum on Barbados, the oldest rum distillery in the world, and this rum, their premium product, first seen in 2009. I was not entirely enthused with the Extra Old, but here, they have created a small gem that takes the [Click here for the full review…]

Smuggler’s Cove Dark Rum – Review

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Aug 182010

First posted 18 August 2010 on Liquorature. Fresh from the intense concentration I brought to the Elements 8 Gold rum, I trotted out the flattie of Smuggler’s Cove Dark to chillax with. I would have damaged the Young’s Old Sam, but it was almost done, so off I went to this one. My more romantic side likes to think that the humourous and positive reviews of Newfie Screech and Lamb’s so impressed the family of one of my Maritime friends at the office, that when she went back to Nova Scotia for some R&R (rather more recreation than rest, I’d [Click here for the full review…]

Elements 8 Gold Rum – Review

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Aug 182010

First posted 18 August 2010 on Liquorature. I’d seen this trapezoidal bottle once in a while on the occasional shelf in Calgary, but I’d never been interested enough, or seen it in sufficient quantity – let alone heard anything about it – to decide whether it was worth a buy or not. It was an interesting surprise when a very helpful gent from Co-op named Dan Ellis (may the ice in his glass never melt) sourced the thing out. Now granted, I had been making sneery remarks at the paucity of his rum selection (as opposed to the Scottish drink) [Click here for the full review…]

Amrut Old Port Deluxe Rum – Review

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Jul 302010

First posted 30 July 2010 on Liquorature. Pungent, full and pleasant to drink. Amrut may be taking the whisky world by storm, but I think this may have been the real shot across the bows Didn’t Clint and the Last Hippie just post good reviews of Amrut’s fusion whisky the other day? In researching the second of three new rums for the July 2010 gathering, I discovered (much to my surprise), that the same company out of Bangalore India, makes this very capable young rum called Old Port (I can’t get any details on ageing, distillation methods or composition for [Click here for the full review…]

El Dorado Finest Demerara 5 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jul 302010

El Dorado Finest Demerara 5 Year Old Rum - Review

First posted 30 July 2010 on Liquorature. We’ve tasted the El Dorado 21 year old (a superb example of the distiller’s art) and I have a 12 year old kicking around somewhere that I’m awaiting the return of the Bear to crack, but since the low end of the scale was available, it formed the third part of the three-rum selection for the July 2010 gathering. I’d like to point out that what Demerara Distillers markets abroad as 5-year, is vastly different from what is foisted on the local market in Guyana, and that’s a shame, since it says that leavings are [Click here for the full review…]

Mount Gay XO (Extra Old) Rum – Review

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Jul 302010

First posted 30 July 2010 on Liquorature You’re not looking at two images here by accident: both of these are Extra Old. The one on the right is the new design introduced perhaps a year or so ago, and what I bought was the one on the left. There’s some confusion in the literature as to what you’re getting: the one on the right is supposedly 15 year old blends, while the one on the left is stated on some websites to be 7, 8 and 10 years old blended together…what the hell? However, after having contacted Mount Gay’s customer [Click here for the full review…]

Flor de Caña Grand Reserve 7 yr old rum – Review

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Jul 212010

Flor de Caña Grand Reserve 7 yr old rum - Review

Solid, even excellent, full-bodied, full-tasting mixing rum (some with stronger constitutions than mine may disagree). I’d take it neat only with some caution, and would simply not advise it this way, though you are welcome to try. When you’re going on a deliberate bender, or attending a bash where you know the drinking will be copious, there’s about zero point to being pretentious about it. You dress like a peon, you bring some cheap stuff with you (or supply it), and you don’t waste a whole lot of time snooting, tooting, gargling, tasting and spitting. You’re there to have [Click here for the full review…]

Doorly’s XO Barbados Rum – Review

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Jun 302010

This rum is simply too weak and underpowered. It is the Prince Myshkyn of rums. Bajans like to say they did everything first, annoy and harass no end of Guyanese travelling through Grantley Adams, and are a suitably soft-spoken, deprecating folk to boot (“You may enter the war; Barbados is on your side,” went that famously modest telegram to King George in 1939). However, research shows their claim to produce the first commercial rums in the western hemisphere is likely to be true. Mount Gay is of course the most famous and widely exported, but for some reason they [Click here for the full review…]

Rhum Clément X.O. Très Vieux- Review

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Jun 302010

First posted 30 June 2010 on Liquorature. A superlative agricole with good body, marvellous complexity and a really strong, spicy fade; yet not as sweet as some rums drinkers might like. As of this writing I’m not entirely won over by it (or agricoles as a whole), but concede the excellence of its make without hesitation. Abandoned by all the ladies in my family for the afternoon, tasked with making sure my two boys didn’t get into a fight over the Wii, I whiled away the hours by taking an appreciative sniff, slurp and swallow of this expensive rhum agricole [Click here for the full review…]

Kraken Black Spiced Rum – Review

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Jun 272010

First posted 27 June 2010 on Liquorature. (#027)(Unscored) Overproofed, overpriced, overrated. *** Kraken Black — the selection for the June 2010 Book Club session — is a victory of advertising over the reality of what it is, of style over substance for those who are ok with it, a low-to-middling value (~$28 Can) wrapped up in a presentation that would have you believe the price is an undiscovered steal. A lot of people are going to drink this thing, wax loquacious at the spice, admire the darkness and say “wow!” I’m afraid, though, that’s just knee-jerk, because you take [Click here for the full review…]

