Cabot Tower 100 Proof Demerara Rum – Review

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May 262012
 

A better than expected, overproof: smoother, tastier, more engaging.  Should be tried neat before you bastardize it with a mix, ’cause it may just surprise you too.

Yeah. Smell that sucker. That whap you feel in your schnozz is a hundred proof hitting you in da face. This is a rum which indulges in a level of unapologetic phallocentrism that would make Ron Jeremy weep with envy This is what they would serve in Buxton’s Tipperary Hall to my squaddies Biggers and Evan, if they could ever get it. I mean, a hundred proof, wow – sure, his is a rum that only now approaches where cask strength whiskies have been for years, but I can tell you, somewhere out there a tractor is feeling inadequate.

Cabot Tower Demerara Rum, made by the Newfoundland & Labrador Liquor Corporation (who I believe are also behind the Young’s Old Sam, Lemon Hart 151 and a few other bottom feeders I enjoy) is named after a tower in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, situated on Signal Hill (from where Marconi received the first wireless signal from Cornwall, back in 1901). Construction of tower begun in 1898 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of John Cabot’s discovery of Newfoundland, and Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.  The rum itself uses Demerara rum (age and still, alas, unknown) imported from Guyana, blesses it with druids and then distils it to a yummy cask strength 57.5%. That to many would make it an instant mixing agent, I suppose, but I’ve been on a bit of a cask strength and overproof kick for a while, so indulge me while I urge you to take a second taste.

Nose? Well, it’s certainly more enjoyable than many of the 151 overproofs I review, and the case could be made that when it comes to man-sized rums this one is right up there. Deep, heavy and powerful, yet lacking in serious bite and sting…quite mellow in its own way, hinting of burnt sugar, molasses, caramel, honey, vanilla, with perhaps some chocolate at the back end: and an odd mustiness, like truffles Soft and sweet…not at all the vicious claws one would expect from something this (relatively) strong.

Claws there were indeed, of course, once I actually sipped this bad boy. The body on the Cabot Tower was like an agile baby hippo…heavy, spirited and playful, and also cleaner and clearer than the dark colour and heavy nose might lead you to expect. Dry, a shade sere and not that sweet after all: the vanilla and chocolate take a back seat and I simply noted a spicy sort of brown sugar with some oak making itself felt as well. The fade was excellent, mind, as a result of the extra alcohol (and some nice zesty licorice notes), and I must tell you, after stuffing myself at a neighborhood restaurant that evening, this rum carved its way down and was an excellent way to aid my digestion. Damn right you can drink it neat. It really is a pretty good rum in and of itself.

People kind enough to read past reviews posted here know of my sneaking admiration for the Newfie products, and that’s not just because one of my best friends hails from there: Young’s Old Sam and Newfoundland Screech both received nice reviews from me, irrespective of their relatively lacking pedigree (a St Nicholas Abbey 12 year old they are not). I just wish I could find out more about it, because even the NLLC website says nothing about methods of distillation, age or blending, let alone what barrels, if any, they were aged in (sure I can say American whisky barrels, because aren’t they always? …but that just seems like a cheat somehow). Kind of annoying.

Summing up, I liked Cabot Cove rum.  A lot. It somehow managed to overcome the cask strength curse that too often attends overproofs where the only thing you feel is bite, and came up with an impressive marriage of puissance and profile (I wanted to use the word “puissance” just once in my writing, so here you are). I spent almost half my life in the Caribbean, and some of my love for dark rums comes from that experience. Sipping this thoroughly cheerful dark red rum which makes no apologies for being what it is and succeeds beyond expectations, all I can say in my own uninspired way is God bless Newfoundland, praise Jah for rums…and thank the Good Lord for Guyana.

(#109. 78/100)

Dos Maderas 5+3 Rum – Review

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Feb 202012
 

First published 20 February 2012 on Liquorature

Dos Maderas 5+3 is a study in opposites, an examination into contrasting styles somehow coming together to produce something different from either. The rums are made in the so-called Spanish style based on ageing in sherry casks, yet have their origins in quintessential English style rums first created in Barbados and Guyana. The result is hamstrung by what to me is an utterly unnecessary dilution to 37.5%, and sinks what could otherwise have been quite an impressive product. (First posted February 19th, 2012)

Dos Maderas (“Two Woods”) is a brand of the Spain-based company Williams & Humbert, and have done something quite intriguing, in line with Rum Nation, Cadenhead, Gordon & MacPhail and Bruichladdich – they have taken a Caribbean rum or two and aged it their own way, in their own casks. The result is something I’ve been raring to check out for some time, and I bought both the 5+5 and 5+3 variations within weeks of each other last year. I was actually so curious about what they came up with that I didn’t even flinch at the 5+3’s 37.5% strength, which normally is an immediate disqualifier (for me, not necessarily for you).

Rums under 40% I tend to view with some disfavour, because they lack intensity of flavour which stems from their underproofishness (is that a real word?). They also present a certain smoothness that has less to do with a blender skilfully marrying the products of various barrels, and more with a lack of alcoholic content. Tastes are smaller, noses not as full, bodies somewhat less alluring, mouthfeel not as viscous or enveloping. They edge perilously close to exes you no longer love…or liqueurs, which may be worse.  Damn. I must be turning into a rum snob.

All that editorializing aside, I shrugged and went ahead anyway. 5+3 was a gold coloured rum, medium bodied and created from rums hailing from Barbados aged for five years there in American white oak barrels, then taken to Spain, where they were aged a further three years in casks that once held Dos Cortados palo cortado sherry (aged for 20 years, as certified by the Jerez-Xérès-Sherry Regulatory Council).

On the nose, it was not a rampaging stampede of strong and dominant flavours reminiscent of a Serengeti stampede at dawn…more a gentle melange of chocolate, coffee, brandy, burnt sugar and mild cinnamon. And yes, the sherry came through, winding its way subtly around these scents.

The nose was lovely, yes; the taste not quite so much. This is where the lack of an alcohol content dissatisfied me, and perhaps those who like a stronger taste profile will agree (maybe not…). Sure there were the intermingling flavours of nuts, vanilla, creamy butter and burnt sugar – and had the right amount of sweet, which I would suggest is the residual bleed from the sherry casks it was aged in – but also some surprising oakiness and bite, barely held in check by the relative weakness of the blend. It was also quite dry, and while soft and clean, lacked some of that power and punch I would have preferred: in a word, it didn’t have oomph.

The fade, while pleasant came similarly short in character, and the most I can say is that it was not sharp or overwhelmingly piquant, nor did it seek to make up for its shortcomings in the taste department by trying to bitch slap your tonsils one last time to assert itself and say “Yo! I’m here!” In that sense, it was utterly consistent: a good rum in and of itself, just not, well…butch.

In fine, then, this rum is a homunculus of the breed: a perfectly formed replica in every way…but in miniature. That, I am afraid, is not enough to get either my undivided attention, or my undiluted appreciation. Bring it up to 40% or greater, mind you, and Dos Maderas might really be on to a winner. Until then, this lightweight rumlet lacks that final ingredient that would make me take it more seriously as a contender: a punch that means something.

(#90. 78/100)

 

Cadenhead’s Green Label Panama 8 Year Old Rum – Review

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Feb 042012
 

First published 4th February 2012 on Liquorature

“Hi – we’re Cadenhead.  We’re whisky makers doing rums on the side one cask at a time, and we’re stuck firmly in the last century.  But we make some really crazy s**t that you know you want to try.  Here…have a sip of this drag-strip devouring retro-cool V-12 high test. You’re gonna love it.” (First posted February 3rd, 2012)

Comparing the Cadenhead philosophy with that of the giants like Bacard and Diageo is a little like comparing Terrence Malik films with Michael Bay’s, or a haiku with Paradise Lost. Instead of beating you over the head with all possible volume sold to the widest variety of consumers, Cadenhead is small, tightly focussed on its principles, and has vanishingly small sales of its rum product, which are all made with what seems to be a dour middle finger to the commercial rum establishment. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of a single commercial rum maker who takes this kind of minimalist, puritanical approach to making rum (unless it’s Bruichladdich with their Renegade line and the occasional Gordon & MacPhail offering and both have prettier presentations).  I mean, Cadenhead seems almost aggressively indifferent to how the world at large reviews its rums. It’s like they say “Like it or lump it, laddie…we’ll keep makin’ it just like this.”  That’s positively West Indian.

William Cadenhead & Co, now owned by J A Mitchell & Co of the Springbank distillery in Campeltown, have a reputed enormous stock of matured Demerara and other rums, and constantly replenish their wares through a rum broker to ensure continual supplies from obscure and not-so-obscure distilleries in the West Indies. They bottle one oaken cask’s offering at a time and then the “run” is done. My inquiries didn’t yield any answers as to which distillery in Panama was the source of the spirit, so we will have to remain in the dark on this one.

However, one thing you can say is that Cadenhead don’t frig around with wussie forty percenters. They chuckle into their sporrans, shake their heads at the weakness of the young, and issue beefcakes of rum, then trumpet the fact long and loudly. 46% cask strength, bam. Sniff that, me son.

The Panama 8 year old is pungent and deeply aromatic on a first assessment. I noted last week that Kōloa Gold had a strange scent that one really had to work at to see it was a rum at all – Cadenhead’s Panama 8 is exactly the opposite, being very obviously a rum with an aggressive attitude redolent of burnt sugar, molasses, toffee, bonbons and perhaps allspice. There was little in the way of secondary, lighter (or “cleaner”) flavours, not that it needed them – this was a serious nose that didn’t have time to muck about.

The medium bodied gold rum was also quite excellent on the palate. The arrival, as befitted a cask strength offering, was a shade sharp on the initial taste, and then mellowed out very nicely – then the dark burnt sugar, the caramel and nougat started to come to the fore; after opening up some more, other soft flavours began to gently emerge like little ballerinas not sure of their reception on the stage: vanilla, chocolate, a good wine-soaked cigarillo, the lightest perfume of flowers. And yes, before you ask, a bit of briny spice on the back end. The finish was long and lasting and wafts of chocolate, leather, tobacco and sugars fought genteely for dominance. After the odd non-specificity of the Kōloa Gold, I must confess to being very taken with this rum which had no time to pretend it was anything other than what it was. A rum, and a rough ‘n’ tough ‘un at that.

What impressed me about the Cadenhead here was its depth. It’s difficult for me to put this precisely, but what I’m describing is a measure of the intensity and dark heat of the mingling flavours as they chased each other down one side of my nose, out onto the tongue and then up the throat. I’ve noted before that overproofs deliver a whallop of flavours a standard 40% rum just doesn’t – in this aged eight year old rum, the company has somehow tamed a raging spirit right out of the cask with nothing more than distilled water.

A rum like the Panama 8 has to be approached with a certain mindset: there’s no point in thinking that this is a mixing agent or a sweet Caribbean tipple at a holiday resort. It is, on the contrary, a rum made by a whisky maker to an exacting principle best described as “keep it simple.” Panama 8 has no colouring or other additives, is not chill filtered, is as close to the output of a barrel as you can imagine – and therefore can truly be said to be an expression of what an unadulterated rum should be. This won’t find favour with many rum aficionados whose palates are accustomed to smoother, more carefully blended fare. But if you want to know what a rum is before a blender starts tinkering with it, then this is surely the place to start.

(#101. 83.5/100)

Other Notes

  • In 2010 I tried the 12 year old Demerara variation from Cadenhead and didn’t like it, scoring it low. I don’t have any of the rum left to compare against the Panama, but I stand by the score as it was back then. In fairness, given how much I like this one, the Demerara 12 may deserve a re-try to see if it’s me that’s changed, or the rum really was that unimpressive. In 2020, I managed to re-taste it and came away with a better understanding of its quality..

Myer’s “Planter’s Punch” Dark Rum – review

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Jan 292012
 

Big, stompin’ rum maybe meant to be a mixed-drinks base but really good neat. Definitely helpful for getting loaded when dollars are tight; interesting when mixed in any number of cocktails. Feeling lonesome in some cold winter clime and miss the Ole Country? This will cure what ails you.

