Blended Rum – Page 11 – The Lone Caner

Bacardi Reserva Limitada (Founder’s Blend) Rum – Review

Nov 062014

Don’t bash the bat until you’ve given this rum a fair shot. Because it’s damned good.

Many – myself among them – believe that one of Bacardi’s more unappreciated rums is the 8-year-old, and I’d argue the Reserva Limitada joins the club…and even dials it up a few notches.

The company may sell more rum than anyone else, has enormous (and heavily criticized) tax breaks and subsidies to keep its costs down, is a global juggernaut of the entry-level rums, but at the upper end of the scale has a real bad rep with rum lovers who just disdain it. So if Bacardi wanted to break into the rarefied realms of stratospherically-priced premium rums lovingly issued by craft bottlers, they did well with this one. And yet, many who taste this rum will express their “surprise,” and how “unexpected” it is. But it shouldn’t be: one can’t be in the rum making business for over a hundred years and not pick up something, right. The real mystery is what took so damned long, and why they can’t do better, more often.

Still, let’s just move away from any preconceptions we might have regarding the brand, and simply address what I tasted that day: a dark amber rum in a standard bottle (I didn’t see a box, but a quick search confirms it comes with one) bottled at — what is now, for me — a mild 40%. (Interestingly enough, while I meant it when I said dark amber, some photographs online suggest a lighter colour, almost honey-like). The nose demonstrated a solid, creamy nose of coconut, some fruit, burnt sugar, even nougat… and a touch of mischief thrown in via a flirt of lemon peel. Some clove and cinnamon danced around there after opening up. It was well done: there was nothing truly exciting or freakishly adventurous about it — it probably wouldn’t be a Bacardi if it exhibited such traits — just above-average quality.

Same for the taste. Soft, smooth, sweet, it was a baby’s drowsy kiss to your palate. It was a really good melange of coconut shavings, banana, almonds, caramel, raisins, honey, some allspice and cinnamon; even some freshly baked bread. Barely any smoke and leather or tannins from the ageing. I’m hoping that they didn’t cram sugar into the thing to smoothen it out – that would be a real shame (yet I can’t rid myself of the thought). The mouthfeel at 40% held to that unwarlike temper to which I had become accustomed in my recent enjoyable battles with full-proofs – gentle and easygoing, almost creamy, with merely a nip of the alcohol bite, far from unpleasant. As for the fade, pretty decent for a milquetoast offering – soft and lasting, with all those rich scents taking their bow before departing.

Bacardi does this so very well: they don’t seek the edge of the envelope, they don’t shoot for the stars, they don’t go off the reservation. They simply, day in and day out, make rums that are a slight cut above the ordinary for their age, type and price point. Okay, the cost for this rum is pushing it for the masses that drink and move the brand by the tankerload, yet it must be conceded that it’s being marketed as a premium rum, and so perhaps a different audience is being sought.

This rum apparently hailed from stocks which were reserved for the founder’s family, and were released rarely – commercial production began in 2003, and one supposedly had to go to Puerto Rico to get any, up until 2010 when it began to be released more widely. Varying online sources mention that the age of the blends comprising the rum is 12-18 years and averaged 16 years (one noted that this average is now 12 years, another said 15) and aged in lightly charred American oak. The 2010 press release noted 10-16 years. I found it enormously irritating that the Bacardi website itself didn’t mention a damned thing about it. What does it say about a marketing strategy in today’s world, that you get the most information from re-sellers, online shops and hobby sites, rather than from the actual manufacturers?

In the end, whatever the background material (or lack of it) says, I think Bacardi’s Reserva Limitada is neither a cult object, nor a brave miss nor even a “flawed masterpiece”. It is, simply, a solidly excellent rum, well made, carefully put together, showing real care and attention — I enjoyed it a lot. And if it is, at 40%, a little to weak for my own personal taste these days, it sure won’t let down legions of its drinkers, who might just be encouraged by this review to pony up the coin which the bottle will cost them – or at least for the cost of a shot in a bar somewhere. In that case, I honestly don’t think they’ll be disappointed.

(#187 / 87/100)

Other notes

Bacardi’s strategy mystifies me. The rum is a blend limited to 8,000 bottles per year, which many boutique makers would be proud to issue: and as noted, it’s a very good rum, great for sipping. My question is, why blend it at all? Why not issue an age-specific or even a year-specific rum and ratchet up the advertising to tout its uniqueness? What’s with the anaemic 40% – this thing could easily be a shade stronger and deliver more punch. And then really earn its “premium” cachet.
Update, March 2017 – Interesting how things develop. I looked at this rum again in passing last week as I was comparing a number of others in Berlin. In just three years, it’s sunk in my estimation. Blind, I scored it 78 on this go-around, and it was largely because of my tastes gravitating towards pure pot still rums, and because of the 40%. It’s still a decent rum and beats out the Paraiso…but is left way behind, by all the amazing rums that have emerged since that time when I first tried it.

Damoiseau Rhum Vieux Millésimé 1980 18 Year Old – Review

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Oct 122014

A deeply rich and remarkable rum – 1980 was a damned good year for this company

When one buys a raft of intriguing aged rums and then samples several dozen more (especially after a protracted absence), the issue is which rum to start reviewing first. Since my intention on this go-around was to run through several Caroni rums from Trinidad, as well as to give more weight to agricoles from the French West Indies, I decided that one of the best of the latter deserved some consideration. And that’s this sterling Damoiseau.

The Bellevue au Moule estate and distillery was established at the end of the 19th Century by a Mr. Rimbaud from Martinique, and was acquired by Mr. Roger Damoiseau in April 1942…since then it has remained within his family (the estate and distillery are currently run by Mr Hervé Damoiseau). They claim to be the market leader in Guadeloupe — 50% market share, notes the estate web page — and their primary export market remains Europe, France in particular.

Forget all that, though: this 1980 edition would be enough to assure their reputation as a premium rum maker by any standard. Damoiseau themselves obviously thought so too, because it’s not every day you see a polished wooden box enfolding a bottle, and costing as much as it did. And once open, bam, an immediate emanation of amazing aromas greeted me. Even with my experience of full proof rums clocking in at 60% and over, this one was something special: plums, dark ripe cherries and cinnamon blasted out right away. The rum was impatient to be appreciated but then chilled out, and crisp, clean and direct notes of white flowers and the faintest bit of brown sugar and fresh grass came shyly out the door. I’d recommend that any lucky sampler to get his beak in fast to get the initial scent bomb, and then wait around for the more relaxed aftersmells.

What also impressed me was how it arrived in the palate: you’d think that 60.3% strength would make for a snarling, savage electric impact, but no, it was relatively restrained: heated, yes, but also luscious and rich. (The closest equivalent I could come up with when looking for a comparative to this rum was the 58% Courcelles 1972 which also had some of the loveliness this one displayed). Fleshy, sweet, ripe fruit were in evidence here, pineapple, apricots, crushed grapes, apricots – it was so spectacular, so well put together, and there was so much going on there, that it rewarded multiple trips to the well. It’s my standard practice to add some water when tasting to see how things moved on from the initial sensations: here I simply did not bother. It was hard to believe this was an agricole, honestly – it was only at the back end that something of the light cleanliness and clarity of the agricoles emerged, and the fade was a pleasant (if a bit sharp), long-lasting melange of white fruit (guavas, I’m thinking), a twist of vanilla, and light flowers.

Guadeloupe as a whole has never been overly concerned about the AOC designation, and creates both pure cane-juice and molasses-based rums, in light and dark iterations of vieux, très vieux, hors d’age and (not as common) the Millésimé – that’s where we head into rarefied territory, because it denotes a particular year, a good one. From the taste of this rum, the heft and the richness, 1980 outturn must have been phenomenal. For a very long time I’ve not been able to give enough attention to the products of the French West Indies (to my own detriment) – but even the few steps I’ve made have been worth it, if only to see diamonds like this one washed up on the strand at the high water mark.

Other notes

Aged for 18 years in 180 liter ex-bourbon barrels.
This is the same stock of rums as formed Velier’s 1980 Damoiseau

Ron Barceló Imperial – Review

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Sep 062013

A subtle, supple rum, undone by a lack of courage and strength

Consider for a moment my score on the Barceló Imperial. A 78 rating for me is a decent rum, if nothing to write home about. For a premium product, it’s something of a surprise – so here I should state straight out that that score reflects primarily its lesser proof and maybe excessive ladling in of sugar, not any other intrinsic quality. Frankly, it could have been higher.

When I originally read the Barceló Imperial review from Josh Miller at Inu A Kena, I immediately fired off post on his site to ask him whether he got the 38% version I had been avoiding for over a year in Calgary, or whether he had something a shade more torqued up. Because when I’m springing for something that is being touted as a premium (even if I didn’t in this case – it’s a soft blend of relatively young components), I’d rather have a rum that’s…well, a real rum. As it turns out, his was indeed 40%, while the one that Jay of Liquorature trotted out on my last meeting of the Collective prior to absconding, was the lesser proofed bottling.

You’d think that this 2% difference is minimal, but nope. It really isn’t. Consider first the nose on this attractively packaged, sleek looking bottle. Soft as sea breezes, sweet with scents of molasses, cashews (white ones), caramel, prunes and almonds…but all very quiet, slumbering almost, as delicate as the frangipani and white flowers which it called to memory. No intensity here at all, which is where it went south for me, trying to be attractive and pleasant to nose, but somewhat emasculated by a vague cloying sweetness.

This gentleness was mirrored in the taste and the feel on the palate as well. It was soft, warm, billowy, aromatic. It loved me and wanted to share its feelings. Toffee, slight citrus notes, apples and pears led off, with slowly emerging caramel and almonds following on. The mouthfeel was surprisingly “thick” — that’s the added sugar again — and that lesser alcohol content also made it somewhat (disappointingly) bland. Still, I must concede that the balance of the muskier, smokier, deeper sugar tones with the slightly acidic citrus and faint astringency was rather well done. The finish, which came as no surprise, was short, providing a closing sense of nuts and molasses.

So all in all, an underwhelming product, as I said, perhaps a shade too sweet for some, too damped down for others, even though there is some complexity hiding underneath. People who go in for softer rums, perhaps soleras or liqueurs, would have no problem drinking this one, I think. Those preferring a more aggressive disposition will disagree (I am one of these). I mean, this is touted as a premium rum, and its sexy shape and packaging reflect that, even if its price (around $50 in my location) seems somewhat low. Part of this might be its ageing, which is uncertain – I’ve read claims of components in the blend being of bits and pieces with as little as 4 and as much as 10 years, though the official website makes no statement on the matter at all: so I’d suggest that Barceló may still be tinkering with it and aren’t ready to make a definitive statement…yet.

