Rumaniacs Review 004 | 0404
First rum I drank back in the day. Was working in the interior of Guyana for gold exploration companies at the time; every Saturday evening, a couple of bottles of this stuff were trotted out for us to get hammered on. We drank it swiftly, continuously, copiously and without a care for quality. This one is supposedly fruit cured…not that I noticed much of that.
Nose: Thin, sharp. Coconut shavings, swiftly disappearing. Faint caramel and vanilla. Nuts. Anise, but not much. Raisins, red guavas and grapes waved at me, but kept way back.
Palate: Light bodied, hay coloured 40%, almost not a Demerara at all. Thin and sharp. White flowers, more coconut, a few fruity notes, peaches and cream with a dusting of cinnamon. Some mangos, raisins and black currants at the backend. A bit sweet, hardly noticeable. There’s not enough going on here to care, really. It’s all very underwhelming
Finish: Short, sharp and dismissive. Almost nothing to discern here at all beyond scraping heat and dark sugar and licorice.
Thoughts: A throwaway rum, for mixing, I suppose. I remember it being a lot more raw and pestilential. No notes on ageing provided, but methinks it’s a really young ‘un…at best a five year old. In between grumbling that nobody ever thought to keep any of these rums for heritage purposes (people were to busy drinking the stuff) Carl Kanto remarked to me that there were aged variations of the King of Diamonds, and they evolved into the El Dorado line in the 1990s. For my money (speaking metaphorically), this wasn’t one of them…if one could ever be found, I suppose you could buy it for historical value.
(75/100)
- 90 + : exceptional
- 85-89: excellent, special rums
- 80-84: quite good
- 75-79: better than average
- 70-74: below average
- < 70 : Avoid
In 2019, a lady offered to sell me a bottle of King of Diamonds 12 year. Knowing it was the pre-cursor for El Dorado 12 I offered her $150 for it. She turned me down. She believed the bottle to be worth $15,000. I told her good luck with selling it.
It’s definitely not worth more than a hundred US, and most of that price is because it’s long discontinued. Of course, she may have been talking in Guyanese dollars 🙂
No, US dollars. She was in California. I sent her current auction pricing to help her understand my offer. I even showed her auction prices for highly prized whiskeys that went for much less than $15K. She stuck to her desired price. I probably should email her back to ask if she sold the bottle.