First posted 29 January 2012 on Liquorature. 

I don’t always get top end rums like Barbancourt’s Estate Reserve 15 year old to try, and often, I don’t even want to try them. Sometimes, like most people who’ve had a hard week, I just kick back with a glass of hooch that makes no pretensions to grandeur, pour it, mix it and glug it, and like the fact that it’s just there to make me feel better. Myer’s Planter’s Punch Dark Rum falls squarely into that category, and joins – maybe exceeds – fellow palate-deadeners like Young’s Old Sam, Bacardi Black, Coruba or Potter’s at the tavern bar. These are single digit rums or blends, meant for mixing (cowards cut ’em with whisky) and for my money, they’re all sweaty rums for the proles, displaying a remarkable lack of couth and subtlety – I appreciate them for precisely that reason.

Pour a shot of the stuff and you’ll see where I’m coming from: Myer’s is a dark brown-red, oily rum quite distinct from Appleton’s lighter coloured offerings, and the scents of molasses, liquorice, nutmeg and dried fruit don’t merely waft out onto your nose – they gobsmack your face off. Once you stop crying like a little kid at the neighborhood bully or staring at your glass in wonder, I imagine you might try to recover your dignity, and observe how you can detect caramel, vanilla, perhaps a bit of nutmeg, coconut, citrus. Quite encouraging for something so cheap (less than $25).

The tromping arrival of unleavened flavour square-dancing across your tongue is perhaps the main selling point of a rum like Myer’s. What is lost in subtlety is made up for by stampeding mastodons of a few distinct profiles that actually mesh quite well: caramel, coconut shavings, molasses, fruit, burnt sugar with maybe some orange peel and baking spices thrown in. There’s a weird butteriness in the taste somewhere… maybe from the ageing? Overall, I wish I knew for sure whether they augmented the profile – as I think they have – with any additives: a rum this cheap is unlikely to be this interesting merely on the skill of a blender (if it was, it wouldn’t be so cheap). And there’s a fade here, boys and girls, but it’s strong – more like the exit of a gentleman bank robber discretely blasting away with his gat than the soft silken swish of something more polished. And it’s long, very pleasant – this is a rum which could easily be stronger and still be good.

Mix Myer’s Dark Rum in a Planter’s Punch, in a dark-rum cocktail (feel free to consult Tiare’s excellent site a mountain of crushed ice or any tiki site for ideas) or just mess with the old stand-bys, and the few weak points of the drink as a neat drink are smoothened out and it becomes an excellent base for whatever you feel like making. I’m reviewing it as a sipper, as I must, but this should not discourage you from trying other variations.

Myer’s Dark Rum is hardly an unknown, of course, having been a staple of the cocktail makers’ bars the world over for decades: It was indeed made specifically to address the popularity of Planter’s Punch (which could be equally said to originate in a recipe dated 1908, or in a Charlestonian doggerel from 1878 depending on who you ask). The company founded by Fred Myer in 1879 is now owned by Diageo, and they continue to blend nine rums out of Jamaica at the southern distillery of Monymusk (the plantations of origin are more secret than Colonel Sanders’s recipe) into the drink that we know today. Monymusk, as you may recall, also makes the middling Royal Jamaican Gold rum, which isn’t anywhere near as fun as Myer’s. Aside from calling it the “Planter’s Punch” variation, it is supposedly the same as that first produced in 1879, made from Jamaican molasses, and a combination of distillates of both pot and column stills, then aged for four years in white oak barrels. I’ll also note that my bottle clearly states Myer’s is a blend of Jamaican and Canadian rums, at which I immediately sneer and say…well, “Bulls..t”, not the least because after years of crisscrossing the country in my beater, I still haven’t found a single sugar plantation and therefore I somehow doubt Canada has a rum of its own.

I have to be careful in assigning a rating to Myer’s. It’s not quite a sipper (damned close, though), but some of my review must address the sheer enjoyment I get out of it both as such, and in a proper mix – and even if it *is* added to. Like Young’s Old Sam, it exists in a somewhat less hallowed underworld of rums embraced by bartenders and not so much by connoisseurs, and which some believe must be braved only with fireproofed throat and iron-lined stomach for the crazies who drink it neat. It’s strong, powerful tasting, heavy on a few clear flavours – and doesn’t so much whisper its antecedents as bellow out the sea shanties. It may not be the coolest rum you’ve ever had, or the smoothest, but by God, when you’ve tasted this thing you know you’ve just had a *rum*.

(#92. 80.5/100)

Kōloa Kaua’i Gold Hawaiian Rum – Review

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Jan 292012
 

Impressive sipping-quality light rum from a region you’d almost expect to have many more darker variations. If your tastes run into the stronger and more distinct profiles, this may be a bit too subtle, being more more shy in its release than most. But it is well worth it.

First posted 29 January 2012 on Liquorature

Most of us drink rum originating from the West Indies that are aged in oak barrels, and so we make certain assumptions about our taste profiles: this is why, when we come across a rum from India (Old Port deluxe), Australia (Bundaberg), the Phillipines (Tanduay) or elsewhere, we can immediately sense, without putting it in so many words, that there’s something different about it. There’s a subtlety of otherness in the mouthfeel, the aroma, the taste (especially the Bundie, but never mind) which immediately perks up our beaks. My own theory is that this relates to the different climates and soils in which the source sugar cane is grown or maybe even different barrels. Who knows?

The rums of a relative newcomer to the rum world stage, Kōloa, seem to possess some of this characteristic. Made on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i by the Kōloa Rum Company, they utilise crystallized sugar derived from cane grown in the west of the island in the shadow of Kauai’s Mt. Wai`ale`ale, in what may be the wettest place on earth (for the rumgeeks among us, the yeast strain used in fermentation supposedly hails from Guadeloupe). The distillation itself takes place in a 1210-gallon, 1947-made copper still (much better for imparting subtle tastes to the end product than a modern stainless steel variation) which was trained, trucked and shipped all the way from Pennsylvania – it is composed of a pot still combined with a seven-plate column still and condenser, and the company makes small batch, twice distilled rums using it.

All these elements come together in a very impressive product which, while not being quite as crazy as the Ozzy-inspired bat-shredding Bundaberg, is easily discernible from the regular Caribbean or Central American products I see more regularly.

Bought on a whim (I buy a lot on whims, largely because Calgary being what it is, if I don’t get it now, I may not get it tomorrow), I was more than pleased with the result. The rum itself was pale gold – nearly straw-coloured – with a light-medium body, and initially I almost confused it with an agricole (trust me – an agricole this was definitely not). The bottle was topped by a plastic screw-top, was fully transparent, and the label was plain white and relatively simple, though not minimalist.

The scent immediately hinted at a rum determinedly taking its own course in life: soft, a shade delicate, subtle. I swear that at the beginning I had zero clue what the thing actually was, there was so little normal nose on the liquid. Gradually, on opening up, certain elements began to make their prescence felt: white flowers, cherries, a vague herbal and grassy background mixed up with creamy caramel. But very little darkness from molasses, oddly enough.

It’s the palate that made this rum an excellent buy. There was some spice to it, and a bit of medicinal background; thankfully these were minor detours from an overall extraordinary arrival: a creamy soft butteriness on the tongue, merging into vanilla, nuts, honey and delicate caramel, chocolate and perhaps bananas. The thing seemed to have no real “rum taste” to it at all, by which I mean the usual burnt sugar / caramel / molasses combo – and it worked wonderfully. Smooth and easy and different. Wow. I liked this taste so much I didn’t even bother to try mixing it, just took one glass, another, then asked myself why the bottle was half empty. The fade was, admittedly, somewhat more anticlimatic – it was medium long, with an exit of faint citrus and fleshy pineapple notes, some honey and rained-on new-mown hay drying in the sun. Gentle and easy all round. Not excellent, but pretty damned good.

What makes Kōloa Hawaiian rum so intriguing is that the rum I describe above was not aged at all. This meant that the flavour profile had no elements deriving from oak barrels (maybe that was why I got no “rum taste”?), and relied wholly and solely on its own ingredients, its own strengths and the skills of Kōloa’s blenders. That skill must be quite something given what I tasted.

Kōloa is one of those distilleries about which I have more information than I know what to do with – the opposite is usually true. Let me wrap it up this way: given the Hawaiian islands’ long involvement with sugar and the sea, it’s no surprise that rum has been part of the maritime culture for a very long time.  What is surprising is that this brand of rums is the first legally distilled popskull ever made on Kaua’i. The company was incorporated in 2001 and it took years for them to jump through all required bureaucratic hoops to get up and running in 2009. In their very first year of operations they won a Gold Medal at the 2010 Rum Renaissance in Miami for their Dark Rum (and again in 2011), and then another medal for this one in the 2010 Polished Palate Rum Festival awards. The word started filtering out that there was a new distillery to watch for, out of Hawaii. On the basis of this one, I’d say that word is entirely justified.

(#091. 82/100)

Other Notes

  • Although I did not ask it at the time, it seems reasonable to assume that if the rum is unaged, then the colour derives from a caramel E105 additive, as rum is colourless as it comes off the still.

Rhum Barbancourt Estate Reserve 15 Year Old Rum – Review

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Jan 202012
 

First posted 20th January 2012 on Liquorature.

A rum for those who like cognacs and somewhat lighter fare without the heaviness or sweeter full-bodied physiques of the darker variants. Rewards some patience, because it does not reveal its secrets lightly, and will require you to go back to it a few times before appreciating it for what it is:  a drink both subtle and supple, spicy and sere. Nice.

These days, if Haiti is known for anything, it’s for its poverty, political strife (and the 2010 earthquake). Rums are almost an afterthought, yet Barbancourt is there, and has been since 1862, and they keep churning out the product, very well known among the cognoscenti. Their double distillation method produces cognac-like rums many consider among the finest in the world (not surprising since old Dupré Barbancourt hailed from the region in France where such spirits mostly originate)

I had previously tried their Barbancourt 8 year old which I found an intriguing essay in the craft, but lacking some of the richness and smoothness I preferred, and listing slightly more towards cognac than a rum (and I’m a middling proponent of cognac). Others of course, love the thing, and esteem it even above the fifteen year old, which was initially reserved just for the founder’s family and entered commercial production in the 1960s.

The 15 is packaged in much the same bottle as the 8, but with a spiffier label. Same cheap tinfoil cap, however: at least it closed tightly. Like the 8, it originated in sugar cane juice, so it was an agricole, not a molasses-based product, even if it lacks the official French AOC designation associated with a terroire which would perhaps grant it more street cred among the snooty.

By the measure of these characteristics, there were certain things I would have expected of this rum: a medium to light body, a less-sweet-than-average palate, and a certain driness to the taste, as well as a complex mingling of tastes and a lingering finish with a bit of claws at the back end. And indeed, the lead-in started well off to confirming this: a spicy nose, somewhat light and flowery, lacking the dark power of, oh, the Pusser’s 15. Some fresh fruit mingled with pecans, a florists shop and (I swear this is true), freshly done laundry.

As I suspected the body was not entirely up my street (but then, my street is in Tiger Bay in GT and leads into Buxton, not downtown Port-au-Prince, so draw your own conclusions there): a solid medium corpus – in that sense I would compare it against the Clement Tres Vieux from Martinique, or perhaps one of the middle ranking Colombian Juan Santos rums I admired rather more. Neither was the palate sweet, or even middling sweet: it was quite sere, peppery almost, and once again there are subtler hints than usual of the flavours we seek, like grapefruit, burnt sugar, caramel, and baking spices.

The fade in particular was worthy of mention: long and lasting, releasing notes of citrus, some tannins (not surprising given the lengthy ageing in limousin oak vats) and softer scents like maybe hot damp earth after a rain. Yes, I have to be honest, the thing gave me a bitch slap or two going down, but like the deep carving warmth of a good tea, I liked it for all that

In fine, I was not entirely won over by the Barbancourt 15 year old (no need to call for the headsman’s axe, I’m aware that I’m in a minority), but concede without hesitation that it was not a kick-down-the-door bandit out to relieve you of your valuables…more a sly, subtle thief in the night, with complexities of character that gradually grew on me. And l wasn’t alone – if the measure of the success of a rum is the way the Liquorature crowd lowers the level of any bottle I presented, then this one was close runner up to the Ron Abuelo 12 by being damaged to the tune of over two thirds. That’s a real recommendation by any standard, given that it was done by a bunch of low class whisky lovers. A cognac lover I’m not, and an unabashed Barbancourt fan neither – this rum, however, demanded I pay them a lot more attention.