One characteristic of underproofed products is that you get the taste without the strength; with added sugar you get thickness without complexity; and this is like gorging on white bread, or a cheap hamburger – a few minutes later the taste is gone, you’re hungry again, there’s no buzz in sight, and you’re unfulfilled, wanting more. If that’s what Barceló are trying to do, all I can say is that they’ve succeeded swimmingly, ‘cause that bottle of yours is going to be finished in no time. Still, I wonder what my malt swilling amigos would make of this rum, those gentlemen who inhale aged cask-strength whiskies by the caseload and can barely sniff standard proof drinks without being snooty about it. I think they would probably make similar comments to mine – interesting notes, some delicacy harnessed to artistry in service of a fine sipping dram. But I’m sure they’d also say, sorry Ruminsky, we like you and all, but there’s just not enough buxom in the bodice and backside in the bustle, to make this rum worth lusting after.

(#178. 78/100)

Other Notes

Barceló hails from the Dominican Republic, where it shares the island with the other two “B”s – Bermudez and Brugal. They have been in business since 1930, when Julian Barceló (a Mallorcan emigre) founded the company, and Spain remains one of its primary markets, though they ship rum to some fifty countries these days.
In September 2022 a comment on the review of the Imperial Premum Blend pointed out that Barcelo makes rums only from cane juice, which an immediate check on the website of the company also confirms. I have therefore changed some of the factual elements of this older review appropriately (although score and tasting notes stay as they were). No idea how that slipped past my original vetting process…however, it’s possible that they used both molasses and cane juice, since Latin countries / ex-Spanish colonies did not have a history or tradition of using juice.
Note that in 2009 a new Barcelo division, Alcoholes Finos Dominicanos, was established with funds from the EU Rum Sector Programme (the same one that funded Clarendon’s new column still / fermenters and Foursuare’s bottling plant), and built a new industrial distillery the following year, which is processing 100% cane juice. This is now the distillery Barcelo is using to make its rums. It’s possible this older Imperial I tasted in 2013 is from stocks that were made from molasses. The taste and the age of the rum supports that assumption. (See also this 2020 Barcelo company profile on YouTube).

Wood’s 100 Old Navy Rum – Review

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Aug 052013

Rich, simply flavoured, overproofed Navy-style rum that has a skinnier corpus than expected

There’s nothing much I can tell you about Wood’s Rum Distillery itself because (a) it’s not a distillery and (b) there’s not much online about it, even on their own website (and my books barely speak to the big names so what hope is there for the small ones?), but the brand did exist for over a century before being acquired by William Grant in 2002 – these are the boys who also own Sailor Jerry and the OVD rum brands and supposedly dabble in minor whiskies like Glenfiddich and Balvenie (or so rumour has it). They are, however, blenders…descendants of the merchant bottlers of the old days. I wish, on the strength of what I tasted here, that I knew more about the company’s origins and how it got into the Navy rum market. It’s perhaps kind of appropriate that I bought it at Heathrow, Britain’s largest modern equivalent to the old ports.

The first noticeable, unmistakable aromas that billowed forth as I cracked the cheap tinfoil cap, were huge, in-your-face biffs of molasses, licorice and coffee. They were deep and dark and rich and had it not been for the rather raw profile overall, I could be forgiven for thinking the rum was an old Demerara from Enmore, or even a Dictador 20 on steroids. Which is not too surprising, because Woods made a rum here which took the characteristic dark pot still distillates from DDL in Guyana (one source suggests some column distillate is used as well, about which I have my doubts, but okay), aged them in oak for up to three years and then bottled the result without gelding the poor thing to 40%…but remained at a chest-hair-curling 57%. Drink this neat and you’ll feel like a hobbit drinking with Treebeard. So good for them, methinks. The intensity remained, the darkness persisted, in any kind of cocktail the tastes stayed true, and frankly, Navy rums should be a tad more oomphed up than the norm, otherwise they wouldn’t (to my mind anyway) be Navy rums.

What about the taste? Well, pretty much what you would expect, all in all (come on, were you really expecting a swan to emerge from an eighteen-quid duckling?). Woods 100 was a dark red, almost black rum — which had been part of the initial attraction for me — poured inkily into the glass, and when sipped conformed as closely to the anticipated profile as one James Bond movie does to another: spicy, rich, dark melange of flavours promised by the nose. And these were the same molasses, burnt sugar, coffee and licorice overtones, which buried the subtler elements as completely as an alpine avalanche. Sure, I found sly and supple hints of chopped fruits, cinnamon, vanilla, ripe cherries and cashews, but not enough to really stand out…the balance was all towards the dominant notes. The finish was, as befitted an overproof, long and lasting, giving more of the molasses and burnt sugar, quite heated and a shade dry. But, of course, with claws.

It should be pointed out that I felt the rum teetered on the edge of being medium bodied, because it was harsher on the tongue and one the fade than I had anticipated, thinner (perhaps I’ve been spoiled by El Dorados)…there’s an element of rawness to it, a lack of refinement and couth which points to the short maturation. Still, it’s young, it’s brawny, it’s cheap, it’s not like I should expect a miracle: like any young stud, strength is the selling point, not staying power or finnesse.

There are many rums like Wood’s on my shelf, which says a lot for my affections when it comes to sweaty, prole-centric, cane-cutter rums I don’t necessarily sip. Cabot Tower 100, Favell, Young’s Old Sam are the first that spring to mind, but also Robert Watson, some of the old Enmores (better made, older and smoother but not quite as cheerily nutso as this ‘un), Pusser’s or Lamb’s. I’d place this one about on par with the Cabot’s (which scored 78).

But y’know, Demerara rum seem to be good no matter what, and that is particularly true of the wooden pot still products. Whether they are made to sip and savour (like BBR’s Port Morant 1975 or Bristol Spirits PM 1980) or to get one hammered (all the others named above), they all have that deep, rich fruity molasses note within their variations, and this one stands forward to take its place loudly and proudly (even obnoxiously) among all the others. The fact that many online shop-commentaries resound with the plaudits of ex Royal Navy men who esteem Woods above just about any other Navy rum says all, I think, that needs to be said about this cheerful, powerful, unpretentious cask-strength rum.

(#176. 80/100)

Other notes

In passing, why name it “100” when it’s actually 114 proof? Well, here I’d refer you to my essay on poofage, but in fine, in the old maritime days, 100 proof was a measure of the least (most diluted) ratio of alcohol to water which would still support the combustion of gunpowder. And that equated to about 57% ABV. This was called 100 proof.

Rum Nation Demerara Solera No.14 (2010 Release) – Review

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Jul 052013

A Demerara rum that may not be a true solera in spite of its name. Lovely, affordable, interesting rum.

With this review, I have finally, after nearly two years of getting around to it, come to the end of the Rum Nation 2010 line of rums I bought all in one fell swoop, after being introduced to the series at Kensington Wine Market’s Raucous Rums tasting back in 2011. Since that time I have become quite a fanboy of Fabio Rossi’s products, and wish I could get more of his yearly releases: largely because I have not tasted a single one that was anything less than impressive (if occasionally different), and this one is no exception.

Bottled at a standard 40%, housed in a barroom bottle and surmounted by a plastic capped cork, the first impression as I nosed it was actually that it reminded me a lot of the El Dorado 21 year old: smoke, rich dried dark fruit (dates, raisins, prunes and black grapes), some oak sap and some burnt sugar and cinnamon, all warm and pleasantly put together. As soon as I noticed the similarity, I hustled downstairs to retrieve my 21 year old. That one proved to be subtly richer, deeper and more complex, as well as a shade drier, but the similarities were quite striking.

The congruence of the two rums’ profiles continued on a tasting. I could taste the relative youth of the No. 14 rum – it lacked something of the supple depth and mastery of the 21 which derived from its ageing. And while it was a solid medium-bodied dark rum of warmth and not fire, it evinced its own character quite handsomely too – the aforementioned flavours of toffee, butterscotch and caramel, prunes and grapes, intertwined with a faint citrus, licorice and baking spices, some woodiness…and an odd, light dancing note threading through the back end, some kind of cashew fruit (not the nut) and (you may not take this seriously) the fire of vinegar soaked red peppers, barely perceptible. In point of fact, it reminded me a lot of more traditional navy rums, like Pusser’s, or even a much improved-upon Lamb’s. The finish was medium long, just a shade dry, and quite clean on the exit, with soft heated velvet caramel and licorice notes to end things off.

So, an ED21 it’s not, though quite good in its own way; it expresses its own differences well, being both original and tasty, a rum which will not piss you off by going wholeheartedly off into its own domain, just sideways enough for you to appreciate it on its own merits. Think of it as a good accompaniment to the El Dorados (12, 15 or 21) without actually being one…each one enhances the others.

If I had an issue at all with the rum it was in the labelling. Rum Nation bought a few barrels of blended bulk Demerara rum from DDL, which contained Port Morant (PM) and Versailles (SV) rums aged around four to six years. The barrels were taken to Italy and transferred into sherry (PX and Oloroso) butts for just over a year of further ageing, after which a few litres of 1997 Enmore rum was added (that comes from the famed Enmore wooden continuous Coffey still now housed at Diamond estate). That final blend was what I was sampling, and therefore for a true age statement based on the youngest portion of the rum, I guess it’s best regarded as a five year old. The question is whether that process of blending constitutes a solera system…in this case I’d suggest not. This doesn’t make the rum any less than what it is, but for those who really prefer a solera and want that sweeter, slightly thicker profile, the implication of the label may cause concern.

Rum Nation regards this rum as something of an entry level product, much as they did the Barbados 2001 10 year old. Based on the price, that is all well and good, I suppose. But you know, I enjoyed the rum, think it is a good blend of the Guyanese rums that constitute its core DNA, and for what it cost, it’s a pleasant, impressive sipping-quality rum that I drank quite a lot of and would highly recommend for those on a budget who like darker fare. It may be 40%, it may not be a true solera, and it may just be $50, but if you like navy rums in general and Demerara rums in particular, you wouldn’t be out to lunch by springing for this lovely dark product.

(#172. 84.5/100)

Other Notes

The No 14 moniker in the name is meant to state that the oldest rum in the blend is 14 years old.
The “Solera” title on the label will be omitted from future iterations

Brugal 1888 Ron Gran Reserva Familiar – Review

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Jun 252013

A subtle, complex, tasty sipping rum

You don’t see many of the Brugal rums here — I’ve only ever reviewed one of them, years ago when I was starting to populate the site: that one got a review, a shrug and a meh (which in retrospect may have been a touch condescending, as was my initial scoring), and I remember it principally because of its really lovely finish. The 1888 Ron Gran Reserva Familiar is something else again, and perhaps it’s sad that we don’t get to see more shops carrying it, ‘cause it’s a pretty nifty drink, and deserves its accolades.

The Brugal 1888 is a fascinating synthesis of odd subtleties and traditional strengths that displays a solid character when matched against the other bottles I had on the table that day (the BBR Fiji 8 year old and the Plantation Barbados 5 year old, both of which it outclassed). Right off I admired the blue cardboard box, the elegant tall bottle and the metal tipped cork, because unlike my friend the Bear, I always did enjoy nifty presentation, and feel that special editions or top end products deserve no less even if it does mean a few extra pesos tacked on to the price (note that said Bear does not object to the extra pesos as long as he’s not forking out the dinero himself, and smiles like a cherubic Buddha whenever I do, as he helps himself to a taste).

