Below the Salt L’Ardois JaQ “Marc de Canne” Canadian Rum – Review

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Jun 272025
 

For those who trawl the Canadian rum scene and occasionally despair at ever finding a locally made hooch that would blow their hair back and wow their pants off, well, I have a new candidate for you: the very tasty, lightly (very lightly) aged, almost-white stinker of a rum called L’Ardois JaQ, made by a recently opened craft distillery in Nova Scotia run by (and I shit you not) a tug boat captain I met named Gregg Colp, whose business card very appropriately gives his position as “Chief Adept and Bottle Filler” and sort of gives you a flavour for the whole operation.

That preamble requires a lot of unpacking, so bear with me.

Distillery Background

Captain Colp – you gotta love the name – is indeed a tug boat captain for the Arctic sealift. He has been involved in making one form of alcoholic beverage or other, legal or not, commercial or otherwise, since he was a pilchard brewing illicit beer in his backyard. Having studied chemistry at Uni, he then got his master’s ticket and spent the next decades travelling around the Caribbean and other parts of the distilling world, which included interning in Cognac for a venerable maison there (no, not the one you’re thining of) just because it sounded like fun and he wanted to know more about the entire process. The man, you can tell, loved rum.

Anyway, some years ago, as cruel eld frosted his hair and bit at his bones (while simultaneously deflating parts he preferred to remain inflated) he decided he wanted a retirement plan, something to ward of the chill, make a few bucks and indulge his maritime proclivity for rum. After trawling around and consolidating his experience (to augment what he already had amassed in a lifetime of globetrotting, and that’s a lot) and sourcing a double retort pot still, he and his partner Vikki Piersig (her card reads “Chief Mate and gal who makes the distiller and most everything else look good” – people, I cannot make this stuff up!) set up shop as a small distillery in a landaway in Highway 4 in Nova Scotia (very close to the shore dividing it from Cape Breton where his office premises are). In point of fact, as a throwaway factoid, he was offered the opportunity to take over Vernon Walters blacksmith shop in the 1990’s (when he was sailing on the Bluenose itself), long before Ironworks came on the scene and took over the premises to launch Ironworks Distillery. Small world.

That irreverent sense of humour exemplified by the business cards is to some extent also represented by the name of the distillery – Below the Salt. While in today’s world salt is something of a commodity whose major use is a feedstock for industrial chemicals, for most of history it was a tradeable good much used for nutrition and preserving food; trade routes were opened to search for new supplies, and as late as 1860, wars could be fought over it. In medieval times it was a precious resource not often seen except on the tables of the rich, where small pots of the stuff were placed halfway down a noble’s long dining table. The lords, ladies and exalted ones (which is to say, not us) sat “above the salt” as a mark of their lofty station, while us peasants, rabble, assorted commoners and lowlifes sat “below the salt” – and it’s clear where the Chief Adept’s preferences and antecedents lie.

Since Calgary is known for its maritime waterways, it was just a matter of time before Captain Colp sailed into my area with a blatting tantaraa of trumpets, all flags waving, and a fistful of bottles in each hand. And so we met and had a most enjoyable afternoon running through his line of rums, getting progressively more hammered by the minute, until it was all we could do not to break into sea chanteys and do a hornpipe right there in the bar (well…I exaggerate a little for effect because I can’t let a good story pass…but only a little) — and because I really liked this one a lot, I’m going to start with it to give an introduction to the company, the man and the rum

Rum Specs, Tasting Notes

Basically this is a rum that is not quite an agricole-style, but close: cane honey in this case, or more specifically, unrefined Guatemalan and Demerara cane juice crystals (specifically not refined sugar) akin to jaggery or panela, re-liquefied, rendered down to honey, and then fermented for a few days. The distillate coming off the pot still is then aged – if the term could be used – in just about dead’r-than-a-doornail casks sourced in the Caribbean, with little to offer except maybe bad advice, for six to eight weeks: just long enough to impart a little colour, but not enough to appreciably alter the flavour profile that was (and is) desired.