(#100. 82/100)

Ron Viejo de Caldas Añejo 8 años – Review

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Jan 062012
 

A low proof rum that is impressive right out of the gate, suggests quality and subtlety past compare, and then gives up and runs full tilt into the wall. What this rum might have been with some extra strength….    

First posted 6th January 2012 on Liquorature. 

Right off the bat I have to state my preferences: I am not a fan of underproofs. They have a fake air of smoothness that has less to do with a blender’s art than with a low alcohol content. Spirit imparts depth and character to a rum (as I have observed with overproofs from time to time), and the lack thereof forces the distiller all too often to make up for the shortfall with additives.

With the Colombian Ron Viejo de Caldas 8 anos (bottled at 35% according to the label), however, I may have to revise this assumption, since not only did the Colombianos age this for eight years as if in defiance of all conventions for a rum less than 40%, but the thing is actually quite a decent drink which, because of its relative weakness, can be had as is without embellishment. I can’t say this makes me an instant convert…but it does make me less of a detractor.

Ron Viejo de Caldas is made by the Industria Licorera de Caldas from Colombia. It started small, as a little known artesinal rum from the provinces, but clever marketing and its own quality have made it a more internationally known brand than heretofore. It was created by a Cuban Don Ramón Badia at the behest of the Caldas Fine Perfume and Rum company in 1926 (not as unusal as it may sound, since a good nose is key to both) and in 1959, boosted by good sales, a distillery was set up; in 2009, the company produced 25 million bottles of various rums. Nowadays, the brand is produced in Manizales, the provincial capital of Caldas, 7,200 feet above sea level. Located in the shadow of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, the distillery is now equipped with column stills and sources its sugar cane syrup from the Cauca River Valley, where sugar cane is cultivated all year round.

On the nose the first impression one gets is a kind of supple fruitiness: peaches, citrus, nectarines and maybe a ripe mango or two. Raisins and cinnamon and maybe nutmeg can barely be made out. The aroma is rich and deep and actually reminds me a bit of a good bourbon, or a rye (just a sweeter one). And upon opening up, the brown sugar notes start to dominate in a very pleasant burnt sugar I always love.

The dark copper liquid has a pleasantly heavy body, and is smooth and a shade sere: there is less sugar and and molasses on the taste than the nose suggested, and this might be because the rum is not made from molasses, but from sugar cane syrup. The ageing in bourbon barrels certainly left its mark in a slight woodsy note at the back end, and this was not unpleasant, just distinctive…a bit of character added to the gene pool, so to speak

The fade might be the weakest part of the rum, and this is where the low alcohol content shows its true colours and abandons your snoot — just as you expect a lingering smooch from what you may have thought was a lovely undiscovered gem you alone have sampled, it…disappears. No seriously. It has one of the shortest finishes of any rum I’ve ever had, and that’s something of the character that’s missing along with the true 40% or greater ABV content.

All things considered, I just don’t get why this rum had to be an underproof at all (unless I got a variant that’s not commonly exported). It has a lovely body, a terrific nose, a good tart and tasty palate, and then, just like Dick Francis’s horse all those years ago, it just falls flat on its belly and skids to a sudden sharp stop without explanation or apology. The 40% variation I did not have won a bronze medal in 2007 and a gold in the 2009 Ministry of Rum tasting competition for premium rums, but fellas, all I can say is that good as that may make it, ensure you check the label for the proof before you buy this in a duty free shop someplace, or you might be a little disappointed

I’m giving this baby 77 points on the strength of its great opening act, and had it not been for the weak conclusion, it would surely have topped 80. It reminds me of unadorned rums, subtle, complex and not too burdened with noticeable additives of any kind. I just wish I knew what the real forty percenter was like – on the strength of this one, it must be quite something.

(#099. 77/100)

 

Ron Abuelo 12 Year Old Rum – Review

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Dec 182011
 

First posted 18th December 2011 on Liquorature.

Much as I like the Ron Abuelo 12, I must concede that somehow, by a subtle mismatch of flavour, nose, body, complexity and overall profile, this otherwise excellent rum just fails to attain greatness.  That’s not to say this is not a really good product, because it is – and at a price most of us can afford, you wouldn’t go wrong adding it to your shelf. The middle tiers, that is.

One problem with liking a rum is that the rum as a rule doesn’t really like you back. In fact, the converse is true: the more you indulge your appreciation for one, the more you suffer for that presumption (usually with a Godzilla-sized headache) – no rum will ever crawl into your bed, buy you that Porsche you wanted, remember your birthday, or care that you have an anniversary.

A second issue is that rums you might deem worthy of your love cost cold hard cash, and a lot of it (much like real spouses do). Now this is not a problem for professional spirits reviewers who obtain samples from all and sundry, or for a Google founder who might want a new 911 GT3 – it is, on the other hand, a rather bigger deal if you are a mere working joe like yours truly, on a limited budget. Perhaps the solution is to tread lightly: enjoy what you can for what it is, and don’t go too far off the reservation in fawning over any one product. Keep dreamin’ of the good stuff and enjoy the diamonds in the mud you can occasionally uncover.

Like this one from Panama – the Abuelo 12 year old, which was one third of the rum selection in October 2011 for what is traditionally Liquorature’s sole rum-only evening: mine. I’ve made it a practice to know nothing about any of the three rums I always offer to my guests so that their discovery is also mine. Ron Abuelo was definitely the pick of the evening on that score not because it was exceptional per se, but more because it was overall an utterly all-round above-average product

Aside from the almost-impossible to get Centuria, this is the oldest rum in the stable of Varela Hermanos SA of Panama, who have been in business of rums since 1908 when Don José Varela Blanco went operational with the first sugar mill in the then recently formed Republic of Panama. In 1935 the site began to distill sugar cane juice for the production of liqueurs, and since then the company has been expanding its range into a wide variety of different spirits products. They distil the 40% 12 year old from estate grown cane in the usual barrels that once held bourbon; it won the 2009 Ministry of Rum tasting competition for Premiums, the first year it was marketed, and followed that up with a double gold from the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. And probably deserves it – if after a hundred-plus years of working with spirits the company still doesn’t know what it’s doing, I’d be amazed.

Appearance wise, ostentation was kept to a minimum, as probably befits a $48 rum – cardboard box of no distinction, embossed dark brown bottle hiding the golden rum within; plastic tipped cork, seated tightly as my six-year-old’s fist on pocket money day.

The golden copper-bronze rum had remarkably slow legs which spoke well for its viscosity; the nose was initially spicy, and this faded quickly and transmuted into a rich honey-vanilla and burnt sugar accents that opened up later into subtle hints of flowers and cherries, with a sweet woody background and perhaps something subtler – that of new-mown hay, maybe some grapefruit or other citrus rind. It reminded me a bit of both the Mount Gay XO and the Flor de Cana 7 in that respect.

Flavour-wise I had nothing to complain about. I liked it.  A lot. The rum was heavier and a shade thicker than the colour would have suggested: honey, nuts and caramel were there right from the get-go. The Abuelo 12 year old was not as sweet as these remarks would suggest – there was a retention of the oak there, a bratty kind of stinging insouciance that I didn’t expect from a rum aged this long.  This may have been from a shade too much oak refusing to leave, like a guest who doesn’t know the party is over. But even so it was smooth and possessing a reasonably complex profile that took time to emerge. That taste deepened on standing to slightly briny but rich molasses, and here I’d suggest that it trended toards a younger El Dorado…perhaps the ED 12 year old.

As for the fade, it was long lasting, smooth, if not entirely balanced – vanilla, tannins, dried fruits and a hint of the burnt sugars didn’t quite harmonize (but still, let me hasten to add, damned good for all that). I’d suggest that it missed being superb by some small slip of the blender’s art (or my own predilection for other profiles). But let me be clear: it’s above average and most people buying it will not be disappointed. It has points of similarity, as noted, with the Ron Zacapa (though not as smooth and not quite as sweet), Cruzan Single Barrel, Flor de Cana 7, Mount Gay XO and El Dorado 12 or younger. My take would be to have it as it is and don’t mix the thing.

I said at the beginning that rums you love are usually heartless products that give you a clonk on the head instead of returning your affection, and cost a bundle to obtain. This is true for many top-end products, but not this one: Ron Abuelo 12 year old is a reasonably gentle, occasionally-harsh-yet-loving, soft and slightly off kilter rum that doesn’t cost your left arm to get, will treat you with the respect you deserve and won’t viciously burn your precious vintage Superman comic book collection of you don’t like it. It’s moderation personified, not too much of any one thing, and delicately treads the line between too sweet and not sweet enough, between too smooth and too harsh. That probably won’t endear it fully to people with delicately attuned noses that can dissect a rum’s bouquet into fifty constituent pieces – but maybe, at end, this is a rum for the rest of us: those of us who are not Google founders or professional sample receivers, and who simply want a damned good drink that won’t bust the bank.

(#089. 79.5/100)

Ron Abuelo Añejo 7 Year Old Rum – Review

 1 Response »
Dec 182011
 
Abuelo 7

First posted 18 December 2011 on Liquorature.

Better than the Ron Abuelo 12 year old, if not quite as smooth. 

As a general rule, the older a rum is, the better it’s supposed to be, and price points certainly follow on from that. We pay extra money for the ageing, the loss the maker suffers from the angel’s share, the supposed care and expertise taken in blending and smoothening out all the aged components so as to balance out the oakiness. So you’d think the older the rum, the better, right? Not so in this case. In fact, I reviewed the 12 and the 7 year old rums side by side and had to check my results not twice, but three times – just to make sure it wasn’t a mistake (as you can imagine, during that exercise my computational aptitude went down exponentially, hence the third check to make sure).

Ron Abuelo 7 is the younger, brasher, more insouciant sibling of the top of the line Abuelo 12 year old from Hermanos Valeros about which I wrote very recently. Made from sugar cane syrup (rendered down cane juice) deriving from cane growing right by the Varela Hermanos distillery in Panama, it is distilled in a four-column still and then aged for the duration in ex-bourbon white oak casks prior to final blending – the youngest rum in the final blend is seven years old.

I have no clue why rum producers seem to think that brown, nearly opaque, bottles, are considered a plus – it hides the colour of the spirit within from the casual browser in the shop and gives no basis of comparison even at that admittedly coarse level. Be that as it may, the amber-gold rum – it has the appearance of fresh honey – is embraced by a simple, plastic-capped bottle, no biggie there. Presentation is rock solid without flamboyance of any kind. “I’m a rum,” this thing proclaimed with low key machismo…”nuff said.”

Right off, the nose suggested that I had was something different. Without a real sting to the snoot, the Abuelo 7 revealed scents of chocolate and coffee wallowing in a caramel burnt-sugar bath. Soft, smooth and easy on the inhale, with traces of vanilla, straw and caramel. The aspects of this nose were impressively strong and distinct (not usually the case with middle-aged rums, where one often has to strain to get the slightest hint of aromas so subtle they would make Jean Baptiste Grenouille faint with the effort).

And the arrival was, simply put, excellent. Though not quite as heavy on the tongue as the 12, it’s medium to heavy body was impressive by itself, and it shared the 12’s lack of overall sweetness. However, its smoothness and overall complexity carried me past such concerns regarding sugar: I was tasting caramel, vanilla, some oakiness and a more earthy flavours, and hidden in the back end were muskier hints of leather, of damp ground steaming after a tropical rain and baked fruit enveloped in a kind of smokiness which I found delectable. All this with almost no burn at all: I wouldn’t mix this with anything, and even over ice I might not enjoy it as much. The fade was long, deep and lasting as well, and while here some spiciness started to creep in, it was not unpleasant, but more like the deep heat generated by reddening coals in your fireplace on a cold winter’s night, or exactly the right note of strength and heat you’d want as you watch the sun sink hissing into the ocean in a pleasant tropical twilight, with a glass of this stuff in your hand. What a lovely, lovely rum this was.