The first thing I noted on the nose of this mahogany red rum was its clean lightness, redolent of coffee grounds, cocoa and dark chocolate, vanilla (not quite as evident as the Plantation), all mixed up with light floral hints, and a touch of blue or black grapes, apricots and nuts. And a dusting of cinnamon so light it almost wasn’t there. At 40% I wasn’t expecting a rampaging series of flavours to reach out and scratch my face off, and I didn’t get that, just a pleasant, orderly parade of notes, one after the other.

The medium light body was warm, but in no way overly spicy, more like a verbal dig in the ribs from a friend, spoken without malice – in fact it was smooth, and dry, but not briny or astringent in any way. Light chopped apples mixed it up with vanilla, kiwi fruits and freshly sliced papaya. And it was smooth, very nicely so, delivering further notes of white flowers, pears, some burnt sugar, caramel (not much), butterscotch wound about with a touch of oak. All in all it was a few subtle flavours coming together really well, with a clean exit, a little astringent and dry, lasting well and providing a last creamy breath of all the pleasant rum notes described above. No, it doesn’t have the growling power of darker, stronger (or older) Jamaicans or Guyanese rums, but I don’t think that’s how they envisaged it to begin with. It just was (and is) a really well put together sipping rum of some…calmness.

The source of its rather rich set of flavours of the Brugal 1888 derives from its double maturation, once in the standard American white oak casks that once held bourbon, the second in European oak casks once used for maturing sherry (that’s where all those fruity notes come from): if Brugal’s marketing is to be believed, McCallan’s own Master of Wood was instrumental in handpicking the casks, and the end product is a blend of rums aged five to fourteen years – that would, to purists who insist that any blend be age-labelled based on the youngest part of the blend, make it a five year old, but y’know, even if Brugal themselves make no such distinction…man, what a five year old it is.

Brugal is one of the 3 B’s of the Dominican Republic (eastern half of Hispaniola island…the west is Haiti) – Brugal, Bermudez and Barcelo – and probably the largest. The company was formed in 1888 by Don Andres Brugal, and is now considering itself the #3 rum maker in the world by volume…again, if promo materials are to be believed. However, when you consider that #1 is Bacardi, #2 is probably the Tanduay, then that leaves Havana Club, Captain Morgan and McDowell scrabbling for the next three places…Brugal is somewhat of a lesser player compared to these behemoths, in my opinion, so you’ll forgive me for taking that remark with some salt.

Still, sales volume and their place in the rankings is not my concern. My issue is the character of this rum from the perspective of a consumer, and which in this case I enjoyed and liked and appreciated. Anniversary offerings are traditionally good rums with an extra fillip of quality: the Brugal 1888 succeeds on many levels, is a good sipping rum, and a worthwhile addition to any rum lover’s cabinet. I’d buy it again without hesitation, to drink when I’m not on top of the world, perhaps (I have the full-proof Demeraras for that), but certainly when I’m feeling a little more relaxed and at ease with the state of my life.

(#170. 85/100)

Other Notes

Since 2008, Brugal has been owned by the Edrington Group, the same parent company as MacCallan’s and Highland Park. That might account for the sherry maturation philosophy and the source of the barrels I noted above.
The company’s literature remarks that this is a rum for whisky lovers (which I assume would be the bourbon boys, not the Hebridean maltsters).

Traveller’s 5 Barrel Premium Gold Aged Rum – Review

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Jun 182013

Ambivalence personified

Ever since I sampled Traveller’s Liquors 1-barrel expression, I’ve wanted to move up the chain – that rum, for its youth and antecedents, was a pleasure to drink, and I really appreciated its ten year old cousin, the excellent Don Omarios Vintage Rum. As with the latter, it was a bottle which “Rum Balls” Tony brought back when he was on holiday over in that part of the world: he obliged his parched amigo by schlepping a bottle of this Belize-made rum back for me to try (with him in attendance, of course). So once again, big hat-tip to Da Man.

I remarked in the Don Omario review that the 5 Barrel would really have to have an oomphed up game to beat it, and the initial nose of the amber coloured, thick legged rum suggested it might: it had a musty, earthy pungency to it, a certain driness, reminding me of an old carpet I used to beat the crap out of in the days before the family had a vaccuum cleaner. Licorice, caramel, brown sugar in a plastic baggie, and a lingering whiff of a cloying overripe (dark red or black) grape notes, something like a sweet red wine. Not quite my thing, that last, though overall, nothing to gripe about, and much to admire.

The taste was an interesting counterpoint. Light and smooth and clear…clean is a word not inappropriate to use in this context, and odd after that darker earthier nose. The rum itself was bottled at 40% and was medium to light bodied, but care must be taken – I’m not comparing the taste on the palate to an agricole, because here the balance was different, well handled between the light clearer flavours of androgynous fruit like papaya, kiwi and breadfruit. The caramel and sugar notes were held in check while not being entirely overwhelmed, and if I had to make on contrary observation here, it was that there was a salty, almost crackers or biscuits background at the last I simply didn’t care for. The finish was shortish, smooth, warm, and decent without brilliance: it simply reaffirmed all the aforementioned flavours. The Omario, which counted this as its weakest point, was still better.

Summing up, I liked the 5 Barrel quite a lot, but those odd discordant notes that crept in somewhat marred the experience for me. At end I can’t help but feel faintly let down. It’s not that it’s a bad rum (quite the opposite — in fact it’s a perfectly solid rum in its own way). I just expected, given the sterling encomiums it was given by individuals for whom I have respect, that it would be, somehow…better. When I compare it to both the 1-barrel, which I enjoyed but which it eclipsed, and then the Don Omario’s, which edged past it, you can perhaps forgive me for being just a shade sniffy about the matter.

If I was feeling bitchy, I’d close by making grumbling, snarky comments about where it failed and what it didn’t do for me and how could it be said to be such a premium expression when it really isn’t, and so on. I won’t, though, because truly, as a mid-range sipping rum, there’s not much fault to find. The thing is solid, just not brilliant (for me…your mileage will inevitably vary). So what it comes down to is expectation versus reality, the very conundrum that infects our daily lives. I go into every new job as an unbridled optimist, thinking that this will be the last one, the best one, this is the one I’ll make my pile from and retire in. Anyone who knows the penurious state of my finances and the precariousness of employment in my drone-like cubicle knows how laughable that sentiment is.

And so also for rums. The Traveller’s Five barrel is what it is, a decent, workmanlike entry into the genre, well put together, decently blended, nothing to be ashamed of at all. My expectations aside, there’s no reason for me – or you, for that matter – to ignore it if it ever came across my path again.

(#168. 82/100)

Other Notes

This rum is a five year old, aged in American oak, and so my scoring is a bit out of synch with other five year olds, especially with the four looked at in “A Tale of Four Fives.” I’d rank it below Plantation’s Bajan 5, El Dorado 5 and Angostura, but no lower. It’s a shade better than both the Juan Santos 5 and the Fluor de Cana 5 year old rums, which should tell you something about my personal taste preferences.

Don Omario’s Vintage 15 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jun 152013

Sedate, but not quite docile. Urbane with just a hint of bad boy. An excellent fifteen year old out of Belize.

The humourist in me likes to think that Travellers – that excellent rum house out of Belize which also makes the 1-barrel, 3-barrel and 5-barrel rums – has a resident Irishman on the payroll, and he changed his name, and was instrumental in making a left field product with his name on it (I had a similar feeling when I ran into an Irish pub in Kazakhstan many years ago). The reality is different, of course, but it tickled me mightily. Anyway, all that aside, I was otherwise enthused by the vintage rum called Don Omario’s Vintage which “Rum Balls” Tony brought over. He is, you will remember, the guy who has now put me under the table on several occasions with the rums he brings for me to try (while cheerfully pilfering my own vintage stocks).

Traveller’s has been in business since the 1950s, founded by Omario Perdomo (yeah, that’s the guy), after whom this rum is named: the company derived its moniker from its origin in serving the various travellers in and out of Belize City. Like many other national companies (DDL and Tanduay spring to mind), they produce a wide range of spirit products for both the domestic and export market, and thus far, the only previous rum from their range which I had tried was a very pleasant 1-barrel (and I now have the 3- and 5- barrel variations to check out if I can ever get around to them).

There’s a certain retro aspect to this bottle that’s quite unique…in fact, it may be one of the most unusual designs I’ve seen in recent memory: it is shaped roughly like a six pointed star when seen from above (too bad that’s not the way it’ll appear on the shelves, isn’t it?). Good cork, so-so labelling, all-over faux-1970s design. Inside was a copper mahogany liquid that poured out along the sides of the glass with the slow plump legs of a chubby baby.

I should confess that the nose on this rum was something a few orders of magnitude ahead of the 1 Barrel I was sampling alongside it. Luscious in depth, it reminded me a lot of the Dictador 20: earthy background, coffee, chocolate, fleshy non-acidic fruits – prunes, dried apricots, even dates. The smell advanced past this to mild white pepper notes, caramel and burnt sugar, and came together really, really well.

As for the taste, no complaints from me there. Medium to heavy bodied on the tongue, bottled at an excellent 45%…my research suggests it was double distilled from molasses. Smooth and pleasant, with initial warm notes of well humidified tobacco leading off, handing over to chocolate and caramel notes, limmed with burnt sugar and a lovely background of coffee and roasted nuts. The nose hadn’t lied either, because fruity scents hadn’t disappeared, and were a shade more intense than previously promised: peaches freshly cut and still oozing sap, prunes and that flirt of apricots. Good stuff. I should point out that it displayed a few discordant notes here and there – mostly some sharpish oak and a tad of dry astringency – as I went back and forth, and I suggest to you that this gives it a nice character, a little bit of bullyism to the palate, something that makes it more than just another rum that pleases.

The finish is about the weakest thing about an otherwise sterling product: dry, short and straightforward, and I’m not damning it for that, by the way, because for all its minimal length, it was soft and billowy, giving up closing aromas of nuts and coffee grounds faintly mixed up with toffee and butterscotch. The close may be too rapid for some, but given what had come before it, I muted my bitch button and simply accepted it as a very pleasant fifteen year old rum, one I would say nice things about to anyone who asked. The 5-barrel I’ve heard so much about would really have to be spectacular to beat it, I think.

So where does this leave me? Well pretty happy, all in all. Traveller’s have made an interesting, professional fifteen year old, smooth, silky, tasty and good for sipping on a cold Calgary night. It is at this point not for sale here, but I will have fond memories of my experience with it, and recommend it as an excellent all-round rum bottled at precisely the right strength for what it attempts, which is to make you savour the visit of a squaddie like Tony who’ll bring it with him for you to try.