Lamb’s Navy Rum – Review

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Jun 222010

First posted 22 June 2010 on Liquorature. “The spice must flow,” said the Padishah Emperor in Dune. I agree, because I do love my cheap-ass spiced rums. My sweet tooth and plebian background make having a rum with no stratospheric price or ostentatious pedigree such a pleasant experience, truly. And I could tell, that day when I trotted out the Renegade 1991 for my Newfie squaddie (who snatched it happily out of my hand with a speed his corpulent frame does not begin to hint at), that even if I was a snob with pretensions to the peasantry, he had more [Click here for the full review…]

Rhum Barbancourt Reserve Speciale 8 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jun 192010

Rhum Barbancourt Reserve Speciale 8 Year Old Rum - Review

First posted 19 June 2010 on Liquorature. Barbancourt. Just roll that on your tongue and you can almost hear the whisper of words both foreign and exotic – Barbarossa the Ottoman privateer; the Barbary Coast; Hispaniola; bucaneer…the name reeks deliciously of of piracy. And aside from peg legs, parrots, cutlasses, the Spanish Main and caravels of looted or buried treasure, is there any product more identified with the term than that of their most famous drink? I have to admit that it was the romance of the name and origin – and some honest curiosity – that made me [Click here for the full review…]

Havana Club 7 Year Old Cuban Rum – Review

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Jun 192010

Havana Club 7 Year Old Cuban Rum - Review

First posted 19 June 2010 on Liquorature. So much of how I remember a drink and rate it, comes from the circumstances in which I sampled it. The woman I was with in that special restaurant when I feigned sophisticated insouciance over an unpronounceable rum. The Irish pub in Berlin where my brother and I got a little sloshed on some cheap crap tipple at a Rugby World Cup match we watched years ago, the name of which I can never remember, but which tasted so great that I go all soft with the memory long after the laughter has [Click here for the full review…]

Havana Club Cuban Barrel Proof Rum – Review

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Jun 092010

Havana Club Cuban Barrel Proof Rum - Review

First posted 9th June 2010 on Liquorature. Let’s be clear from the outset, that this is a true Cuban rum, not a product of the Bacardi line which produces a rum under the same name and which it is being litigated against. The marque was first created in 1878 by Jose Arechabala in Santa Cruz del Norte, Cuba. Some might argue that Fidel had no business nationalizing the company after he took over the country in 1959, but the current crop of rums, produced in a 50:50 partnership with Pernod-Ricard since 1994 suggests that quality has not suffered in the [Click here for the full review…]

El Dorado 25 Year Old Rum (1980)

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Jun 012010

This review was written in 2010 for the online rum magazine Rum Connection, and I add it here for completeness. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously noted that the rich are different from you and me. The same could possibly be said of premium rums at the top of the scale. They are so different, represent such an investment of time and effort, and are usually in such short supply that they come to represent something of the pinnacle of achievement in rum blending and production. Something rarefied, something out of the ordinary box in which most aged rums are placed. Something [Click here for the full review…]

Newfoundland Screech Rum – Review

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May 312010

First posted 31 May 2010 on Liquorature. All humour and snide Newfie jokes aside, Screech is a thoroughly rock solid rum: not brilliant at any one thing, it is simply good at everything without shining anywhere. Odd, but if you’re after something that just goes ahead and does what it does, here’s the one for you. One has to smile when seeing a name as evocative as Screech. It has all these connotations of pain about it, mixed up with the Newfie seafaring heritage and their backwoods image so beloved of Canadian humourists: and so one’s imagination goes riot as [Click here for the full review…]

Captain Morgan Private Stock – Review

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May 252010

First posted May 25th, 2010 on Liquorature. Surprisingly mellow sipper from a purveyor not noted for such drinks; not overly complex, but warm, buxom, heavy and with a rich nose and body. This is the Mother Hubbard of rums, to keep in the cupboard. Right from the get go I must mention that I’ve given Captain Morgan a wide berth thus far, simply because it always had a reputation as a low- to mid-level mixer. The fact that it was a spiced rum – whether or not it says it is – also added somewhat to its plebian cachet. Not [Click here for the full review…]

El Dorado Single Barrel ICBU Demerara Rum – Review

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May 242010

El Dorado Single Barrel ICBU Demerara Rum - Review

First posted 24 May 2010 on Liquorature. I always admire some level of originality, whether it is in food, drink, a book, movies or simply the way something looks. In an era of mass production and conformity, too much of what we buy or see is an exact copy of the same thing we bought or saw somewhere else. On that basis, I was quite happy to see Demerara Distillers’ square, tall bottle of the El Dorado Single Barrel ICBU when it was presented at the April 2010 session of the club, and since it was not only a [Click here for the full review…]

Appleton Estate 30 Year Old Rum – Review

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May 172010

Appleton Estate 30 Year Old Rum - Review

First posted May 17, 2010 on Liquorature. A smooth, complex, warm, rich and all-round-awesome creation which fails ever so slightly on the back stretch because of excessive oakiness, just enough to defer sainthood for Joy Spence. Should be drunk in miniscule sips, with hat off, and head bowed reverentially down. I’ve remarked before that there are only three ways of deciding whether to buy a rum you know nothing about and which you cannot taste to test in the shop: one, by price; two by information filtering through from others (i.e., word of mouth or one’s own research) and three, [Click here for the full review…]

Santa Teresa Antiguo de Solera 1796 – Review

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May 102010

Santa Teresa Antiguo de Solera 1796 - Review

First posted 10th May 2010 on Liquorature. I remember being somewhat unenthused with this rum from Venezuela when Scott trotted it out last year. Venezuelan rums seem to be a bit drier, with less body and not quite as sweet as those made in the Caribbean proper (I note that several online reviews have precisely the opposite opinion), and to my mind, that makes them best for mixers, not sippers. Still, I had never made good notes on this baby since I tried it for the first time, so, when both Keenan and Scott coincidentally came up with the [Click here for the full review…]

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