Were I to wax metaphorical (again), I’d suggest that what we’re talking about here is character. The difference between various movie actors portraying the same role – and the best example might be James Bond. The Abuelo 12 aspires to be Pierce Brosnan or Roger Moore – exquisitely dressed, urbane, debonair, unflappable, always ready with a quip, with the culture and breeding right there out front on the lapels of the Savile Row suits – but lacking, I dunno, some kind of down to earth machismo. The Abuelo 7 is more like, oh, Connery; or better, Daniel Craig. Brooding, capable, awesomely efficient, dynamic as all get out, yet not as well-bred. I mean, with the Abuelo 7, as with Mr. Craig, you get the elemental brutality and proficiency of a well-educated street-thug. And believe me – I mean that as a real compliment. The Abuelo, on the levels described above – taste, smoothness, complexity and character – makes me hurry to see Casino Royale again, while sticking Goldeneye and Moonraker back on the shelf.

(#088. 81/100)

 

Potter’s Traditional Navy Dark Rum – Review

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Nov 232011
 

 

First posted 23rd November 2011 on Liquorature

A dark navy rum that starts slow and nasty and evolves into a most amazingly flavourful product, and which can even be tolerated by the masochistic as a drink to sip on its own.

Honesty forces me to confess that the only reason I bought this rum was because Keenan and I had had it in local pub on a wing night and we couldn’t believe what a powerful deep-tasting mixer it made. Seeing it the other day in a shop, I snapped it up, and I have to tell you, for less than $30, you could do worse than try this pretender to the Navy rum throne. Too bad The Bear had bailed for booze-regulated eastern climes by then. I comfort myself by snidely noting his pickings are now as slim as a frog hair split four ways and sanded smooth.

There is something uniquely and even amusingly provincial – nay, Canadian – about Potter’s. The label, which tongue in cheek informs you that if you are reading it, you probably aren’t on a tropical beach (try finding that on a product made in the US); the bottle; the unassuming nature of it all. Okay, enough snickering (yeah yeah, I can see you there in the front row, fella) – I know it has a chintzy kind of faux-70’s bottle design – much like the Alberta Premium – but how can one not help but smile at the sheer chutzpah of makers who can so insouciantly flip us all the bird?

In the glass, Potter’s is copper bronze, almost red (pretty cool, that), with middling thin legs hesitantly draining down the sides. Wafts of molasses and brown sugar were immediately in evidence even before I put my beak into it, and at that point I have to tell you flat out – the initial nose may be the single worst reek since the Bundie (or, for the generous among you, the most distinctive). Plastic, plasticine, playdo and sickly sweet grape esters leapt out at me and sought to crush my sense of smell with a mass attack – I felt like my nose just harpooned a steam locomotive. Molasses, burnt sugar and some vanilla tried vainly to get out from under that crushing stench, but were mercilessly clubbed to the ground.

So pretty bad, right?

Not at all. That’s the crazy thing. Potter’s opened up like a shy bodybuilder, and after the initial bludgeon relaxed, it was actually quite good – one kind of was able to pick out the individual scents (not without effort, admittedly), and while it’ll never be on my list of alltime favourites, it wasn’t all bad. Liquorice, molasses and burning canefields all coiled around the core smells of burnt sugar, and Potter’s made no attempt to be coy or complex – what you nosed was exactly what you got, and nothing more (contrast that against the Pusser’s 15, which had hidden treasures under them tights).

And tastewise, oh man – what the hell did Potters do here? The rum is stupid good – no cheapass rum should have such a strong delivery, be this bold, or this distinctive. Dark, smoky, heavy, like the best Navy rums, or el Dorado 5 yr old, better than Lamb’s Navy, or  Coruba by a sea mile, and as good or better than Young’s Old Sam’s.  I tasted liquorice, tobacco and molasses, heavy and smoky on the tongue, with leather, pipe tobacco and perhaps a touch of dried grapes (my six year old son The Little Caner took a sniff and disdainfully remarked “blue cheese” before walking off with his pocketmoney, but he has a point – there is some kind of well aged rindy cheese in there too). Dry and uncompromisingly sere, not too sweet (but not too much in the opposite direction either), and quite smooth for such a seemingly unaged product. And the fade is also good – dry, deep burn down your throat, not bitchy, just slow and powerful – it lacks the sophistication of the Pusser’s 15 yr old, but guys, it ain’t far off, and it costs less. In short, this rum is, in my opinion, an unheralded mid-ranger punching well above its seemingly low-class antecedents – it’s like an accountant who strips off his tie and becomes, oh, I dunno, Superman’s poor doofus cousin. About the only thing I wish I knew was whether they had added anything to enhance the flavour profile.

So who is Potters made by? By the same outfit that makes the utterly forgettable Momento rum I so dissed not too long ago – Highwood Distillers out of Alberta. I didn’t think that the Momento cut it, and said so, but thankfully I didn’t just dismiss the whole distillery out of hand. After tasting this rum, about which not much is said on their website (actually, they just reprinted the blurb on the label), I am happy to report that if they were to branch out into aged rums, perhaps, they might really have something going here. Certainly as navy rums go, I have some fault and much praise to find in the product, because it appeals to all my basic desires in a rum – I don’t have to filet the thing, dissect it into ten different components – it is a straightforward, strong and unapologetic product made for simpler times, and simpler people than we have become.

Now, all things considered, I think Potter’s has a shade too much sulphur and is a bit too feinty to be classed as a good sipper (don’t let that stop you if you’re of a mind – it ain’t half bad that way); something about that background muskiness and cloying nature of it puts me off. And even the label suggests it isn’t one, and I may be one of the few who can stomach it as such given the initial reek (it’ll batter most others into catatonia). As a mixer, though…wow. Rounds out a coke or ginger ale just fine. I could drink it with a cola or as a cocktail base all night long, and all I could think of as I tasted it that night, was that I wish my friend had been with me, and that he hadn’t left to take up a job elsewhere. This rum was made for a guy like him, and in fact, it was a rum like him – outwardly simple, deceptively unpretentious, effective, unforgettable, humorous, powerful and the best essence of all that is north of forty nine.

(#087. 76/100)

Other Notes

  • Potter’s Distillery was founded by Ernie Potter in 1958, and originally only bottled and sold liqueurs, but over the years expanded into spirits. In 1962, Captain Harold John Cameron Terry (Captain Terry) – who started his career at 14 as an Australian seaman – acquired Potter’s Distillers. He took the company public in 1967 and was its CEO for 20 years. In 1990, production was moved from Langley to Kelowna, British Columbia where it remained until 2006. In November 2005, Highwood Distillers purchased Potter’s Distillers and folded it into its umbrella of brands.

Bundaberg Reserve Rum – Review

 1 Response »
Oct 092011
 

First posted October 9th, 2011 on Liquorature

I have a feeling I’m going to catch some flak for this review, of a rum I know many think is the bastard offspring of a low quality formaldehyde mixed with a crazy paint stripper and the stinking armpit of a sweaty canecutter at noon.  Short version – miles better than its low-bred coz from the sticks.

Full disclosure: I absolutely detested the original low end Bundaberg Rum, and even Aussies with whom I’ve occasionally been in contact seem to despise the rum most indelibly linked with their land. It was a raw, nasty, foul tasting morals charge, a rum so way off base it was in Mongolia, with a taste so different you found yourself clutching what remained of your tonsils and crying like a baby after merely one sip. My squaddie the Bear probably still as that original bottle from two years ago in his pantry, never opened or sampled again. Stefan Hartvingson, of that excellent website tastersguide, thought that even the Reserve, a step or two up, was not as good as his wife’s nail polish remover.

Therefore it was with some trepidation that I forked out forty bucks for the Bundaberg Reserve when I saw it. You might reasonably ask why I bothered. Well, partly it was curiosity, and partly it was so I could give it a shot (so to speak) and see what it was all about. It couldn’t really be as bad as the entry level, could it? And how could I call myself a reviewer of rums if all I did was go after what everyone else said was good and never went off the reservation myself…where’s the intellectual honesty in that?

Bundie has been around since 1888 when several small operations in Queensland combined to form the Bundaberg Distilling Company, which has been in operation (more or less) ever since – fires caused a cessation in production in 1907 to 1914, and again in 1936 to 1939. The Polar Bear mascot was introduced in the 1960s to signify Bundie’s ability to ward off the coldest chill, and Diageo bought the entire concern in 2000.

With respect to the 40% rum itself here is not much real information about the Reserve. According to the company website, it’s a blend taken from vats which seem to be maturing very nicely, and are reserved for some ageing in oaken casks and subsequent bottling and marketing as something more high end.  Supposedly released in June 2009, only 5,000 bottles. There’s no age statement to be found anywhere, not any indication of how long the blend remains in the oak casks – from my own observation and experience, I’d hazard a guess it’s around five to seven years. The bottle is the standard slope- shouldered, simply-labelled bottle. Tinfoil cap…utilitarian but effective, so no great fancy cork nonsense for this baby.

There  was an earthy, musty nose of truffles and damp earth when fresh rain hits it, to start one off – immediately you get the picture: this is not the normal rum one is used to, all caramels and burnt sugar.  Behind that initial scent I got pineapple, some fleshy fruits, with a faint nuttiness coiling around it all, and the expected brown sugar notes attending smartly.  Much better. The cloying turpentine and rotting fruit assault of the Bundie I had tried previously was dialled down so far as to make it a mild characteristic rather than the whole show of that variation. For something touted a ‘Reserve’ – usually seen as a cut above the ordinary – the arrival was a bit sharp and peppery, yet I got a clear “rum” taste of sugars and phenols that wasn’t bad – the weird thing is that the musty taste of the nose was nowhere in evidence.  Certainly there’s a piquancy to the Reserve – I couldn’t fault it too much for that, however, since the smoothness of the product was rather pleasant and not raw and raging as I had half-feared.  The finish was utterly unexceptional – short, sweet and spicy, and I can’t say I cared much for that – the taste was the best thing about this entry into the Bundie stable.

Bundaberg rum may be considered Australia’s signature spirit, but it’s a queer thing that Aussies themselves don’t seem to care much for it, unless one counts yobbos whose aggressive demeanour after a fair night’s enthusiastic duelling with the spirit has caused the company much embarrassment. Maybe most antipodean dwellers think they’re too good for it, or some such – it may be held in the sort of genteel contempt that King of Diamonds is in Guyana.

But truth to tell, this ain’t all bad, guys. It can be mixed or taken with water, or even (for those who really like something original) taken by itself, and here I should note that a certain smoky character emerges with a cola, and I really enjoyed that. Sometimes I come to a rum with low expectations and get surprised…this is one of those times. I came to sneer and stayed to write of my tolerable appreciation (and that was not a lightly given accolade, believe me). Bundaberg Rum is not the chippest kid on the block, and it won’t convince anyone who hates the other varieties to give it a try…but it’s better than the bad word of mouth has it. Not by an enormous margin…just enough that you notice it.

(#086. 77.5/100)

Momento Amber Rum – Review

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Oct 012011
 

Photo (c) Highwood Distillers

First posted 01 October 2011 on Liquorature

A strange rum from Alberta’s Highwood Distillery, Momento is aimed at the high end market without having the cojones to put its quality where its marketing leads it.  It’s clean texture and originality of make are its best features, but I can’t say it really works for me.

There are some cases where a distillery looking to go in a different direction begets some kind of bratty, youthful rum that dances on your tonsils and tries out its chubby biceps on your palate. Bruichladdich comes to mind, or the reblenders and rebranders like Gordon & MacPhail and A.D Rattray (whisky makers all, I sigh). Remember the Caroni 13 year old, the Renegade line, or even (bow head here) the Longpond 1941? Rums like those made you laugh with pleasure, and walk out the store clutching your prizes, with a cape, red boots and big friggin’ “S” stamped on your chest.