(#167. 85/100)

Other Notes

Originally I named this a ten year old based on some online background pages I read, though the literature is inconsistent about the matter: some mention it as being ten years old, some as fifteen. I have emailed Traveller’s to see if they can clear up the matter. Tony himself confirmed that when he bought it in Belize, it was specifically sold to him as being a fifteen year old, and so I have retitled my post.

Ron Centenario 20 Años “Fundacion” Solera – Review

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May 212013

If rums were animals, this would be a faithful, doe-eyed spaniel with slippers in his mouth, who only wants to express his adoration of Master.

The Costa Rican Ron Centenario “Fundacion” solera rum is a poster child for rums which could easily be a bit more torqued up, and become better. Right now, this quietly excellent solera is cuddly, a bit pudgy, and is like soft velvet on the tongue – I think it could just as effortlessly go on a Charles Atlas program and beef itself up to something a lot more interesting, good as it is in its current iteration. I make this comment, of course, after having sampled the darkly dour Bristol Spirits Port Mourant 1980 51%, which addressed all such issues and pleased me more…but should that be enough to make me smack down the Centenario? Not at all. For a solera, for a 40% rum, there’s little to complain about here. It’s just a different kind of rum than the aforementioned beefcake, and takes its place comfortably in the ranks of the perhaps better-known soleras, like the Rum Nation Solera 15, the Cartavio XO, or maybe the Dictador 20.

The Ron Centenario is part of the family of rums from Costa Rica that seems to like breeding cautious 35% underproofs such as the Legado and others in the line, with which I was unimpressed, sorry. Here they must have realized that what with soleras tending to be sweeter, more full bodied and softer, bottling it that weakly was a dangerous indulgence, and dialled it up a notch. As with the Legado, appearance was impressive in and of itself, spartan box, zen like long bottle, well etched and simply stated, showing a dark mahogany and ruby red drink reposing within. That red colouring of box and rum is sure to catch your eye in any shop you’re lucky enough to find it.

As with many other soleras, there was a soft pungency to the nose, yet remarkably little fruitiness one would expect. Some molasses and overripe pineapples brushed against each other, laced with a faint licorice, cinnamon and coffee. Smooth and rich and very pleasant – no aggressiveness or brutality here at all, this was certainly not the kind of rum that wanted to maul your schnozz.

As for the palate, wow. Very pleasant indeed. A lot of one’s final opinion would, I think, depend under what circumstances one would drink such a rum – my own take would be after dinner, not before, or even as a sundowner to be had without haste or urgency. It’s thick and sweet (though not too much so – the Fundacion has a really good balance on that score) and in its own way, even a little heavy. The olfactory pungency carried over well into the taste, being redolent of aromatic pipe tobacco, some smokiness, anise and blackberries, with that pineapple taste being just barely held at bay but lending some of its sweetness to the overall profile. And it segues into a gentle, warm finish, quite long lasting, flowering into final memories of orange peel, caramel, walnuts and a kind of creamy butteriness. Overall, a very impressive product – as I said, warm and cuddly and loving…and therefore, it must be said, perhaps a mite unchallenging if your tastes run to somewhat more assertive and complex drinks. A Doberman this is not, by any stretch.

You’re going to look long and far to find a review of this rum that isn’t contained within the marketing materials and write ups of online shops (mostly, it should be noted, in Europe, with almost all that I could find actually being in Germany). I don’t get that. The Centenario is a sterling solera product, noses well, tastes excellent, finishes without bombast. It’s well known, won prizes, and an all-round good product. Why it would not be either reviewed or sold in quantity in North America confuses me. My recommendation is to disregard the lower-proofed 35% offerings further down the line of Centenario’s food chain, and get this one if you can. It may not be sold with the box (or so Stuart told me when he passed it on), but who cares? – as a rum, as a solera, as a well made addition to your shelf, it’s worth the money to acquire a soft sipping spirit that has zero ego and only seeks to please.

(#163. 87/100)

Other notes:

Aged in American oak barrels that once held bourbon. As a solera, treat the 20 Años with some care, since of course it does not represent the youngest part of the blend but the oldest, and therefore a large portion of what you’re tasting is less than two decades old..

Plantation 1999 Guyana Old Reserve Rum – Review

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May 072013

Crackers and butter

Given how much I care for Guyanese style Demerara rums (even if some of them actually originate from plantations closer to Berbice), and knowing something of the various profiles hailing from these old sugar estates, I must confess to being quite surprised at the sharp left turn this 45% ABV Plantation rum made.

No really. As soon as I opened the bottle to pour the gold-amber rum into my glass, the very first scent that reached me was salt biscuits and creamy, unsalted butter. This, to me was quite unmistakable, because in my youth I was once caught on a tramp steamer in the Atlantic for three days, and all we had to eat was salt biscuits, crackers and peanut butter (and some jam) – and the Guyana 1999 rum mirrored those scents so faithfully it was, quite frankly, like being back on board. Okay, it did mellow out, I can’t kid about that – into smoke and wet, rain drenched wood, tannins from oak, only slowly deepening into almonds, faint citrus, hibiscus flowers and softer caramel and burnt sugar (for which I was thankful – I’ve never appreciated salt biscuits since that time).

The Guyana 1999 suggested a certain clarity and hardness rather than softer, more voluptuous tastes. Very little soothing gentleness here, yet also no real bite and sting on the palate. Indeed, the somewhat briny, tannic nose transmogrified into a creamier, very pleasantly oily feel on the tongue, and the previously restrained ponies of sugar, vanilla and caramel were allowed freer rein, though they never went so far as to dominate the overall flavour profile. Indeed, were it not for that clear, dominant “I am here” taste of butterscotch and burnt sugar, this rum would have been a lot more delicate and flowery to taste. And there were few, if any fleshy fruit or citrus notes here at all, nor where there any on the finish. It’s a very strange rum to try, yet also a pretty good one – this is one case where the palate exceeds the nose (I often find the opposite to be the case). The fade is medium to long, with a rather hard denouement of blackberries and almond nuttiness that goes on for quite some time.

Plantation is one of the famed rums made in series and in quantity by what is termed an independent bottler – Cognac Ferrand from France, in this case. There are many others – Rum Nation, Renegade, Fassbind, Berry Brothers & Rudd and Velier are just a few examples – but most of these tend towards a few thousand bottles per run, originating in a few casks, while I get the impression that CF does quite a bit more than that for each of its editions. The claim to fame of the Plantation line, and what gives them such a great street rep, is their finishing for a final few months in cognac casks, which imparts an intriguing flavour to each and every one of their rums I’ve been fortunate enough to try thus far, providing an intriguing counterpoint to the Renegade line, which to my mind attempts the same thing a little less successfully.

Also, I think that the slight saltiness and background cracker taste on the fade makes the rum drop a bit more than usual for me – oh, I liked it, but I enjoyed other Plantations more (the Nicaragua 2001, for example, and the Barbados 20th Anniversary for sure). For a Mudlander, even one in exile as long as I have been, that’s nothing short of embarrassing. Still, I have to make this observation – I tried it side by side with the Renegade Barbados 2003 6 year old (coming soon to the review site near you), and doing the tasting in tandem revealed something of the character and richness of the Plantation rum which Renegade lacked…so it’s certainly better than a solo-only tasting or my ambivalent wording here might imply.

There aren’t many rums I try that evoke such strong, definitive memories. I may not have enjoyed eating stale crackers and jam for three straight days on the Atlantic Ocean, no…what I took away from that experience was more of the black, moonless nights, blazing with stars, phosphorescent green water lapping against the hull, desultory conversations with the mate at three in the morning (while sharing some unspeakable hooch), being young, immortal and seventeen, and considering myself part of a grand adventure. This rum, with a middling nose and finish and a very pleasant palate, brought back that experience in a way that was nothing short of amazing.

Don’t know about you, but for me that’s beyond price.

(#160. 84.5/100)

Other Notes

According to Master Quill, his bottle of this rum has April 2009 on the bottle, so I am taking that as reasonable proof of age.
No mention of the stills is made anywhere except Difford’s which referred to it as coming from “a small traditional copper still”. Plantation’s own site page for the vintage series doesn’t go back as far as 2009, let alone 1999, which is an issue of longevity and preservation of information about which I have serious concerns, but a subject too long for a quick comment here.

Ron Vigía Gran Añejo – Review

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May 022013

Parts of this rum succeed swimmingly, others less so.

This was the second of two rums brought over some days ago, by my squaddie Tony – he of the famous 151 proof rumballs guaranteed to lay you out flat under the table in labba time. I remember having about four of these alcoholic grenades a few years back, and then having a serious and lengthy conversation with a doorpost for the next ten minutes, thinking it was the Hippie. Tony had the good fortune to visit Cuba recently, and being one of the few Caners in the whole province (he claims to have seen a few others of our near-mythical breed in occasional flyspeck watering holes, though this may be mere rumour), he brought back both this rum and the 12 year old Santiago de Cuba I looked at before.

So what to say about this one? Well, first of all, it’s not of a level quite comparable to the sterling 12 year old mentioned above, but it reminded me a lot of another Cuban rum I reviewed some months before, the Ron Palma Mulata de Cuba, which I didn’t care for all that much in spite of its also being aged twelve years. After doing some research, it came as no surprise that the same company made them both – Technoazucar. The company website barely makes mention of this rum beyond some technical details, which I find an odd omission.

Secondly, the Vigia is made from sugar syrup, not molasses, which may account for something of its lighter, vegetal nose (the title of the rum comes from Hemmingway’s residence in San Francisco de Paula, Havana). Be that as it may, the mahogany rum did indeed have a rather herbal tang to it: dry, spicy, with hints of lemon grass, orange zest, dark brown sugar and cinnamon. Not aloofly astringent like Professor McGonnagal, more like, oh Professor Spout – plumper, more inviting, pleasantly earthy and absolutely no-nonsense. I thought that nose was the best thing about this product, though the taste wasn’t much behind.

The palate morphed from the aforementioned grassy notes to something quite different – a touch of red grapes and wine surrounding the caramel and burnt sugar core. A floral background of white blossoms stole gently around these aromas, and the mouthfeel was pleasant, without drama or overacting of any kind. Not all that smooth, but not overly spicy either – it was quite a difference from the Mulata, and closer in profile to (if lighter than) the Santiago de Cuba. Certainly it was sweeter than either, I should note, just not enough to be either cloying or offensive. A medium long, none-too-special exit redolent of caramel and flowery notes, plus some crushed walnuts, light smoke and leather, rounded off the overall profile.

So, the nose was pretty decent, the palate almost as excellent and the finish just meh. The Vigia tasted like a youngish rum (5-7 years, I judged), one to mix in a nice daiquiri perhaps, or that old standby, the Libre. Some of my ambivalence comes from me seeing it as an agricole, not so much a molasses based product, and while I have great admiration for such rums when properly made (such as in the French Caribbean Islands), here it just seems that they wanted to produce a mid-tier rum without too much additional effort, saved their love for more top tier products, and let it go as it was.

Which is strange because it’s better than the Mulata 12 year old even without that extra care and attention. How odd is that?

