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…]


Mandakini Malabari Vaatté, Unaged Sugar Cane Spirit – Review

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Aug 292023
 
Mandakini Malabari Vaatté, Unaged Sugar Cane Spirit - Review

The real question is not so much how good this Malabari Vaatté, is, where it originates, or what it purports to be…but what exactly it is. Part of the issue surrounding the Mandakini is that the wording on the label could equally well be describing a real rum, a disguised alcoholic beverage claiming to be one, a spiced spirit, or some peculiar amalgam of all of the above.  The rum (I’ll use the term for now) is made in Canada, and therefore falls into the rabbit hole of the country’s arcane liquor laws, one of which, like Australia’s, states that [Click here for the full review…]


Killik Handcrafted Rum “Gold” (2023) – Review

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Aug 252023
 
Killik Handcrafted Rum "Gold" (2023) - Review

Killik distillery, located in the east of Melbourne, is one of the “New Australian” outfits I have an eye out for: like others located up and down the east coast of Australia (and elsewhere), they are seeking to bootstrap a homegrown rum industry into something greater by applying modern techniques to old-style rum-making and adding an occasional dash of crazy to set themselves apart. So far it’s mostly local sales that keep these small and often family-owned operations afloat, yet slowly their reputation is spreading beyond the Bundies and Beenleighs everyone knows. The Boutique-y Rum Company’s recent bottlings of Black [Click here for the full review…]


Doorly’s “Macaw” Barbados White Rum (Late 2010s)

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Aug 222023
 
Doorly's "Macaw" Barbados White Rum (Late 2010s)

Rumaniacs Review #R-157 | #1019 Somehow, in all this time of reviewing rums from around the world, from around Barbados, and from within the Foursquare oeuvre, I never got around to looking at the Doorly’s “Macaw” white rum. Not the new 40% 3YO and its 47% ABV sibling which is in line with the redesigned and now-consistently labelled range as it currently exists (3YO, 5YO, 8YO, XO, 12YO and 14YO, and if this piques your curiosity just head over to Alex’s excellent vertical review of the lot) but the rather older and more venerable one at 40% and a sky [Click here for the full review…]


Outlier Distilling Co. “Hurricane” Overproof White Rum – Review

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Aug 182023
 
Outlier Distilling Co. “Hurricane" Overproof White Rum – Review

Outlier Distiller’s overproofed “Hurricane” is a jolt of adrenaline to the heart, an amazing rum of remarkable qualities which took me so by surprise that I kept it on the go for the best part of a day in a glass I refused to put away (or rinse out, much to the horror of Mrs. Caner). The previous rums in the company’s oeuvre – Hoolie and Punk Croc – were pretty good for their place and time and the producers’ experience, but the Hurricane took it to another level entirely. Most who tasted it at the 2023 TWE Rumshow that [Click here for the full review…]


ABC Gold Label Tropical Rum Superior (1970s/1980s)

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Aug 142023
 
ABC Gold Label Tropical Rum Superior (1970s/1980s)

Rumaniacs Review #R-156 | 1017 ABC Distillers is not a distillery of any kind, but a brand of rums still being made (with different labels), on behalf of the ABC Fine Wines and Spirits liquor chain in Florida, brought to life by Florida Distillers (no direct connection, just a commercial one), and in this case dating back to the seventies and eighties.  ABC is a chain founded in Orlando just after Prohibition ended, in 1936 — originally it was a series of bar-and-lounge establishments named after its founder (Jack Holloway) but seeing the opportunities and lesser risks of the retail [Click here for the full review…]


Bundaberg Overproof Extra Bold Australian Rum – Review

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Aug 102023
 
Bundaberg Overproof Extra Bold Australian Rum – Review

Bundaberg — or “Bundie” — may the most globally famous rum from Australia, the rum that (according to the local wags) coke, ginger beer and weekends were invented for. Even if you’ve never seen a bottle or tried it, you’ve likely heard the name. Aussies seem to love hating on it with a sort of gruff affection, but God help the gronk or the pom who disses the thing – then you get comments like Gunnar’s, which, I have to be honest, made me laugh harder than the closing sentences of the latest Plantation diss. Though they have something of [Click here for the full review…]


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