Highwood Distillers, alas, does not make the cut with this insouciant Momento rum. It aspires to the heights without trying to scale them, and yet, my inquiries with the company brought forth the comment that they really were aiming for the premium segment of the market. Take my word for it: this is not premium. Nice, inoffensive, original, different. But not top of the line by a long shot.

I must concede I liked the appearance of the bottle, with its transparent label and fancy lettering: there is a spartan simplicity to it which I appreciated. Long slender bottle, enveloping a clear, straw yellow rum topped off with a white cork. If nothing else, that certainly is pretty good.

My disappointment started with the nose. It was a sharp skewer though the schnozz, a cannibal’s bone through the septum, redolent of chemicals and paint thinner. Pungent, thin and grassy…almost like fresh hay. It reminded me of the play-doh in a badly maintained day care. The body (hinted at by swift sprinter’s legs that would make Usain Bolt weep with envy) was thin and unimpressive, tangy and medium sweet – I’ve tasted white wines with more body and depth. And the cloying medicinal properties of the nose followed the palate and arrived with the screaming tantara of a badly tuned clarinet, added to by a briny, almost seaweed like taste, a tad spicy and not particular sweet. Perhaps I sensed some caramel and citrus, but I’d be reaching if I said that with assurance. The rum’s one redeeming feature to me was a certain light clarity, a tight, clean texture on the palate which was a real pleasure to feel, if not to taste. The finish was also some consolation, short and smooth: delicate, light fumes caress your throat before bailing in labba time for the backdam.

So, I give it points for originality, but you’re getting my drift – this is definitely not my glass of the good stuff. I’m barely convinced it’s a rum, and I’m not the only online reviewer to make that observation: maybe because it’s a whisky distiller that makes it, it has many properties that would appeal more to a lover of the Scotches than the rums. As a mixer it is without doubt competent; as a sipper, I’m afraid it falls down flat. Thank God it was paid for: I’d feel real bad taking this as a free sample and then have these negative feelings about it. And yet its antecedents stem from Guyana, DDL stock to be exact, and after coming to Alberta, aged in charred oak barrels for an indeterminate time. Highwood remarked in an email to me that they make no age statements on the blend, and the Arctic Wolf thought it was six to eight years old, but my own take is that it’s quite a bit younger than that – it’s too raw, too rough for any kind of serious ageing and the oak makes almost no imprint on the taste buds.

Look, I’m not really in a bad mood or trying to be bitchy ‘cause it’s fun to write a negative review. What I want is rums to be taken seriously, and this one isn’t helping me any. When a distillery with a pretty good pedigree like Highwood Distillers makes a rum this odd and appears not to be taking the blending all that seriously (unlike their startlingly deep-flavoured Potter’s, which may be one of the best mixer’s extant in the bars of Calgary), I get the impression they’re just making this rum so they can round out their portfolio (maybe it’s because they have so many different spirits in their repertoire – 90-plus, according to their rep).

The Momento might, over a period of years, morph into something pretty cool and interesting, but as it stands, all it is is a snazzy bottle encasing a pale coloured, under-distilled rum wannabe without serious taste or body, and about the best thing I can say for it is that it’s original as all get out, has that clean texture, and goes better with a cola than Doorley’s. I didn’t think it was possible to best the Prince Myshkyn of the rum world at its own game, but with the Momento, you’ve got a winner on that score, however much of a loser it is at all the others.

(#079. 71/100)

Other Notes

  • Highwood Distillers was founded in 1974 and originally operated under the name ‘Sunnyvale’. In 1984, it was renamed ‘Highwood Distillers’ after the famous river and region in which it is located in the Canadian province of Alberta. It bought Potters Distillery in British Columbia in November 2005, and so the Potters Dark rum is part of their brand portfolio.
  • The core distillate of the Momento is imported Demerara rum but it is unknown how long it is aged for or which DDL still it comes from.

St. Nicholas Abbey 12 year old rum – Review

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Sep 022011
 

First posted 2nd September 2011 on Liquorature

A worthy successor to the 10 year old which was also expensive and extremely well made.  Succeeds, in my opinion, on just about every level: presentation, nose, taste, finish and aesthetics. This is the point where you start telling yourself maybe two hundred bucks may not really be that much to blow on a single rum…but ensure the spouse concurs.

You’ve got to hand it to the Abbey.  Not being content to rest on their laurels with the very excellent 10 year old I was so taken by, they issued the dark gold 12 year old limited edition rum, and built on all of its predecessor’s strengths.  This is not surprising since it was the remaining stocks of the ten which form the twelve (original barrels of the ten are now exhausted or aged past ten years).  And they have changed nothing except the rum itself: the etched square-shouldered bottle showing the Jacobean plantation house, mahogany tipped cork, the cheap cardboard box which Keenan so applauds, the thin wrapping paper with the company logo…all this remains the same.

St Nick’s, having emerged as a surprising new quality distillery in 2006 after the Warrens bought out the prior landholders, initially had R.L. Seale distil their product and then aged it themselves; though previously they had shopped around for stocks from all over Barbados and other places which to age in their first offerings, these days they are laying down stocks themselves using a newly acquired German distilling unit, and have impressive plans to increase their product line (I made some notes about this in the 8-yr old review if you’re interested).

“It’s not about what the movie is about,” remarked Roger Ebert once, “But how the movie is about it.”  By that standard, how should we discuss this rum?  By its nose, its flavour, its look, the bottle, the colour, how it’s distilled, blended, bottled…what? Having written enough prose about both the eight year old and the ten year old, how can I go on from there?

I could say, for example, that it is a modern day reimagining of Bajan styles of old, or that it originates from both pot and column stills, and is aged for 12 years in white oak barrels. I could add that it is made not from molasses but from concentrated cane syrup subsequently double-distilled to about 92% prior to ageing (unlike agricoles from the French terroires, which generally limit their distillation to 70% before barreling). Then I could go on: that it has a deep, rich, dark rich nose of currants and jam, cherries, peaches and fleshy ripe fruits, redolent of breakfast spices and a touch of caramel, and tastes of jasmine and hibiscus arrangements dusted with cinnamon.  But what does all this really tell you beyond dry facts you’re probably sick of and may not even agree with?  Not much.  What about taste, then? Would it make a difference if I noted its slightly salty-sweet tang, or its heavy body about on par with an ED 15, hints of banana and papaya melding gently into a buttery-soft mélange of fruit and brown sugar? And the long smooth, lasting finish that clutches your tonsils with the tenacity of a junkie clutching a five?

Maybe not.

So let me go off in a different direction for the more poetic among us.  This rum is a hug from your mother when you had a skinned knee and came home holding back tears — in the warm softness of her comfort, all good things came back and the hurt was forgotten.  The taste of this exquisite twelve year old is of a lazy Sunday breakfast with your first real lover after a good night before, and a great kiss after (substitute the word you’re thinking of), with french toast, hot strong coffee and the fixin’s melting in your mouth as you wolf it down in the warm morning sunlight of a great new day.  And the finish is redolent of the smooth feeling of power that envelops you when you win a hard fought battle – in the office or on the field or in the street – and deservedly bask in the accolades.  The world is your oyster.  This rum goes well with it.

The St. Nicholas Abbey 12 year old Limited Reserve is not cheap. At two hundred dollars in Calgary, I have to be honest and concede that I thought long and hard about buying it – I can get the 21 YO El Dorado, or the English Harbour 25 YO, for less, and both are older vintages, proven tastes, made by well established companies for which I have great respect.  I know I’m paying this price because of limited production, not entirely because it’s so good. Honestly, had it not been for the ten that St Nick’s had already won me over with, as well as their instant and honest answering of every question I had when researching this review, I might have held off.

But I must be honest: this is a reminder of what rums can be, in a conformist and lowest-common-denominator culture where blended product and cheaply spiced rums sell by the truckload, and many people have no idea that “top-end” and “rum” can be said in the same breath. And as I’ve observed before, rums are not for any one thing: some take the edge off our anger, some help us forget and take us away from our problems, some are best with which to observe a sunset, some are to toast the great events in one’s life, and still others are to share with one’s best friend over an evening spent playing chess and indulging in a desultory sort of harum scarum conversation.  What is so wonderous about the twelve, and what makes me recommend it, is that in some measure, it is good for, and does, all these things.

(#084. 86/100)

St. Nicholas Abbey 8 year old – Review

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Sep 022011
 

First posted 2nd September 2011 on Liquorature

 

Much as I loved the St Nicholas Abbey 10 year old (and I have yet to meet a soul who doesn’t like it), I must concede that the corresponding 8 year old is not in its league. This is not to say it’s a bad rum…just not as good as its older brother(s). And that’s a shame, because left on its own, had I never tasted any of the Abbey’s other products, I might have given my pen rein, gone to town with loads of colourful metaphors, and in all ways harped on its observed qualities.  However, I had had the others, and in a vertical tasting with all three rums in attendance, the eight simply suffered by comparison. Bummer.

I should note that part of what really sets St. Nicholas apart is stellar marketing. The whole story of the plantation and its lovingly restored Jacobean house; the creation of one of the first new rum-makers in decades (quite aside from massive commercial enterprises who create hollow rums by the containerful); the sand-blasted bottle with its mahogany tipped cork wrapped in soft paper embossed with the company logo, the limited production (they’re up to about 5000 bottles total per year now)…all these envelop the plantation operation and the resultant rums in a sort of enviable cachet of quality and history that many a maker would give his last heels of ten year old for.  And when you consider how good that original ten year old was (quite a debut, I’d say), well, there’s some pretty good street cred right there.

Of course, Madison Avenue b.s. can only carry a rum so far (did I hear someone say Kraken?).  Consider the Young’s Old Sam Demerara Rum, or a very nice (and very cheap) Potter’s rum I have had before – utterly unspectacular, unadvertised low-end hooches the pair of ‘em, and yet I can’t imagine my pantry without either.  Word of mouth and individual tastes will overwhelm a clever campaign…and that other bugbear of the big sellers, real quality.  I thought St. Nicholas really had something going there.

Having waxed rhapsodic over the softness and billowing fumes of the 10, I was somewhat taken aback by a younger, sharper nose of the 8 year old.  Young, boisterous, aggressive, spicy and aromatic, it reminded me of a lady in high school I once asked for a dance, who then grabbed me with quite unnecessary force, and unsmilingly said in a tone that brooked no demur, “I’ll lead.” All kidding aside, it was an interesting scent: apples, a tad of brown sugar crystals…there was a buttery kind of quality to it, yet one that was thin and faintly medicinal at the start: it gradually opened up into something more floral – white roses and hibiscus.

The mouthfeel and taste on the palate continued that odd mix of aggressiveness and restraint. It lacked the smooth wash of tastes of the ten, that was a given; however, I simply cannot express what it was about the 8 that did not permit me to separate out flavours precisely. That there were tastes was undeniable, what I was having trouble with was figuring out what they were, because they ran together so seamlessly. Perhaps it would be better to tell you what this wasn’t:  not very sweet, always a problem for me; not very oily, or lasting; not very, well… rumlike – this thing was more like a decent cognac.  The body was light, gold and clean (it was the lightest colour of the three St. Nick’s offerings I was sampling), bottled at 40% just like the others, and displayed a sharpness I can’t say enthused me overmuch.  And the fade was unexceptional: short, medium smooth, lacking a good long finish — yet to its credit, it did not have a bunch of bitchy fumes leaving their claws on your throat on the exit.

St Nicholas Abbey in Barbados, is currently distilling its own rum from its own sugar, using a German distillation apparatus they brought over from the heimat in 2009 – and unlike all others in the area, they are using sugar cane syrup (concentrated juice) rather than molasses – this may account for the lack of a caramelized brown sugar taste so prevalent in other dark or gold rums.  However Foursquare Distillery (they of the dubious Doorly’s) did initially help produce the first rums here, after the Warren family bought the plantation from its previous owners in 2006.  Currently St Nick’s is setting down rum at the rate of one barrel a week for ageing and they have plans to expand their line to include younger rums (3 yr and 5 yr olds, plus a white), and older ones to come – for example stocks of the ten are now past that age and are being re-issued as the twelve and the 2005 stocks they had are being held for yet older expressions.