(#158. 83/100)

Other Notes

Subsequent research suggested that as a Gran Anejo the ron is supposedly a blend of rons 12-15 years old but I still lack independent verification as of 2021

Ron Santiago de Cuba 12 Year Old – Review

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Apr 252013

Very few discordant notes in this excellent 12 year old…just perhaps a little less intensity than I’m after, maybe a shade less complexity.

The Cuba Rum Corporation’s 12 year old rum is a very well put together product that reaffirms my belief that if the US embargo is even lifted in part, rums should be high on the list of products allowed into the country just so those poor souls south of 49 can see what they’ve been missing. This rum is proof that Cuba remains high on the list of nations making some of the best rums out there.

Other bottles in the Santiago line made by the CRC are the Anejo, the 11 year old, 20 year old and 25 year old, and while it is dangerous to imply on the basis of a single tasting how others in the series turns out, all I can say is that after sampling this one (provided by my friend Antonio after he returned from the Island, in a rum tasting session at my house that was quite epic), I’m really looking forward to checking out all the others. Because this rum is very good indeed, even if it could (in my sole opinion) be made a shade stronger than the 40% at which it stands.

Lighter than some of the Demeraras I’ve been trying recently, but more assertive than the softer Bajan and Panamanians, the 12 year old had a lovely mahogany colour with ruby hints, which swirled thickly in my glass, releasing a very pleasant, pungent nose of muted orange peel, cherries and sweet, light flowers. These initial scents blossomed into a rich and fruity aroma that presented notes of cherries, vanilla, coconut and (if you can believe it) cola. In its own way, it released both perfumed and deeper caramel scents, with hardly any smoke or tannins at all.

As for the arrival, that was amazing. Smooth and yet heated, warm and inviting on the palate. Based just on the colour, I would have expected it to be thicker and heavier to the taste, yet it was actually a bit light and dancing as all get out, as if I had seen Jack Black turn into Gwynneth Paltrow. Some smoke, nuts, caramel, papaya and brown sugar were the various commingling notes I was tasting…but what I want to emphasize is something of the overall balance and harmony these flavours achieved, the way they merged into a mouthfeel that was, quite simply, luscious. A medium long exit left behind fond memories of caramel, ripe yellow fruits and a faint perfumed note of citrus that faded only reluctantly.

This relatively dark coloured, light tasting rum could probably be bettered, but for the life of me I don’t see how unless it is to torque it up a shade. The boys who make the Santiago line – I read that the rum is made in the old Bacardi facilities which the family left behind after the Cuban Revolution – have taken the light rum methodology pioneered by the old maestros and created something quite spectacular here: its Gold Medal at the 2012 Berlin RumFest was probably no accident. It succeeds at many levels – nose, taste, mouthfeel, finish – and though perhaps my tastes these days run to somewhat stronger fare, I can’t argue with the results contained in this bottle.

I came across a reference online that the Santiago rum (no further detail) was Castro’s favourite. That may be purely anecdotal, and I have lots of great hooch in my own stocks – but I can state with some assurance that if you have a shelf containing your own favourite sipping rums, this one can, without embarrassment or undue favour, be displayed proudly among all the others residing there.

(#157. 86/100)

Other Notes

In August 2019, Corporación Cuba Ron (“Cubaron”) signed a deal with that bastion of capitalism, Diageo, to distribute Ron Santiago de Cuba internationally (not including the USA, obviously). This is probably not good news for Pernod Ricard, the long term distributor of Havana Club and Diageo’s rival in the spirits business.

Rum Nation Barbados 2001 10 Year Old Rum – Review

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Apr 182013

The Barbados 2001 from Rum Nation is a solid plate of eddoes and plantains, black pudding and cookup on a refectory table…the spirituous equivalent of comfort food. It’s a warm bosom against which one can relievedly lean after a tough day…and call it Mommy. A good, warm-hearted, undemanding rum of unexpected depth.

Rummaging idly through my shelves the other day (“Jeez, what am I going to look at this week?”) I came across one of the last two unreviewed Rum Nation products I had bought back in 2011 after having been impressed as all get out by the Raucous Rums tasting session where the host had introduced them. Rum Nation is that Italian outfit which opened its doors up in 1999, and has produced some of my favourite rums – the 1985 and 1989 Demerara 23 year olds, and the Jamaican 1985 “Supreme Lord” 25 year old among others. This Barbados variant was laid down in 2001 and bottled in 2011, and it’s a very decent product in all the aspects that matter, though not of a level that exceeds the pinnacles of achievement represented by the rums I refer to above.

So it’s not a top end rum, but it’s not a lowbrow piece of entertainment either, much as the cheap, plastic-windowed cardboard box reminiscent of an unwelcome bill envelope might intimate otherwise. The nose for example, is very pleasantly warm and almost thick, with initial flavours of bananas, vanilla and crushed walnuts mingling pleasantly with an earthy scent of ripe fleshy fruit, more cashews than peaches. It had an odd kind of richness about it, very near to cloying (though not quite there), that gradually transmuted into a floral hint with a last snap of smoke. Estery, I guess you could call it. Not entirely successful, to my mind, the aromas didn’t quite marry properly into a cohesive whole, but overall, it’s not bad at all.

The palate? All is forgiven, come home please. Oh, this was just fine. Smooth, warm, creamy, like banana ice cream liberally drizzled with caramel, toffee, a little licorice and nougat, all sprinkled with white chocolate and a shade of mint: put a cuckoo clock on top of it and you could almost pretend it was swiss. Rich and pleasantly deep for a 40% rum, and unlike some drinks where the nose was spectacular but the taste less so, here it was the other way around. The denouement was also quite good, pleasantly long and fragrant, exiting to the tune of cinnamon and vanilla and a last bash of the banana.

According to Fabio Rossi, the owner of RN, this is considered an entry level rum (retailing for about €30…Can$50 in my location), and is Barbados-sourced pot and column still blended rum from the West Indies Refinery, matured in American oak casks and then finished for about twelve to eighteen months in Spanish casks that once held brandy. I was unenthused about Downslope Distilling’s wine aged rum some months ago – this is the rum that it should have been, could have been, had they been more patient and aged it properly.

Is it better than the other Bajans in my collection? Yes and no. It’s not as good as the Mount Gay 1703, but exceeds the XO by quite a bit, I would say, and edges out the A.D. Rattray 9 year old from R.L. Seale I looked at not too long ago. Its relative softness and smoothness is the key here (see other notes, below): it pulls an interesting trick, by seeming to be more full bodied than it is, and therefore coating the mouth with a sumptuous set of tastes that, had that slight cloying over-estery note not been present, would have scored higher with me than it did.

Still, if you’re after a good, solid sipping rum, the Barbados 2001 won’t disappoint. It’s soft, warm and easy on the palate, forgiving on the finish. It may be a rum to have when you’re feeling at peace with the world (or unwinding from it), don’t feel like concentrating too hard, and don’t need to protect your tonsils. On that level, it’s excellent at all it sets out do, and if it doesn’t ascend or aspire to the levels of some of its pricier, older cousins, at least it’s an excellent buy for the money you do shell out.

(#156. 85/100)

Other Notes

February 2018 – By now it is common knowledge that Rum Nation, like Plantation, practices the addition of something (usually caramel beyond just colouring) referred to somewhat inaccurately but descriptively as “dosing”. This rum measures out at ~10g/L of adulteration which actually quite minimal: enough to smoothen out some rough edges, but not enough to make it a mess. Potential buyers and drinkers will have to take that into account when deciding on a purchase here.

Ron Centenario Gran Legado 12 Year Old – Review

2 Responses »

Apr 122013

D7K_1244

A set of Bata flip-flops made out of Gucci-quality leather

Frankly, I just don’t get the point of underproofs. It’s like they aren’t quite sure what they want to be, and are deathly afraid of offending even one potential customer by being, I dunno, a real rum. If I wanted a light liqueur, I would have bought one, and to have a rum aged twelve years to be bottled at a strength like 35% makes little sense to me: the wussiness sinks an otherwise decent product. You can taste the underlying potential…it just doesn’t deliver.

Put aside the grumbling about oomph, and this 12 year old rum made in Costa Rica (presented to me by my compadres Mary and Stuart, who recently returned from there) is a pretty good product, mind you…it rises – barely – above its weakness, one might say. Consider merely the presentation: decent cardboard box of good paper, well designed, holding a frosted, dark, engraved bottle with a plastic screw cap. Solid all the way ‘round.

This was a rum too weak to batter your schnozz — so gentleness, warmth, lightness and softness were expected and received — and had intriguing and predominating scents of vanilla. Around that core swirled light floral hints, freshly cut ripe peaches and apricots (not rich enough for pineapple by any means, which was a good thing). Sweet, not cloying, and a faintly medicinal background, barely noticeable. Relatively unassertive, which may point to where underproofs usually unravel for me.

That gentleness carried on to the palate as well. This was a very smooth and light rum, and because of its delicacy, very difficult to pick apart. Almost no oak prescence, more vanilla and caramel and light flowers, all of which morphed into the androgynous nature of a papaya, skirting the line between a little tartness and none at all. There was hardly any finish to speak of, a short exit that left a quick last taste of oak and vanilla (but none of the raw smoke of older, more powerful expressions), and left me looking with some dissatisfaction at my glass. It gave too little, you see, and while a person casually trying something in this line would probably enjoy it, I preferred and continue to prefer, stronger and more intense drinks. This wasn’t one of them, good as its makers made it.

Speaking of the makers, Centenario Internacional SA from Costa Rica makes quite a range of these rums – five, seven, nine, twelve year and twenty year olds (plus a solera 25 40% not mentioned on their website). Aged in white oak barrels, the product of locally grown sugar cane, all except the solera are bottled at 35% according to the website’s photographs, so this is not an aberration, but a deliberate blending choice. I’m afraid I was not able to come up with much more regarding the company history – however, it did not seem to be one of those decades- or centuries- old distilling houses with traditions handed down through the generations, more a commercial spirits maker of relatively recent antecedents.

In fine, then, the general profile of the Centenario strikes an intriguing balance between the smooth lightness of some of the Colombian rums (like the Juan Santos 12, or the Ron Viejo de Caldas Añejo 8 años 38%) and the slightly more assertive Panamanians such as the Abuelo 12 or RN Panama 18. But bar the Viejo de Caldas, those drinks were bottled at par proof or better, had heft, hair and some hormones under the satin slinkiness. On this one, I can’t help thinking that they had a great product in the making , and for reasons known only to themselves, they dialled it back down to a puff piece I can barely call a rum without snickering. Much as I believe it to be a good product, I would only use it to introduce a newbie to the rum world, because at end, speaking for myself and knowing my preferences, that weakness of proof is its undoing – they have, alas, made a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.