Cap’n Colp is a huge proponent of letting natural flavours pop out, and some edge be retained, without too much oak influence gumming up the works. One aspect of the process that comes in for mention here is that Gregg re-distils the lees in each run, for added flavour and bite and pungency, and it is this step that I believe elevates the rum beyond the puling milquetoast vodka wannabes that populate far too much of the barren wasteland of the Canadian rum shop shelves into something really original.

“Wow!” I wrote in my initial evaluation when I smelled it – “This thing has real character!” And it does. The nose starts out with the aroma of forests and sun-dappled jungle glades steaming after a warm tropical rain: loam, wet earth, brine, mud, waterlogged bark — and believe me, this is far from unpleasant, more like a deep mossy herbal scent that channels cane rum in a fascinatingly different way. And that’s just the start – the fruits make their entrance after a while: ripe green grapes, apples, tart peaches, overripe mangoes, attended by light florals and and sweet sugar water, plus (and I know this will turn some off) ashes and dusty cardboard. I mean, the nose pretty much presses most of the buttons we would expect in an unaged or young agricole from the islands…except that this is made north of 49.

The palate is also really good, notwithstanding the living room strength with which it comes out: it tastes initially of fresh hay drying in the sunshine after a rain, as well as of honey, sugar water, sweet corn, green peas from the can… odd I’ll grant you, but far from unpleasant. Original is not a bad word to describe it, yet completely rum-like. Moreover, after a while we also get white fruits, watermelons, brine, a few Moroccan red olives, a touch of ashes and cardboard again, and just enough lemon zest to make a point without overwhelming everything. It all leads to a subtly powerful finish that sums up all of the above, without adding anything to the party – light fruits, some sour and tart notes, laban, yogurt, ashes, lemon zest and a nice filip of delicate florals.

Summing Up

Like I said, it’s a lot, and I think that as a sipping rum,it’s really nice, even if the company website suggests it’s something of a mixer’s ingredient (good for a “caipirinha, pisco sour, mojito, and even some traditionally tequila based drinks” says the website). It has that versatility of purpose that I think makes for a good rum that tyros can cut their teeth on, without alienating more experienced drinkers. It works, in short, on many levels at once.

Lest you believe this was the romanticized ravings of an over the hill reviewer who imbibed too much, and got far too high on his friend’s supply, I invite you, should you come across a bottle, to give it a try. It reminds me of some lof the experiments I tried from those new UK distilleries a year or two back – it shares much of the same sense of untamed wild madness, the desire to go where the process led and to hell with tradition. It’s a sort of analogue to writing, I think – you write what you yourself want to read and head in the direction where that leads you.

Here, Gregg Colp has experimented, added eye of newt and tail of toad into his cauldron, stirred, added some spider’s webs and his own personal brand of magic – and come up with a rum that he himself wanted to drink. And man, does it ever work, on many levels. I’m going to go right out there and buy pretty much everything else the guy makes, I’m that impressed with it. I hope you can try it yourself one day, and see if you agree.

(#1122)(86/100) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

  • Video recap link of the review
  • Video recap of the distillery background
  • There’s a non-rum-related story behind the photograph and the name of the rum, but the website covers enough of that and this review is already too long. It channels a typically Maritime sense of humour, tall tales of the Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill stripe, plus a play on words that any punster would enjoy. I’ll leave you to check it out.
  • The outturn is unknown. A few thousand bottles per batch, I think.
  • The company is available on social media (FB, IG, YT) and their website is here.

Rivers Royale “Slightly Overproof” Grenadian White Rum – Review

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Apr 032025
 

We have looked at rums from Rivers Antoine before, although admittedly that was just the regularly available 69% version, which I’ve tried several times. Now, Rivers Antoine is a very old rum making estate on Grenada — they date back to 1785, were certainly in existence since two decades before that, and have only grudgingly upgraded their facilities in all that time — and is perhaps unique in that they not only grow their own sugar cane with which they press and render to “honey” make their rums, but the press is run by a water wheel (made in 1840), the fermentation is in open vats, the yeast is wild, and the rums they make are like no others. Trust me on this.