Let’s sum up.  Different production methods result in a nose that is excellent, but with a taste and finish less so. At $120 in Calgary, I’d hesitate to buy it a second time, when I can get the sterling ten year old for twenty bucks more. It’ll be interesting to match an eight year old from years hence with the one currently in my possession.

And yet, I should add this.  I was similarly noncommittal and wussy about the El Dorado 12 year old (and to some extent the ED15).  But this eight year old rum really isn’t made to be a high end product, however the price might suggest otherwise: it’s a bridge to the really top-tier product lines, the 10 and the 12 and (coming soon to the rumshop near you) the 15,18 and the 20.  I think St Nicholas’s product strategy is based on the unexpected success of the ten, which I have been told there are no more stocks of — the stocks that went into making this 8 yr old will eventually be the new batch of 10 yr olds to come.  Therefore my take is simply that for what it is, it is an excellent rum, however expensive; you are paying for rarity rather than the intrinsic worth, though – so if you really want quality, then spring the extra twenty bucks for the next one up the line.

(#083. 80.5/100)

Pusser’s 15 Year Old Navy Rum – Review

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Aug 162011
 

First posted 16 August 2011 on Liquorature

A solidly impressive aged product from Pusser’s. Though it’s “only” 40% ABV, you might compare it to a barbarian using a fork – snickering, but all the while appreciating the strength and the quality.

West Indians probably snigger into their shot glasses in every beer garden, corner store or rumshop whenever the name of this Navy-style rum comes up.  In fact, I’m pretty sure of it, and if you don’t get that, find a guy fresh off the boat or the plane and get him to explain it to you.  Like many Caribbean bon mots, it’s about as subtle as a charging rhino.  Yet, there’s no denying either the pedigree or the impact of the rum itself. It’s a powerful strong concoction not overly mucked about with. Rums like this have names like Maxwell, Clarence…or Brutus.

That ambivalent phrasing pretty much sums up my attitude towards Pussers, towards which I have an on-again, off-again relationship (much like I do with Clement XO).  At one moment I appreciate its marketing, its unapologetically and brutally minimalist presentation and its take-no-prisoners if-you-can’t-hack-it-you’re-a-wuss flavor.  At others I simply blow it away as something not subtle enough, not refined enough.  I’m inconsistent that way sometimes. My friend Keenan, who hails from the Maritimes, quite liked it, by the way, and so do a few others I know.

Pusser is a corruption of the word Purser, a name given to that worthy gent on each ship in the Royal Navy whose job it was to hand out the rum ration in the days before Black Friday in July 1970, when rum was officially banished from aboard all vessels of war. The company that makes it, Pusser’s, bought the recipe and stills from the Royal Navy and launched themselves into business, and may reasonably be said to make the rum closest to what navy rums really were back in the old days. Characteristics include overproofing, not very sweet, dark and heavy body and minimal – if any – additives.  In that way, it’s very much like the Cadenhead Green Label or Demerara rums I’ve tried.  Lamb’s Old Navy, Sailor Jerry, London Dock and Wood’s all have claims (some say pretensions) to the title of Navy Rums, but my feeling is that Pusser’s got it.

The rum is aged for 15 years in ex-bourbon barrels, and various sources have suggested that the blend that is aged comprises four rums: portions of Jamaican, Bajan, a bit of Trini, and a hefty dose of a Guyanese rum, which immediately implies (to me), DDL – because they are the only ones left making rum from wooden stills which is a Pusser rum claim to fame as well. Some have said five rums, but I’ve been unable to confirm this: Pusser’s doesn’t give out too much in the way of details, and in any event, the blend of Navy rums never really stayed stable but was often tweaked and recalibrated over the centuries.

All this history is fine, you say, but do you mind? Get to the rum itself.

Well, there’s the bottle above.  Squat, unadorned, in your face (a bit like the much more refined English Harbour 10 year old).  The label is somewhat at odds with its proletarian cachet, what with all those bright red and blue colours, and again you think of that dancer (just sayin’…).

The liquid within was dark, as befits a Navy rum, and poured out like a young El Dorado on steroids. The thing had medium legs, and a pungent nose that almost invited further exploration.  You’d think that something so aimed at the drinking classes would have a straightforward bouquet that didn’t frig around and advertised its forthcoming palate simply and directly, with a minimum of fuss and bother.  But that wasn’t so at all.  I took a sniff, wasn’t too impressed, and was about to make snotty notes and grumbling remarks, when the flavours started coming through the air and I realized that this fifteen year old Jolly Jack Tar had quite a lot under its leotards. A full, rich and earthy scent – quite spicy, let me note right off – redolent of cocoa and a hint of vanilla, and dark brown sugar marinated just enough in oak to get that slight bite.  Maybe some cinnanmon played around in the background there, but whatever it was, it made for a more complex nose than I had started off with.

The arrival on the palate is neither smooth nor harsh: powerful, though, quite impressive for a 40% rum.  You get the sense of strength barely held in check from being rotgut moonshine by the blender’s art. I was tasting dark caramel and chocolate, cinnamon (there it was) and baked apples.  Some citrus and maybe sherry. And, alas, the woodiness and spiciness of ageing not entirely mitigated by skilful blending.  This was not enough for me to seriously mark it down, but it was noticeable, and if your preferences are for more flavourings rather than minimalism, more sweet rather than less, then this may not be the rum for you.  I’m no expert on the obscure Scottish drink, but I thought that here was a rum that actually had more characteristics of an aged whisky or a cognac, though it probably is too sweet for the purists and cognoscenti.

The finish was perhaps the least impressive thing about it – however, given how high a position it started from that’s not to be read as an indictment of what is really quite a unique drink – it was medium long and a little too harsh for me, especially after what I had considered a very good beginning, but of greater than usual richness and warmth. The viscosity of the rum was enough to make the finish last – I just didn’t care too much for what it was that lasted.  But at end, this is a matter of the spiciness rather than any intrinsic quality, and by most standards, I’d say Pusser’s 15 year old rum is a solidly top-of-the-middle-shelf product, to be had either neat or in a cocktail, and enjoyed either way. It’s rich, it’s complex, and only my personal preferences make it slightly less than a winner.  Most reviews I’ve read drool over the product.

Over the years I must concede to being somewhat won over by rums stronger than the standard and near-ubiquitous 40% (this is not one of them, being bottled at the standard forty).  The flavours are stronger, more powerful: even a small shot attacks your palate like a tiny hammer of Thor, and as cocktail mixers they are beyond compare for the same reasons.  Pusser’s great virtue is its complexity of flavour and strength of taste you get for a standard strength rum – you’ll go far to find something quite like this, overproof or not, and again, I can only mention the Cadenheads or the Renegades as comparators. Any time I feel like being smacked around by a spicy, muscled beefcake of a rum which proudly struts its stuff, Pusser’s isn’t far from my mind.

So if pressed – yes, I like it.  Yeah, wrap it up for me – I’ll take it.  And I think I’ll call mine Brutus.

(#082)(Unscored)

Juan Santos 21 Year Old Antigua Reserva Colombian Rum – Review

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Aug 062011
 

Publicity Photo (c) Casa Santana

First posted 06 August 2011 on Liquorature.

A steal at the price, the 21 holds its own against rums costing twice as much, and might be better known and sell more if the tag was higher.  I think of it like I do a Nissan GT-R – too cheap to be taken seriously as a supercar, but a performer that can give any of the top dogs a run for their money.  If you see it and you have the cash to spare, my recommendation is to get it.

The Juan Santos 21 year old is the epitome of the Casa Santana group’s rum line. It is a poem in a bottle, a liquid symphony of brown and gold, of smell and taste, and quite possibly one of the best aged rums available for under a hundred bucks. Anywhere.

It is made in Colombia, an unappreciated nation in South America better known for narcotics and coffee, violence and political upheaval.  Yet they speak the purest Spanish in the world outside of Iberia. Democratic traditions survive in spite of FARC and narco barons that would derail many another state. Colombia is the world’s largest supplier of emeralds, possesses a dynamic and educated workforce (I know – I worked with four of them and was hugely impressed by each), and, like every country under the sun, claims its beaches are whiter and its women more beautiful than anyplace else on earth.  Now they can add another cachet to their national pride – this rum. The Santana company has been making rums in the Cuban style since 1994 – I’ve heard that it was Cubans who started the enterprise, see below – and yet have made only limited inroads in the Canadian market.  Bacardi, Lamb’s and Screech, together with Cruzan and a few other one-rum-here-one-rum-there variations still dominate liquor shelves here, in spite of both the Arctic Wolf and myself suggesting the product is good value for money.

The 21 is all wrapped up in a look that does a neat jiu-jitsu on the Pyrat Cask 1623 rum, which had a phenomenal aesthetic appeal and little else.   Perhaps the trick is not to let the 21’s presentation put one off – it’s not lackluster, precisely…more like undistinguished.  The label is cluttered and busy with a pattern of muted colours (contrast that against the vivid backdrops of the Appletons, or the simplicity of the Mount Gay labels), and the bottle is, umm, just a bottle.  One might be forgiven for missing the “21” in the title altogether, and tripping over it in some surprise.  Huh?  Veinte-uno? Que es esto?

The rum itself is a light brownish gold.  It poured nicely into the glass and swirling gently showed thinner legs than I would have expected – it evidently lacked the heaviness, the oiliness which would have indicated a deeper flavor profile and a longer fade.  Still, the nose was nothing to sneeze at: it was all soft and silk, no sting and no burn, and held promising notes of toffee, brown sugar, a very delicate hint of flowers…and a bit of coffee.  Given that Juan Santos also makes a very pleasant underproof café, I found this to be no more than appropriate.

The taste was by any standards nothing short of excellent.  Juan Santos 21 arrived unheralded, with no blaring tantara of orange trumpets such as you’d find in the rather obnoxious Pyrat’s XO or 1623.  It slunk onto my palate, and stayed there. What I got was a smooth and soft liquid gold that some master blender may well have put his cojones into hock to the Almighty to produce. There was hardly any bite or burn at all – pretty good for a rum at 40% – with a remarkable depth of flavor for which the initial pour I noted above had done nothing to prepare me.  I was expecting something a tad on the thin side, maybe some citrus hints, a clear sort of taste in line with the lighter colour and clean nose – what I got was a rye-and-rum combo that was deeper, darker and more flavourful than it had any right to be.  Caramel, burnt sugar, yes, of course – but also breakfast spices, some cinnamon, that coffee again (maybe Juan Valdez is a relative?) and nutmeg lending some gentle muskiness it all. I was, to put it mildly, impressed – twenty one years in oak had been mellowed and balanced out and blended so well that it was a smooth balm to the taste buds.

And the finish was no slouch either: thin legs or no, there was enough oil left in the rum to make a lasting impression that did not bail in a hurry with a harsh knock to the tonsils, merely stayed and lingered, like an old friend whose goodbyes can take a few minutes longer than the average, simply because there’s always one last thing to say. The 21 was so smooth and so languorous, that it actually seemed to stay a lot longer than it did. There were no harsh afterburns or tastes or anything, and quite frankly, if my personal preference hadn’t been for darker rums of greater body, I’d rate this one even higher than I do – for those that like a good quality sipping rum that’s right up there, look no further, since this single ~$85 rum will give you just about everything you’re after.

In discussing the Juan Santos with the store manager at Co-op where I bought it, he remarked that for him this absolutely eclipsed the Zaya which had been his go-to tipple of choice up to that point.  I don’t quite agree it should eclipse anything, since I have a pretty good collection of rums I like as much or more than the 21, and each has their place in my life, depending on the crabbiness of my mood (I drink harsh rotgut rums with minimal cola when I’m angry) whether I want to mix it and get a pleasant buzz on (medium-tier five year olds are good for this), get loaded fast (pick any 151, alert the wife and move out) or simply watch the sun go down (any top end sipping rum of your choice). That said, there’s no question in my mind that the Juan Santos 21 year old, for its price, offers a value for money that other top guns costing twice as much (and with only incrementally greater quality) would do well to observe.  Price is no guarantor of quality, I wrote for my negative Pyrat 1623 review, meaning that a high price sometimes nets you a dog.  Here, with this rum, Juan Santos proves that the reverse is also true, and that a reasonably low cost for an aged rum is no indicator of a lack of any kind.