(#155. 80.5/100)

Other notes

Scouring the online shops shows me that the 40% expressions of the Legado are available, mostly in Europe. I suspect I’d enjoy those a lot more and score them more highly than this one.
Josh Miller from Inu a Kena has reviewed the Centenario 25 and notes it as being a solera. No such notation for the Legado, either on box or bottle
This one can be had neat, no problem. It’s gentle and smooth enough not to bite. A drink for the calmly unadventurous who prefer navigate through less treacherous waters without any stress.

Ron Abuelo Centuria – Review

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Mar 292013

A liquid, light peanut butter and jelly sandwich, heightened with unsweetened chocolate and displaying enormous smoothness and quality. Great product.

Ron Abuelo Centuria is the top of the line Panamanian rum originating from Varela Hermanos, the outfit that brought the 7 year old and 12 year old to the table, issued in late 2010 to celebrate their Centennial.

It’s said in some places to be solera-system-aged for thirty years in used bourbon barrels and in others that the blend of rums (some aged thirty years) was run through a solera: but one must always keep in mind that in any solera rum, only a small fraction of the resultant is actually that old (the math suggests it can be as little as 5% after less than ten years, and the average age of the blend trends towards seven). I make these remarks not to denigrate the product, just to inject some caution (and reality) into pronouncements regarding its age.

Not that you need to know all that, because taken by itself, this is quite a product. Ensconced in a wooden and cardboard box, in a neat bottle with a decent cork, there’s very little about it that doesn’t work. Except maybe the €155 price tag: considering that only 3000 bottles were made, this may be deemed cheap to some lucky fellows who have more money than I do.

Nose first: cherries, dark chocolate, coffee, walnuts and vanilla came right out of the initial pour of the bronze mahogany liquid. Really quite nice, but I suspect there may be some alien DNA in the Centuria somewhere, because after moving on and settling into a creamy, deep burnt sugar and caramel bedrock, there were some discordant background notes that melded uneasily with the core scents so well begun: salt biscuits and a certain musty driness (without being particularly arid) that just seemed, I dunno, out of place. It wasn’t enough to sink the Bismarck, but it wasn’t expected either.

The rum raised the bar for premiums by being phenomenally smooth, mind you. Bitch and bite were long forgotten dreams on the palate, as on the nose: the Centuria may lack the furious, focussed accelerative aggro of a Porsche, but that isn’t its purpose (especially not at 40% ABV) — it’s more a fully tricked-out Audi sedan, as smooth and deceptive as proverbially still waters. Caramel, nougat and burnt sugar flavours led in, followed by a slow segue into a combined smoky, salt/sweet set of tastes reminding one of pecans and dried fruits like dates and figs, not fleshier ones like peaches. In fact, this became so pronounced as to almost dismember the sweeter notes altogether (but not quite,which is to its real credit – great balance of the competing flavours was evident here).

The exit is more problematic: though quite long for a rum bottled at standard strength, there’s something of that buttery caramel salty-sweet tang that doesn’t quite click for me. Yes it was pleasantly heated and took its time saying adios, which is fine — I just didn’t care for the musky, flavours so remniscent of a peanut-butter-and-chocolate energy bar. I should hasten to add this is a personal thing for me, so you may like this aspect much more than I do. And I can’t lie – it’s a damned fine rum, a more-than-pleasant fireplace drink on a nippy night, leading to deep kisses and warm embraces from someone you’ve loved for a very long time.

I often make mention, with top end rums that cost three figures and up, about elements of character. What I mean by this is that the complexity of the parts should lead to a harmonious commingling of the whole in a way that doesn’t repeat old profiles, but intriguingly, fascinatingly, joyously seeks a new tier of its own, for better or worse. The Centuria has character for sure, and what that does is make it different, albeit in a manner that may polarize opinion, especially at the aforementioned back end.

Still, this rum would have, as many overpaid management types in my company would say, all the key performance indicators identified, the drivers nailed down and quantified, all the basic boxes ticked. But then there’s the fuzzier stuff, the weird stuff, the stuff that some guys would call “over and beyond” or “elevated performance”, boldly going where no executive has gone before. In this Anniversary edition rum made by a solid company with quite a pedigree, it’s clear that they’ve succeeded (all my bitching about the off-notes aside). This is an excellent sipping rum where components come together really well, are dead serious about their task of pleasing you, and have taken time out to address some real complex subtleties. This is not the best rum of its kind ever made – my own preference on the Panamanians edges more perhaps towards the Rum Nation Panama 21 — but if you’re buying what Varela Hermanos is selling, they sure won’t short change you.

(#151. 88/100)

Other notes

The business about the Centennial is somewhat confusing: Varela Hermanos traces its origins back to 1908 when Don José Varela Blanco founded the Ingenio San Isidro sugar mill, the first in Panama, with alcohol distillation beginning in 1936. So I’m unclear how this rum was first issued in late 2010 to commemorate a hundred years of operations.
According to online remarks made by others at the time, but not represented on the bottle or its box, the Centuria contains no additives for colouring or flavour. This is, however, contradicted by hydrometer tests here (27g/L) and by Drejer (20g/L) and PhilthyRum (20g/L).

Royal Jamaican Gold Rum – Review

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Mar 262013

First posted 10th April 2011 on Liquorature

Solid beginning leads to a disappointing finish: appearance and nose are excellent, but somehow not enough care was taken to follow through on these advantages.

Appleton (or J. Wray & Nephew, if you will) so thoroughly dominates the rums of Jamaica, that it feels somehow wrong to see a bottle marked Jamaican Rum without the moniker of that famed distiller emblazoned on it. Now, not having been to Jamaica for many years (and having paid more attention to a winsome lass named Renu and markedly less to the available rums at the time), I’m a little off on exactly how many exported Jamaican rums there actually are. Still, I think it’s safe to say there aren’t many from actual estates over and beyond Appleton: Longpond, Monymusk, Worthy Park and a few others which make bulk rum for export and onward sale to independents and merchant bottlers, not real estate rums (see “other notes” below).

The bottle states that it is made by Royal Jamaican Rums; some trolling around shows that it is actually distilled in the Monymusk distillery located in the south central parish of St Catherine’s. Monymusk Distillery (and Clarendon) is owned by National Rums of Jamaica, a consortium formed for historical purposes too complex to go into here, and NRJ itself is 1/3 owned by – each – DDL of Guyana, Maison Ferrand (Plantation) of France and the Jamaican state-owned vehicle of the National Sugar Company. There are remarks on it being handcrafted, hand drawn and bottled, and meticulously blended which I simply pass over as advertising hoopla. However, what I can’t overlook is the appearance: a stark black bottle, bright coloured printing on it (it’s eye catching, I’ll admit: you see this on a shelf, you will come back for a second look, guaranteed), and a straw braided wrapping around the neck. Pretty original. You won’t mistake it for an Appleton, no doubt about that.

That originality of appearance may be the second-best thing about it, if you’re keeping your eye out for some unique new product undiscovered and unappreciated by the hoi-polloi. The rum poured out as an amber gold liquid of middling legs (nothing special there) – and I thought the nose deserved a special mention. I sniffed soft floral hints right away, and hardly any sting; some medicinal phenol-like scents were sensed and then drifted away almost before I realized it, and a creamy chocolate smell wound around with grape sat at the core of it – it wasn’t quite as obvious as the Legendario was (the muscatel in there kind of boxed you on the hooter right away), and I appreciated the subtlety more. I need hardly mention that after opening up in the glass, our old standby aromas of caramel and burnt sugar deigned to make an appearance, though I doubt most people would want to wait that long.

The taste on the palate did not, in my opinion, live up to the hype of either bottle or nose. Some people think tasting should be the sole criteria, and I’ve gotten no end of grief from friends who believe I’m insane to award (or deduct) points for the look of a bottle, or the effort expended in smelling what is at its most basic level, a drink to be drunk. And that’s perfectly fine. It’s just not fine for me, and I take enjoyment from all aspects of the experience – this is why I give more points to a well designed presentation than just an average blah bottle, and take my time with the nose of even a cheap product. However, here, the taste was dry and astringent, and the oak in which had been matured came through with surprising fierceness. It was arid and a little bitter, with a raw alcohol bite which gave the lie to that excellent nose I had enjoyed. And briny, with a weird biscuit undertone that made me wonder whether some wag had salted some hardtack into the maturing bourbon casks. And yet, a second taste suggested that a toffee or butterscotch flavour was trying to emerge with all the shyness of a girl showing her date the prom dress when he comes to pick her up. I was not impressed, is all – the arrival of the rum had started well, but didn’t even get to the middle stretch before faltering. A shame. And I sighed in disappointment as I felt the finish: a short acid burn, not kind to my throat, with zero redeeming features about it.

I just didn’t get it, and still don’t now. Here was a rum with obvious attempts at pedigree which had a taste that simply failed. As a mixer it would cut it, sure, and I suspect that maybe that was because it was a blend of rums of maybe one to three years old; it was labelled on the makers site as being meticulously blended in small batches, and all this was to the good. You’d just think that if a rum was going to take on the Goliath of the Jamaican industry, it would have had more overall quality, some more effort put in beyond the admittedly superior nose. Without a decent taste, it lowers itself to being another low-end mixer, slightly redeemed by better than average packaging and a good smell. Alas, drinking any rum is more than these things – it’s an overall aesthetic experience, and in spite of its impressive beginnings, at end it’s just a damned Anancy story.

There’s an old South African joke I used to hear when I lived in that neck of the woods, about the perfect mouse trap designed by (who else?) Van der Merwe; his first iteration had a razor blade with a piece of cheese on one side: his stroke of genius was to assume that the mouse would lean over the blade to get the cheese on the other side and cut its own throat. The idea that the mouse could go around the trap never seemed to occur to Van. When this was pointed out to the baas, he went away and designed the perfected version – razor blade only, no cheese. How did it work? The puzzled rodent would go lower and lower, and cut its own throat while asking, “Where’s the friggin’ cheese?” This rum reminds me a little of that joke: I turn it around and around, drink sip after sip, and keep wondering where the hell the good stuff is, the uppercut that would take on Appleton. And then it’s gone and I finished it and I realize there just ain’t any, and it was a trap all along.

(#072. 77/100)

Other Notes

For a more in-depth discussion of Jamaican distilleries, the best current resource is probably the Cocktail Wonk’s work here, with further work on Clarendon and Monymusk detailed here.

Ron Cartavio XO Solera – Review

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Mar 232013

A Millonario by another name, and as lovely.

Soleras as a rule tend toward the smooth and sweet side, and have a rather full body redolent of all sorts of interesting fruity flavours. My maltster friends regard this type of drink the way they would a sherry bomb (or a disrobed virgin, if one desperate enough could be found), with a mixture of hidden liking and puritan disdain. Still, after having had two fairly dry products in as many weeks, perhaps it was time to relax in a perfumed boudoir instead of the sere desert air. And because the Ron Cartavio XO was from Peru and a solera, I tried it together with the Ron Millonario Solera 15 and the Millonario XO which also hail from there, to see how it stacked up.

