Rumaniacs Review #R-164 | #1111
Everything about this rum is strange. It carries no strength notation. It is from a distillery I have never heard before. And it is from a period of time when we have almost no data at all – not distillery, not the still, not the stock source, its provanance or travels through time, nothing.
As if that isn’t enough, consider this: it is made in France; it claims to be from the Antilles; it has a 1968 Italian tax strip on the top, and the cap itself has a notation that it was bottled in Israel; and, it was bought at auction, stored in Denmark and sampled in Germany. You can understand why it’s just a bit peculiar.
Distillerie de la Meuse, after some searching around, proved to be not some long defunct distillery from the French islands. It is in fact a closed establishment from NW France, in Verdun, from a small village called Baleycourt. All I was able to find is that it was founded in 1926 as “Distillerie de Verdun” and was an all-purpose spirits maker which made brandy, liqueurs and other distilled spirits, and changed its name to Distillerie de la Meuse in 1937. Where the rum inside the bottle came from is anyone’s guess, and what it was doing being bottled in Israel (which, as you may recall, was established in 1948) — and then being imported into Italy twenty years later — is equally a mystery. That’s what happens when you buy a rum at auction where the provenance is so murky.
Colour – dark brown
Strength – unknown
Nose – Kind of unimpressive, quite light, though there are some fruity notes: prunes, apricots, bananas, vanilla and sherry.
Palate – It seems at first blush to be better than the nose, because here the fruitiness blossoms into a palate that genuinely presents an interesting profile…at first. Sweetish plum juice, raspberries, blackberries, prunes, but without any acidic bite. Some alcoholic notes persist, which is fortunate, because after a while, it starts to show its colours as something oversweet. Vanilla, cinnamon, sherry and red wine, dampened down and with a sugar balance that just gets excessive.
Finish – Short and light, with some dark fruit and paper notes, gone quickly.
Thoughts – That it has been adulterated seems beyond question. It’s a bit too sweet and thick, and even if Marco’s hydrometer was in error when it said 15% ABV (it tastes too alcoholic for that to be believable), tasting it side by side with other rums which we knew to be clean, clearly shows it is not a pure product. That said, we know this was a common practise at the time, as rum’s reputation was no better (worse, actually) then than now and for the very good reason that it was often sweetened or spiced up to appeal more widely, like the Italian Fantasias of the 1950s.
Beyond these observations, I genuinely wish we knew more about the rum, but as with all bottles from so long ago (and during a period of war, no less) perhaps it’s enough that we just have had a chance to taste it, be curious and know a little more than we started with.
(#1111 | R-164)(76/100)
Other notes
Anything on the St. Lucie on the label?
I will have to check my late father’s records when I am back in London, but I am 90% sure Dad had a bottle of this or something very similar crica 1980. My father spent a great deal of time in the Middle East and had a number of friends in Israel, so I suspect that would have been the source.
If this Rum was indeed distilled in France in 1941, then it is a very rare survivor as (perhaps unsurprisingly ) pretty much everything legally distilled in France in 1941 would have gone to Germany or have been consumed by the occupying forces. I wonder if this was actually either distilled pre 1940 and hidden during the occupation, or potentially immediately after the war?
I would also offer one other titbit, one of my father more “colourful” contacts was a Serbian lawyer called Dusko Popov who was a double agent during WW2. After the war he settled in France and had a number slightly dodgy businesses. One of which involved buying some average bulk spirits and then adding colour, flavour etc and repackaging them for sale in small secondary markets, often with labels which gave them a more interesting provenance, I suspect this was a fairly widespread practice back i the day. Is this perhaps one of those bottles?
This may be one of the most interesting stories I ever heard. There’s no way to check the rebottling and resale theory, but you know, I think that may be closer to the truth of it. Thanks for adding such interesting context to the article.