(#081)(Unscored)

Background (Added in 2021)

Juan Santos rums are produced by Santana Liquors out of Baranquilla, a free trade seaport zone in the north of Colombia, on the Caribbean Sea. The company also makes various brands for other markets, like the somewhat better-known La Hechicera and Ron Santero labels (Ron Santero is the US brand name for Juan Santos, the latter of which is only sold in Canada). Their website and Forbes notes that they started operations in 1994 when their founders – assumed to be the Riascos business family – brought over some rum makers from Cuba, and an article in el Tiempo notes they are the only family owned (private) rum company in Colombia — all others are apparently part of the Colombian government monopoly.

However, it does not appear that they are actually in the business of distilling themselves, not are they primary producers of anything. They have no sugar cane fields, nor a refinery nor a distillery – at least not that they promote on their own materials and company websites –  unless it is the winery they also own and operate, which is where their barrels of rum are aged.  What they do, appears to be to act as third party blenders, much as Banks DIH does in Guyana. La Hechicera, their companion brand now distributed by Pernod Ricard who bought a stake in 2021, is often spoken about in rum circles as sourcing barrels and stocks of rum from around South America and then blending and bottling them in Colombia as “Colombian” rums. But they certainly don’t make anything of their own on a distillery.

As an additional note, Juan Santos rums no longer appear to be available in primary markets and online web shops – it has been almost a decade since I sourced mine, so sometime in the mid-2010s I suspect it may have been discontinued.

Pyrat’s Cask 1623 – Review

 1 Response »
Jul 112011
 

First posted 11 July 2011 on Liquorature and the Rum Connection

This review first appeared in two parts on the Rum Connection website, here.  It is reposted here with minor corrections and amendments. It’s a bit of a rant, I’m afraid, and somewhat overlong…it speaks to my disappointment in what has been touted as an ultra-premium, but isn’t.

I enjoy the Pyrat’s XO rum about as much as I do the leisurely explorations of my favourite proctologist: the thing is a perennial dust-gatherer on my shelf, and I finally traded it away to the Arctic Wolf in Edmonton. And when one considers the abysmal regard I have for its enormous tangerine nose, one could reasonably ask what business I had shelling out four times as much to buy the brand’s top-end product, the Cask 1623.  Truth is, it was like a splinter lodged in my mind for over a year, and no matter how many times I passed it squatting smugly there behind a glass case, I could never get rid of the impression it was sneering at me and calling me a puling, whining cheapskate.  So the other day when I had some disposable income, I finally said to hell with it, and got ‘er.

Pyrat’s is a product of the Anguilla Rums company.  This is an establishment with its own origin story (whether true or not, it’s still fun reading) regarding a travelling seaman called CJ Planter who fell in love with an island girl who may have been the illegitimate daughter of a plantation owner and a local lady who dabbled in witchcraft.  CJ eventually began a rum-making concern which, it must be emphasized, did not create rums from scratch, but blended rums from elsewhere (which continues today – I imagine this is because Anguilla, a beautiful but tiny speck in the Caribbean which if you sneezed at the wrong time you’d miss as you flew over it, lacks the resources to have full blown sugar cane plantations on the available land).  Subsequent digging suggests that the Pyrat brand is actually owned by a Nevada outfit called the Patron Spirits Company, and they have a line of spirits products that extends from Patron tequila, to Ultimat vodka, to liqueurs, and rums. So do they own the Anguilla company?  Don’t know…probably they are acting as marketing and distribution agents for the factory, which, as  Ed Hamilton of the Ministry of Rum notes, was shut down in 2010. Note that the rum is now made from DDL’s rum stock from Guyana, and given the shutdown in Anguilla, it’s very likely that the blending takes place in Guyana as well (I was not able to definitely confirm this beyond the anecdotal, but Arctic told me they definitely bottle it there, so it seems reasonable).

Be that as it may, I must commend them for the mere look of the package.  I’m a sucker for a good presentation; it’s part of the overall aesthetic, I argue, much to the disgust of the various maltsters of my acquaintance, who refuse to be sidetracked by such mundane matters and make no bones about chucking wrapper, box and bunting as soon as they buy a bottle of anything. Here, Pyrat’s delivers, and this is as it should be for a self-annointed “ultra-premium” rum costing north of two hundred bucks. The hand blown bottle is encased in a wooden box (the Pyrat homepage says cedar, but I notice one reviewer says walnut, and from the lack of an aroma, walnut is my take also), and around its neck is a medallion with the patron saint of fortune tellers and bartenders, Hoti.  And there’s a hand lettered label signed by the master blender.  Pretty cool.

The rum is a dark amber colour, and has a heavy look to it. The cork is a real cork, no extras or plastic anything. And as soon as I opened the stopper, I knew I’d been had. Well, perhaps not – perhaps I’d allowed myself to be had in my eagerness to try something new at the supposed top end of the scale. The nose wafted out and it was immediately clear that customers of the XO had written in and started a campaign to assure Pyrat’s that the citrus they had sensed in the XO — the very thing I had disliked so much about it – was for wussies and they demanded something with just as much or more orange heft: and Pyrat’s complied.  Open the botle and the waft of an orange grove comes right at you.

There’s a sullen, sulky heaviness to it when it pours into your glass that reminds you of a lighter-coloured El Dorado – and the legs were relatively slow and fat as they slid down the sides, so that part was good. But nosing it was about as subtle as the grapefruit scene with Mae Clark in 1931’s “Public Enemy”.  Yes, I got vanilla (and I had to strain for that); yes there were subtler hints of cherries and flowers here (more strain), under which moved the darker scent of burnt brown sugar – but there was nothing overly dramatic that grabbed my snoot, no I-see-Vishnu moment, no heavenly chorus of angel who should attend the opening of such a purportedly premium product. What was self evident was, as I’ve noted, that damned scent.

The citrus background was more muted than in the XO, but still far too prevalent and bashed the others into a sort of torpid insensibility – it’s like an orange Chuck Norris came through the joint, belted out a roundhouse kick to the face, and all the other smells fell down, twitching feebly.

The palate?  No redemption, I’m afraid, and by now I was wondering – what the hell was going on? Did some disgruntled vet pop a few hundred rinds into the still? The liquid was thicker and oilier than other rums I’ve tried, and coated the tongue like it wanted to be a delivery system for a few fascinating flavours the master blender had pulled out of his hat; there was a sweet and lasting flavor, but what the hell was it? A liqueur?

I was tasting a smoothly sweetish spirit and a commingled taste of various almost impossible-to-discern elements dominated by orange marmalade flavor.  Again I got the annoyingly faint background tastes the nose had hinted at, without any of them having the courage to tek front and show us who was boss. The floral scents dimmed more than shimmered, the caramel-molasses and burnt sugar taste faded almost entirely, and what I was left with was something that wasn’t sure what it wanted to be…too sweet for a rum, not complex enough for a high-end. Excuse me fellas. I thought there was supposed to be rums here. This was what two hundred drops of my sweat had bought?

And don’t believe I was entirely mollified by the excellent fade, the only thing I don’t have a whinge about. The 1623 goes down very well, without serious burn or scratch, and even a non-rum-drinker might like that part: my 72 year old father-in-law took a sniff, smacked his gums, sipped it down and allowed it may even eclipse the standard Russian rotgut he preferred (talk about damning with faint praise there), while observing it had too much sugar, as if I should shoot off to Anguilla immediately and take them to task about the matter. In fact, I did send an email down there (and to Patron) asking about the taste and the sugar, which has thus far remained unanswered.

Pyrat’s Cask 1623, also known as Cask 23 for people who can’t be bothered to write the whole thing, is a blend of rums aged up to 40 years.  Note the careful phrasing on the Pyrat website: “We distill the dark amber spirit in limited quantities, ageing its smooth distinctive blend of premium Caribbean rums in oak barrels for up to 40 years.” What that means to me is that the oldest rum in the blend is 40 years old (not the youngest) and there’s no information regarding what proportion is that old.  About all I’ve read online is that the average age of the blends of pot-still and column-still rums that make the 1623, is 23 years. Even the barrels are a bit dodgy – I’ve heard of the usual bourbon barrels, of course, and rumours of barrels that once held orange liqueur. So maybe that’s what it is. Caveat Emptor.

Honesty compels me to note that Pyrat’s 1623 won the 2007 Ministry of Rum tasting competition, but speaking for this puppy, I can only wonder how on earth that happened. Let me put it to you this way: if you were handing out prizes for distinctiveness, then Bundie, Old Port, Pyrat’s XO and maybe Legendario would come out top – you could taste them blind and know what you were getting because they are so unique in taste, so different: but that difference does not translate into real quality, and frankly, I think Pyrat’s is teetering on the edge of not being a rum at all, what with all that extra stuff they must be chucking into the ageing barrels with such languid insouciance.

So there we have it. Unimpressive.  I know I sound a little miffed, perhaps even a shade snarky. But I’m feeling let down, more than a little annoyed.  Actually, I’m plenty mad.  This rum is such a disappointment – it’s a forty dollar rum in a hundred dollar package, selling for two hundred.  Some might argue that I like the sugar-caramel-molasses taste in my rums, and just as I like that taste, so there are others out there who prefer peats, and others who will like orange or sherry or what have you.  No harm no foul.  Yet, I disagree: the whole selling point of Islay whiskies is that unmistakeable peatiness; with rums it’s the core of caramel and burnt sugar enhanced by the varying notes imparted by climate (Bundie or Old Port spring to mind immediately), distillation techniques, ageing and the barrels used.  In the top end of rums, there is an underlying harmony, a sort of zen marriage of all good things that come together like a Porsche 911 GT3.  Sure it blasts off with you, but in a good way. All is in balance. You don’t mind getting your faced ripped off at 6500 rpm and 200mph because you are utterly ensorcelled by the sheer unbridled harmony of the components meshing together like they were lubricated in distilled angels’ tears.

And that’s not the case here. We’ve been sold on a marketing gimmick. We’ve been fed on rarity, a carefully parsed age statement, and price (and a really odd dearth of online reviews I have difficulty comprehending – what, has no-one tasted this thing?). When I tried the English Harbour 1981, the Appleton 30 and Master’s Blend, the El Dorado 21 and 25, the G&M Longpond 1941, I could taste the underlying structural complexity and efforts to both smoothen and balance off the competing flavours.  Here, we have an inexplicable central taste of citrus that advertises its ego from the get go, practically drowns out all other flavours, and to my mind is only marginally redeemed by an extraordinary smoothness.  Ultra-premium? Yeah, it’s about as ultra-premium as a garage sale with one good item in it.

For a rum this expensive and positioning itself at the top of the rum chain, I’d suggest that they stop messing about with the Hoti medallion…and replace it with one that bears the imprint of the patron saint of shell games and snake oil sellers.

(#080)(Unscored)

Ron Diplomatico Añejo – Review

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May 252011
 

First Published 25 May 2011 on Liquorature

A puzzlingly schizophrenic rum – I can’t quite make up my mind about how good it is: an undistinguished bottle containing a so-so tasting rum with both a lovely nose and a finish to savour. I’m going to go back to this one, for sure, just to nail my opinion down more precisely.

The Diplomatico Añejo I had on the night of the last Liquorature club was one of those weird rums that I couldn’t quite categorize, because it had both good elements I liked and others by which I wasn’t entirely enthralled. However, I had quite a bit of it, so who’s to say that’s a bad thing?