The Cartavio XO is pretty much the top of the line made by the company and is priced to match . It arrived in a black tin can and had a wooden tipped cork fixed into place by the twisted wire one might look for in a champagne…nice touch. Liked the bottle too…tapering, blocky, rounded shoulders, absolutely minimal design esthetic, and etched in gold (the tin can had most of the info, which was as it should be.

Smelling this was an exercise in repressed romanticism. Luscious is not a word that would be out of place to describe it. Creamy, almost like a mild citrus ice-cream, quite smooth and gentle on the nose. Apricots, cherries, vanilla, with just enough background of oaken tannins to provide some character. These scents mellowed gently into flower blossoms – in spite of its depth, the nose had a certain soft, clean brightness to it, like the skin of a sleepy baby after being freshly washed and powdered. It was without a doubt better than the Solera 15, but interestingly enough, it lacked some of the complex pungency that so elevated the Millonario XO.

The feel on the tongue was similarly rich and pleasant, though perhaps a shade more acerbic than the Millonario, but beyond that, quiet and heavy and quite aromatic. Here again is a rum that takes its time, being in no hustling rush to get the sipping experience over with. At 40%, there wasn’t going to be any aggro, no yobbish pummelling on the palate, and indeed, from that perspective, I wasn’t expecting any. The rum sang of vanilla and fruit (peaches and dried apricots), dark chocolate, sherry, nuts and a very faint vegetal note, all of which solidified into a rich and serene taste close to the fullness of honey (if not quite so thick).

The one thing it is not quite good at is the exit. Medium long, hints of nuts, caramel, a sweet-salt tang, with a closing flirt of nutmeg. Faintly dry, but not unpleasantly so – the fragrant, almost humid rush of closing scents married well with that profile, yet try it against the Millonario and see if it doesn’t quite come up to that standard. Sure it’s solid and has a pleasant finish (some would sigh beatifically and say “awesome”), yet perhaps it is a shade too quiet and polished and does not demonstrate any kind of singular, individualistic character all its own, that said it was a walk-on-water rum – it reminded me more of a liqueur (a very good one, mind), and here I thought there were similarities to other well-made drinks of some age and real quality, like the St Nicholas Abbey 12 year old, or the El Dorado 25, which were so well put together (and, unfortunately, so sweet) that they lost that sense of individuality exemplified by their own younger siblings. An issue worth remarking on.

Another point I’d like to make is this: the taste profile of the two XOs is extraordinarily similar. In fact, the two are so close together that I wondered whether Fabio Rossi of Rum Nation didn’t source his rum from Cartavio (for the record, he hedged when asked). It would take real effort to taste them side by side and know right off which was which. I’d say that the Millonario has the upper hand based on a slightly better nose, but in all other respects, these two excellent soleras are on par.

The Cartavio brand of rums was originally made in the coastal town of that name, just north of Lima: sugar cane grows in the area and has been since 1891, though the company was founded in 1929 – this XO is an 80th anniversary edition, quite limited in production. The parent company is Distilerias Unidas SAC, and they use molasses as the raw ingredient combined with a continuous fermentation process, utilizing a John Dore pot still and a continuous still.

Let’s sum up, then. Soft, pungent, all-round lovely, and the taste and palate being the best thing about it. I imagine you can make a cocktail with this rum. What I can’t imagine is why. The Cartavio XO may be among the best examples of passive aggression ever seen in the rum world, because clearly the distillers don’t want you to mix it (and my own take – you shouldn’t).. By the time you hit to the bottom of this baby, you’ll still be scratching your brow, wondering what the hell that last tiny hint of savour actually was. It really is that good.

In fine, this is a rum that is quiet, gentle, and flows without fuss or turmoil to a serene conclusion. It is a rural country stream, chuckling dreamily over rocks and burbling to its destination with no agenda – all it wants is to please, and it succeeds. It lacks the testosterone fury of a full- or overproof rum, and avoids the blandness of more commercial rums that sell by the tanker load: drinking this rum and revelling in its unaggressive and unassuming sophistication is something like loving another repressed person like yourself, dearly…and waiting for the kiss that never quite comes when you want it, but is going to happen, eventually, nevertheless — and be worth the wait when it does.

(#150. 88/100)

Other Notes

2024 Video recap available using this link.
On the tin enclosure and on the website, Cartavio note that the rum is an 18 year old made in the solera method, aged in white oak barrels (some from Slovenia, how cool is that?) but caution must be exercised in what the age statement really means: is it a blend of rums originating from a solera whose average age is eighteen (unlikely, since the math wouldn’t support that); is it a blend of rums averaging eighteen years which then went into a solera process; is it a solera rum that has been in the process for 18 years (my choice for most likely); or is it a solera blend of rums that was then aged for another eighteen years? I simply can’t get resolution on the matter: and it illustrates the issue with pinpointing the true age of a solera rum. For my money, the oldest part of this blend is eighteen, not the youngest. However, note that Josh Miller in early 2016, remarked in his review of the lineup that there is “no rum younger than 18 years in the blend.” And Matt Pietrek, in a piece on Cartavio, wrote in December 2015 that it was also a true 18 year old.
According to wikipedia, Cartavio rums are now made in Aruba. I’m unclear whether “made” means “aged”, “bottled” or both. My bottle makes no such mention, by the way.

Ron de Jeremy “Adult” Rum – Review

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Mar 132013

Come on now, be honest, why did you really buy this product?

How can one ignore the advertising and marketing behind something as evocatively (or crassly) named as Ron de Jeremy, distributed by One-Eyed Spirits? There is almost nothing I can write that would not in some way be seen by the average reader as a mandingo-esque, pornographic allusion. I think the best — nay, perhaps the only — way I can approach this review is to do a full one-eighty course change, sink deep into the netherworlds of geekdom and nerd nirvana, and reference a great epos of wishful manhood….like, umm, Star Trek.

Think of this rum as an off-kilter riff on that ultimate TV bromance. This is you and your best buddy playing with phasers and electrocuting Horta in your spare time, because, when you get down to it, Ron de Jeremy is not for drinking by yourself — so who else to try it with than some friend whose sense of humour mirrors your own and who won’t laugh at your new ears and deadpan Sheldonisms? This is a rum born to be shared and snickered over, which is why the younger and more rebellious crowd of rum drinkers probably laughed themselves into a collective sneezing fit and bought it like tribbles were on sale that day.

Ensconced in a bottle reminiscent of the English Harbour 10 year old, numbered (mine is bottle number 23124…but of how many?) it’s fairly simply designed (I always like that), and for those used to seeing Ron Jeremy as a fatter, ageing prescence on a TV show or on photographs, the younger hand drawn visage will be a bit startling. We can all agree, I’m sure, that his face is not the selling point, though. Maybe it’s his ears.

Ron de Jeremy presented such a queerly discombobulated dissonance between nose and palate that it almost seemed like two people, one of whom is in the throes of pon-farr. This started as early as when it was opened and I got an immediate hit of stale Gorn sweat – for me, with my memories of life in the tropics, it presented like the bitter whiff of anti-malarials in a bush hospital. A vaguely bitter, herbal, grassy lead-in that recalls to memory the scent of dried-out sugar-cane stalks (and quinine) was the first thing out the door. And however much it then mellowed out – and it did – however much it transmogrified into caramel, burnt sugar, toffee and butterscotch, it had already mind-melded with me and that made my opinion less than it might have been.

So, negative on the nose, Keptin. Was the palate any better? I thought it was. Quite decent, actually. Medium bodied, a little aggro right up front. Briny, not-so-sweet and heated to start, a shade harsh – an 18 year old Panamanian it was not – then once it hit what passed for warp in its own universe, it evinced a rather pleasant vanilla sweetness, commingled with oak, leather and walnuts (hush, ye snickerers). Medium long fade with a last jarring sweet bath-soap note warping in from nowhere. It may have pretended not to be of a piece with the initial aromas, but clearly, they went together like Spock and the other guy. Essentially, the rum started one way and finished another…maybe I should call it Seven of Nine.

Ron de Jeremy “Adult” Rum is a Panamanian, distilled by the boys at Varela Hermanos who make the Abuelos (or so I’ve been told), hewing to the line of several other Panamanians in my possession, if not quite as good as many. It is near in profile if not in scent to the Abuelo 7. Don Pancho Fernandez of Zafra Reserve fame has been involved in the production of this rum…and here again I make mention of the palate-level similarity all these Panamanians seem to possess (in my own opinion), which perhaps illustrates the drawbacks of having one person, no matter how experienced and well known and qualified, driving the taste profile of so many rums. I like Panamanians a lot, but the ones available to me are similar enough — bar minor variations — that I am in danger of shrugging and moving on out of sheer boredom.

You’d be surprised, though: overall, in spite of its cost of about $40 here in Canada, I’m thinking it’s worth the extra credits. Because for all its failure at the start, it’s a decent, workmanlike rum, better than quite a few others I’ve had over the years. An intriguing, if not necessarily good nose, a decent palate and a fade not to be sneezed at.

I may not believe a company vulgar enough to call itself “One-Eyed Spirits” can bring something this decent to the table right out of the gate. But I can’t always write about what I wanted in a rum, but must address what I actually got — and on that level my opinion is a positive one. Set aside the nonsense of a porn star shilling for a rum just because of his name, put away any preconceptions you have of the marketing message, ignore its opening salvo, strip away all that — and what you’re left with is a Panama rum, one that’s not too shabby, whose quality, like that of the Chairman’s Reserve Forgotten Casks, barely succeeds in spite of its advertising, but not because of it.

(#148. 80/100)

Other Notes

Masters of Malt mentions the rum as being 8 years old. The bottle of course tells you nothing.

Coruba 12 year old “Cigar” Jamaican rum – Review

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Feb 242013

Photo courtesy of and (c) Cocktail Wonk

A proverbial harridan of rums, thin, dry, harsh and critical of everything you do with and to it. I call mine “Jimbo.”

Coruba. That brings back memories. Remember that original shuddering bastard of a mixer I reviewed some years back? It was made in Jamaica but mostly sold in New Zealand, with a trickle going in other directions (like Alberta, or Europe, where a friend picked it up for me for about fifty Euros). It was rough and tough and a powerful inducement to give up spirits altogether. I wrote rather humourously in my original Coruba review, that one should trot it out – generously – for favoured enemies when they come visiting, which I thought may have been a bit harsh. Until I ran into its twelve year old brother, that is.

To paraphrase Josh Miller from the Inu a Kena blog: “I’m mixing a twelve year old Jamaican rum! WTF?”. But it’s true.

The source of this rum is probably a young Appleton (reasonable, since it’s made by the Appleton boys at J. Wray for the Swiss based concern “the Rum Company” which may be as far away from Fassbind’s Secret Treasures line as you can get). In 1967 the Coruba rum was first imported to Europe: its name comes from the name Companies Rum Basel (or Compagnie Rhumière de Bâle) – which is the name of the company in Jamaica which was among the most famous of the islands’ 128 distilleries at the time when the original company was established in 1889. In 1929, the Rum Company Kingston was founded under the management of Rudolf Waeckerlin-Fiechter in order to complete production process of the rum in Jamaica. Since 1962, the marque has been produced by J. Wray & Nephew, and the blending and the bottling for the whole of Europe still takes place in the Rum Company in Basel, which has become a part of the Haecky Group in the meantime.

It was aged in small (no further description available) casks that once held (of course) bourbon and beyond that my research hit a dead end, and I was able to glean no more info on its constituents. But my feeling based on taste and profile suggested a column still product, not one from a pot still.

All this is window dressing through. Bluntly, this is one of the few aged rums I really don’t care for neat. Most are made with care and attention, and a view to rising up the scale to even older versions to come (take the St Nicholas Abbey 12, Cockspur 12, El Dorado 12, and the Appleton 12 as examples). And Coruba does have an 18 and 25 year old knocking about which I’d like to get and see if they up the ante a shade. But that pussyfoots around the central issue of this rum, and that is that it doesn’t work for me.

Take away the labelling on this bottle and what you’re actually left with is the English Harbour 10 year old bottle plus a wooden-cork combo stopper. Not anything to complain about, and actually, quite nice, even if the label was a bit busy to the eye (I’m a fan of beauty in simplicity). It spoke to its manufacture by the Rum Company out of Kingston, the ISW gold medal it won in 2008 and its ageing in “old oak casks” as well as its “handcrafted” nature, which just had me moving on with the same impatience I always feel in the grocery shop when I see idyllic rural farms and hard-working midwestern families pictured on a box of some industrial-level-manufactured product.

The Coruba 12 year old was one of the lightest-hued aged rums I’ve had in a while, being somewhere between amber and honey-coloured (but not blonde). Both the Cockspur 12 and the El Dorado 12 with which I tried it, were darker. The aroma on opening was quite biting, and more than a little astringent – for a 40% aged rum I found this disappointing to say the least, because the other two competitors had noses that were so much richer and deeper – the best I could say about the Coruba was that I liked the subtle scents of flowers, fresh-cut grasses and faint lemon zest, even if it lacked some more complex fruity notes I would have liked. And let me tell you, like the serpent in the garden of Eden, there was an unwelcome note of excess nail polish coiling behind it all that was utterly discombobulating. Again…wtf?

Palate…meh. Thin bodied and both spicy and briny at the same time, a shade harsh on the tongue, like some Dickensian headmaster of old, rod held upright to whip my misbehaving, misbegotten behind. I am not kidding when I tell you that I tasted dry, musty, tobacco and leather first off (almost morphing into cardboard that’s been in the basement too long), with vague caramel, unsweetened dark chocolate, vanilla and burnt sugar notes following on as the rum opened up, followed by a flirt of ripe cherries. But all subtler, sweeter flavours were rapidly overrun by that salty, dry, tobacco background, which, now that I think about it, is probably why they named this one “Cigar”…not because the rum is good to have with one, but because it tastes like one. A dry one at that. As for the finish, sorry, no happy ending there…short, acerbic, unremarkable, and it sure didn’t like me much. Too dry, too peppery, and gave back not enough.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that I merely sample rums to review, and am not a really regular or serial drinker. Because a rum like this, for the price it cost and the profile it presented, would make a normal person swear off rum for good and maybe switch to whiskies (and indeed, I think there are a lot of elements to this rum that an anorak might appreciate more than I would or did). Others with a samaritan-like bent might just use it to address battlefield trauma. Me, I’m just disappointed. Perhaps it’s a depressing rum for me because I had had higher hopes for it.

Long story short, this is a rum that if it were a film noir, I suspect it would have been that film at the point where it’s raining. Hard. Without the neon lights. Just as someone gets offed by his lady love, for whom he cared more than she deserved.

(#146. 75/100)

Other notes

2024 Video Review is here.

Panamonte Reserva XXV 25 Year Old Rum – Review

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Feb 132013

Bottled evening sunset. Among the best of all the 40% Panamanian rums I’ve tried thus far…though that is not quite what the endorsement it seems.

The Panamonte XXV has, since its introduction, received such rave reviews across the board – it may be one of the most critic-proof rums ever made – that it’s led one reviewer (who I note has not done a formal write up or, perhaps, even tried it) to complain vociferously and with unbecoming language about the lemming like behavior of the bloggers who are supposedly in the pockets of the industry and who put over-the-top positive spins on the rum in order to promote it for their own (inferred) nefarious purposes. I don’t agree with this attitude – there are far too few writers out there who love and promote rums, so we should encourage the reviewers, not viciously diss them – but there’s no question that for a really expensive product, perhaps we should really take a hard look and not be too swayed by cachet or price just because it has cachet and price.

Bearing that in mind, and given that I had dropped $400+ on a bottle of the good stuff last year, I felt it right to check how it rated against other rums of either similar age, similar provenance or similar profile, like the Arctic Wolf did in his famous dissing of the Appleton 30. So I ran the Panamonte XXV past the Cadenhead Panama 8 year old, the Rum Nation Panama 18 and 21 year old, the Ron de Jeremy and the Panama Red Overproof, as well as the Abuelos 7 and 12. And just to make life interesting, I added the El Dorado 25 40%, because of its age.

The Panamonte, right off, had a bottle that was impressive…a flagon, more like, gold-tipped-cork and fancy lettering (same as the St Nicholas Abbey rums, just different etching and cork), all ensconced in a two-piece box that you’d better hold carefully, ‘cause if the snaps on either side break while you wrestle it one-handed, the bottom might just pop out like a stock market bubble, and all your hard earned money will go the way of your portfolio. But it’s kinda faux-handmade retro-cool, and I always liked that. Nothing irritates me more than a super premium, highly priced rum, coming in a shabby, cheap-ass, cardboard paper box (though I must concede the overall put-together-ness of the box wasn’t all that great either) .

The rum itself was amber and copper in hue. Soft and warm, the initial scents curling lazily from the glass were well behaved, rather dense clouds of honey, lightly toasted walnuts (or were those pecans?), blossoms like lilac petals, dark fruits like raisins, plums, just-barely-ripe peaches and bananas. Soft fruits, not citrus, and that set the stage for a rum that was not at all sharp, but as comforting as a feather bed in the winter. Maybe with your plump, soused spouse in it.

The Panamonte XXV may be among the smoothest, most unaggressive medium-bodied rums I’ve ever tasted, which is both a good or a bad thing depending on your personal preferences. The arrival stroked the palate with the gentle touch of honey – maybe maple syrup is a better descriptor – as soft as your favourite pooch’s begging eyes: stroke me, master, because I love you. Evolving nuances of coconut shavings, nutmeg, caramel, cinnamon, cumin, a light dusting of caramel and sugars followed through, enhanced by some light tobacco and leather notes – and hardly any oak or citrus spiciness asserting itself. Quite a change from the aridity and powerful eff-off of the Velier Albion 1994. It had an extraordinary balance that allowed no one taste to hold the high ground or dominate the profile at the expense of any other. It was, in fine, a rum that could be dreamily sipped and savoured all evening long. It might actually be a conversation stopper, for who on earth would want to do anything except make gurgling noises of enjoyment while trying to extract that very last nuance of flavour from it? As for the finish, well, one should not expect anything too epic from 40%, yet even here, warm and breathy aromatic hints of fleshy fruits and tobacco with a sly hint of oak and unsweetened chocolate were the last things to titillate the senses…before I poured yet another glass.

The rum, then, is a Panamanian molasses-based rum aged for 25 years in used oak barrels (standard), and is a product of the same crew who brought you the above-average (but spiced, I suspect) Panama Red I looked at not too long ago – Jim Wasson of Panamonte, and “Don Pancho” of Zafra, Panama Red and Ron de Jeremy…er, fame. It shares something of the generalized softness I sensed in the other Panamanians like the Abuelo 12 or the Rum Nation Panama 21 (the RN 18 is a tad more aggressive), but lacks the youthful yobbishness of the Cadenhead. And it’s different from the El Dorado 25 year old 40%, being not quite as dark or deep, and a shade less sweet (that’s a good thing, by the way). It’s probably better than all of them, though I’d say the RN 21 showcases a little more risk.

So forget my remark about being “critic-proof” – this rum is critic-obliterating. Stripped of the marketing hype (“…every single drop…” – yawn) it’s not hard to see why, because think of all the levels on which it succeeds so swimmingly – it’s smooth, it’s gentle, it tastes great, it releases its character in measured teasing doses, and is bottled at a cushy 40%. What’s not to like? I mean, it’s as if in some backroom office, a blending engineer and management type set out to tick all the boxes, making sure the greatest mass of taste was catered to (they emulated Bacardi, perhaps), and then ratcheting it all up a notch or five and pricing it to match. It makes perfect commercial sense to issue this twenty five year old as it has been, because this is the way most will try it and like it and buy it.

(#145. 87/100)

Opinion

For me, it may simply be too much of a good thing.

This is where I have to tread warily, and be clear about the rationale for my ambivalence. For what it is – a 40%, aged rum – it’s perfectly fine, so its intrinsic quality is not at issue (and my score reflects that). It may be about as good as any such product can or will ever get. So if the rum is so good, you ask, why the beef and bitching? Because, reader, although I haven’t tried as many rums as the Burr Brothers, Dave Russell, Ed Hamilton, or the Arctic Wolf, I have tried a lot and thought deeply about why some appealed to me but not others, tried to understand why I liked stuff I didn’t before, or dislike stuff I once loved. And there you have it – it’s not the rum that has changed, it’s me.

I’ve moved on from commonly available, widely appreciated, well known products that are good to great, from soft and warm and smooth 40% rums, to rums that are stronger, more intriguing, that have the cheerfully experimental insanity of, oh, a seventies Lambo. Rums that encourage some discernment, some thinking. Rums that don’t give a sweet rat’s behind about running with the crowd. Rums that are really different yet still succeed, somehow (unlike Downslope Distilling’s misguided attempt at a six month old wine aged rum). The Panamonte XXV is without doubt one of the best – if not the best – of the Panamanian rums bottled at 40% I’ve ever tried, and for sure I’ll be sharing it with all my friends when they come over.

But it would have been greater still, I believe, had its makers had the courage to think a little more out of the ticked boxes they were intent on filling, the way Rum Nation, Velier’s full proof line, or even the Scottish rum makers do (this is why the RN Demerara 23 is better than the El Dorado 25, for example); if it could stand out from all the commercial supersellers that fly off the shelves so briskly — and go for something awesome, snarling and unique, that would rear head and shoulders above any other similarly aged product. Something that would not be a merely incremental bettering of its forebears, but a true game changer that people would whisper about in awe and envy, with bowed heads and bated breath, every time they timidly approached the mere wrapping paper that once embraced it.

Which is too bad, really, because what it leaves us with is that while I can express my admiration for the XXV, what I can’t do is rave from the mountaintops about it.

Other

Thanks and much love goes to my boy The Little Caner, who managed to hold in his irritation at my pilfering his favourite stuffed toy for use in the photographs.

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