Presented to Liquorature by the same gent who introduced us to the 15 year old Diplomatico Gran Reserva, the Añejo is distilled by the same Venezuelan concern that makes that version – this was merely a younger iteration, having no age statement on the bottle. It also had the rather grandiose statement that it was the Rare Rum of the Caribbean on it, and as a member of the Caribbean diaspora myself, I can tell you that there’s a misnomer if I ever heard one, since not only are there no shortages of rums (rare or otherwise) in the area, but Venezuela, while having a fairly extensive Caribbean beachfront, is not considered culturally a part of De Islands, being more akin to Latin America.  I mean, when was the last time you ever heard of a Venezuelan soca competition, a Veno steel pan band, or their local cricket team?

Bottle appearance?  Utterly average, nothing fancy – solidly seated plastic cap, though, which I liked (at least it wasn’t some cheap tinfoil screw-on). The Hippie stayed silent on this one (remember his childish exuberance with the postage stamp design of the Gran Reserva?) but did partake of a nip or two.

Nose was soft, a little fruity – peaches and soft fleshy types, with a bananas hint emerging reluctantly after a bit; and a vanilla scent which I liked.  Not much in the way of a sting to your snoot, so you’d probably like this one on that level alone. No real complexity there, though.

I said the bottle appearance was utterly average.  The taste, to me, was medium everything. Like Bacardi, it excelled at nothing while being average at everything. It’s almost like the Corolla or Civic of rums. I mean, there was almost nothing out of the ordinary for which to award points or deduct them – the body was medium; the taste was sweet, but not too much so, with neutral smoothness, a taste that lingered on, not too short, not too long, and which had a slightly thicker character that (I swear) tasted of unsweetened chocolate; and there was an odd briny note, a tang of the sea, that I found odd but in no ways unpleasant.

If I was indifferent to the appearance and taste, let me wax somewhat more ebullient on the fade, which was excellent. Soft; smooth, elegant, long lasting. A taste of grapes a little ripe but not as cloying as the Legendario’s muscatel reek, wafted up and stayed in the mind.

On occasion, I’ve been given a hard time by mon pere for not always expressing an unequivocal opinion (he really must love Ebert’s thumb, honestly), and rereading the above I see I’ve done it again. So here goes: I think this is a surprisingly good rum, with elements that make me believe the blender wasn’t too sure what he wanted. I’d mix it or sip it (the latter perhaps with a cube of ice), but what it really makes me want to do is go back to the Gran Reserva: I didn’t have a rating system when I reviewed it back then, but the good and bad of this lower-tiered product from Venezuela makes me want to return and give the other one a more thorough evaluation.

(#078. 79/100)

 

Flor de Caña Centenario 12 Year old – Review

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May 232011
 

Original Review 23 May 2011 on Liquorature

Outclassed by its older siblings as a sipper and given better dollar value by its younger ones for mixing, Flor de Caña 12yr old’s singular characteristic may be its quickness (insert vulgar and raunchy joke here). This isn’t to say you won’t enjoy yourself, or that you’ll have a bad experience – just not a lingering one.

Clint of Liquorature very kindly  allowed me to pilfer his bottle of the Flor 12 in order to write about it, once the March 2011 session wound to a close.  We’ve looked at the 5, 7, 15 and 18 yr old variations here already, and it was time to do one of the last of the aged versions before I seriously began tackling the younger ones.

Flor 12 shares the same brown coloured bottle as the 18 year old, short and blocky, as squat and heavy bottomed as a Bourda fishwife on a Saturday morning. A no-nonsense sort of bottle with the brand etched into the glass, very workmanlike.  Note the plastic cap – the seal it makes is tight fitting and yet easy to remove. Initially I preferred cork, but some experience taught me plastic was probably best, and hang the aesthetics.

The legs of this medium bodied dark-brown rum were strong and slow, reminding me of the gams of an over-the-hill barkeep (of indeterminate gender) in a riverside shack on the Puruni River where I had once panned for gold, whose half-hearted clutches I evaded with nimble footwork.  However, though the dark brown colour of the rum  promised a rich scent, I was unmoved with the nose, which managed to be both soft and sharply assertive – over and above what one would expect – simultaneously.  I smelled burnt sugar, nuts, perhaps a hint of honey, but that was all.  It struck me as being somewhat of a blunt instrument instead of something subtler – it didn’t last at all, but flashed into and out of my nose so fast that whatever quieter or more elegant scents might have existed, were not noticed.

The taste was of burnt sugar and caramel, again nuts and honey (and perhaps baking spices like cinnamon), and some kind of tangy cheese.  For a rum containing such pleasant flavours, the lack of oiliness which would permit a more lasting taste profile, was a disappointment – the experience is just over too damned fast. Just as I was getting a handle on it, it disappeared. And for my money the oaky back end spoiled what could have been an excellent taste there.  The rum trended to a slightly heavier body approaching the el Dorados, and maybe that extra sugar or caramel ingredient was an attempt to mute the sharpness of the oak tannins which were still in evidence here, but with their own effects on overall balance and quality.

And as for the finish, well, it was a good one – smooth and clear, with a few bright notes of caramel and brown sugar coming through – yet over too quickly, gone too fast. I was left with relatively little taste and fumes to savour after a second or so. Made me want to have another shot, real quick, just to try it again and ensure I knew what I was actually experiencing.  And indeed, that’s exactly what I did.

Flor 12 is, like the El Dorado 12 or the El Dorado 15, something of a bridge.  In these variations we see the cheaper, lower-tier rums being left behind and the painstaking care that characterizes the older offerings of the makers coming into prominence, but without actually being complete yet. Flor de Caña 12 year old is an essay in the craft, a wannabe that aspires to the quality in the 18 yr old and the 21 Centenario (which we now know to be a 15 yr old), and both benefits and suffers from that fact.  Is it good?  Yes it is.  It won the 2010 Gold Medal and Best in Class Award at the International Wine and Spirits Competition in London, and has been praised up one hill and down the other (a good reason why you should just take this view here as an informed opinion of my own).

Those of adventurous spirit and love of fine rums won’t have much to quarrel over – except perhaps that peculiar quickness. Quickness of dissipation, of taste, of finish, and, for this writer, quickness of desire to get to the quality of its older brothers – which are promised here, but not (to me) entirely delivered.

(#077. 80/100)

Other notes

2021 Update: Possibly, even in 2011 when I wrote this review, the 12 Year Old was already just a blend of components “up to” 12 years old instead of a meaningful “true age”. At the time, the company still retained a fair degree of trust and it was not often commented on.  By 2013 the questions grew louder and by 2015 the party was well and truly over. In the eyes of deep rum fans, I don’t think Flor ever really recovered its sterling reputation after the hammerblows of the faux age statement and the scandal of the kidney disease affecting its workers.

Juan Santos Añejo 12 Year Old Gran Reserva Colombian Rum – Review

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Apr 252011
 

First posted 25 April 2011 on Liquorature

Smooth, soft and unprepossessing, this may be one of the best 12 year old you never heard about. Coming from a maker formed less than two decades ago, it’s quite an achievement to create a rum of such overall worth. 

It seems that sooner or later one always makes a discovery both unexpected and wholly pleasant. In recent months since I first tried the excellent 9 year old, I’ve realized that Juan Santos rums have been one of mine, and with the exception of the coffee infused underproof, which I do not really regard as a true rum, they have, for each age, been quite and quietly superb. And yet they have a surprisingly low profile – they rarely get mentioned in online fora, reviews of their products are practically nonexistent (aside from web-shop listings with a note or two on flavour), and their rums are to be found intermittently at best. Odd for a rum this good

Here I had the 12 year old to take a look at.  The labelling and bottle shape are consistent with the 21, the 9, and the 5 – the Santana company has been at pains to ensure conformity across their line with only minor differences in the labelling – within a clear etched bottle possessing wide shoulders and a sloping bottom.  Plastic cork – I can’t stand cheap tinfoil, and have recently concluded the plastic corks are pretty good for ensuring a tight seal that doesn’t flake like old cork sometimes does, so this is all to the good.  And, oh yeah – a bunch of the Edmonton Rum Chums around me.  I was tasting this informally, in the company of the Arctic Wolf and some of his compadres, with a follow-up when I got back home two days later to formalize my rather incoherent notes.

There was a smooth and oily consistency to the dark golden liquor (darker then the 9) when poured into the glass; it sheened slowly down the sides and only later separated into fat plump legs. And the nose was like the 9 year old…but better.  No sting and medicinal nasties here, but a softness mixed with spice – faint caramel and sugar entwined with molasses and fruits and burnt sugar.  None of these aromas were in any way assertive or overbearing or dominating: they were each and every one distinct, clear yet subtle, and balanced in a way I had not yet experienced in a rum.

On the palate, the Juan Santos 12 year old  retained some of that clarity and medium bodied nature; and it was soft too – it seemed to be more like a ballet dancer, hiding strength and power behind a pattern of smoothness and elegant moves. The rum coated the tongue so well and was such a smooth spirit that one could easily get lost in the softness and never remember afterwards exactly what had been tasted – though for the record, the arrival was of caramel and burnt sugar, cinnamon and breakfast spices, and just enough sugar to marry these tastes together well.  It reminded me in its cleanliness of taste of nothing so much as very well steeped medium dark tea.

Where I’d have to say the rum fell down was, oddly enough, in the finish.  Not that it was bad.  Far from it. What it was, for me, was that it was cursory. It was too quick, and veiled itself too fast, as if, after all that excellent smell and taste, it suddenly grew shy and with a flirt of flavour it disappeared in a noncommital fade that left almost no taste behind, only a sort of buttery caramel, and a slight and expected alcohol sting. A shame after the overall worth of the beginning, but not enough for me to say it’s bad, merely a tad disappointing.

The Casa Santana company was formed in 1994 in Columbia with the avowed intention of producing the country’s premium rum.  Currently they produce the Ron Santero brand which is what the Juan Santos, relabelled for import to Canada by the Liber Group, actually is. A rose by any other name, is my response to this relabelling, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re doing a good job with their rums no matter what the title, and I want more.  Aged in American bourbon barrels, the aged rums, as per Columbian nomenclature laws, state the age of the youngest rum in the blends, and for this also, I give them full marks.

It is, then, an excellent entry from Juan Santos into the middle aged category, and if perhaps it is not quite on the level of the English Harbour or the St Nicholas Abbey 10 year old rums, it is at the very least on par with the El Dorado 12, is a good rum to sip or mix, and in no way a bad rum, or a lesser one: and once again I’m thinking that we really should agitate to get more of these rums from Columbia on our shelves.

I must concede here that good as it was, the 12 wasn’t solely responsible for the stellar evening I had with the Chums, for sure.  But it didn’t hurt, aided quite a it, and just as some tastes and scents evoke specific memories, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have this unassuming, unpretentious Columbian gem again without remembering a laughter filled evening of jokes and rum talk and the company of new squaddies, pleasantly found, enjoyably experienced and around whose table I felt right at home.

(#076. 81/100)

Background (Added in 2021)

Juan Santos rums are produced by Santana Liquors out of Baranquilla, a free trade seaport zone in the north of Colombia, on the Caribbean Sea. The company also makes various brands for other markets, like the somewhat better-known La Hechicera and Ron Santero labels (Ron Santero is the US brand name for Juan Santos, the latter of which is only sold in Canada). Their website and Forbes notes that they started operations in 1994 when their founders – assumed to be the Riascos business family – brought over some rum makers from Cuba, and an article in el Tiempo notes they are the only family owned (private) rum company in Colombia — all others are apparently part of the Colombian government monopoly.

However, it does not appear that they are actually in the business of distilling themselves, not are they primary producers of anything. They have no sugar cane fields, nor a refinery nor a distillery – at least not that they promote on their own materials and company websites –  unless it is the winery they also own and operate, which is where their barrels of rum are aged.  What they do, appears to be to act as third party blenders, much as Banks DIH does in Guyana. La Hechicera, their companion brand now distributed by Pernod Ricard who bought a stake in 2021, is often spoken about in rum circles as sourcing barrels and stocks of rum from around South America and then blending and bottling them in Colombia as “Colombian” rums. But they certainly don’t make anything of their own on a distillery.

As an additional note, Juan Santos rums no longer appear to be available in primary markets and online web shops – it has been almost a decade since I sourced mine, so sometime in the mid-2010s I suspect it may have been discontinued.

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