Basic production stats: cane juice syrup (some cane is from their own estate, some is bought from surrounding farmers), fermented in open topped concrete tanks which are not cleaned out between batches, so a little bit of previous batches carries forward into the next one. Wild (naturally airborne) yeast, eight days or so fermentation, and then it’s run through one or both of the two double retort pot stills (one Vendome, one John Dore), fed by wood-fueled fires underneath each, and the resultant distillate froths and smokes off the still at around 75-80%. As I’ve said, this is dialled down to 69% for the “standard” version that can be taken on flights, but this one is different, being bottled at 75%, or close to still strength.

What results from all this is a rum of real character: anyone who smells this isn’t going to forget it in a hurry. It’s a pungent, potent, pot still putain, hard bitten and hard boiled as a thirties noir gumshoe, with scents to match. It’s rubbery, ester driven, sour and with as much glue as a glossy new fashion magazine hot off the presses. And as if that isn’t enough, you’ll smell plasticine, varnish, turpentine, and then the sour-sweet scent of kimchi, rotting oranges, ripe mangoes, and if you think this is a Jamaican funk bomb detonating in y9our face, well, it’s pretty close. Rivers never bothers to make a fuss over that, simply letting the product speak for itself…and it sure doesn’t speak in quiet modulated tones, but bellows its puissance from the rooftop.

I know this may sound like over the top insanity to smell, but rest assured that the taste is much more approachable, without ever letting go of its slightly off-kilter vibe.It presents some light fruits and sugar, again the sourness of gooseberries and overripe oranges — the part that distinguishes it from the Jamaicans is a certain agricole-style herbaceousness, a sort of green lemongrass and citrus note that combines well with balsamic vinegar and olives and the faintest suggestion of salt. And the finish…wow. Epic, long lasting, green and fragrant, very fruity with pineapples and spearmint and (yes, still here), grass, miso soup, rubber and plastic notes that fortunately are well tamed by this time. Basically, as my burb states — Rivers starts like a bat out of hell and then slows down to one wing short of batsh*t crazy by the end.

At 75% ABV we should not be surprised at the hot and spicy nature of it, yet it carries the weight of that strength without too much of an assault on the senses – I actually think once you get used to it, it’s something of a (slightly masochistic, admittedly) fun and interesting tasting experience. There’s such a joyous irreverence of competing flavours going on inside, it’s so strong and moves so fast, that one can only wonder how so much was stuffed into a standard barroom bottle without it shattering to shards on the spot.

Sure, most people will mix it – with coconut water, a soda, ice or whatever’s on hand (I think it would shine in a daiquiri), yet I submit that perhaps it’s worth trying by itself, just the one time. Because even though, afterwards, you might not remember everything that happens, you’ll know you had a good time while it lasted.

(#1114)(85/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other notes

Clairin Sonson Unaged White Rhum (Haiti) – Review

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May 302022
 

While there are hundreds of clairin makers in Haiti, and they have been making cane juice spirits there since before the country’s independence in 1804, widespread modern knowledge of the spirit only really came after 2014, when it was introduced to the global audience by Velier, the Italian company made famous by its Demeraras, Caronis, and Habitation pot still rums series. Strictly speaking, Velier’s stable of clairins consists of just five core products from five small distilleries, but this obscures the regular annual releases of the unaged whites, the aged variants, and the various blends.

Initially, clairins from three distilleries were released (Sajous, Casimir and Vaval) a fourth (from Le Rocher) was selected and became part of the canon in 2017, and in 2018 a fifth was put together from a small distillery in Cabaret called Sonson — which is, oddly enough, not named after either the owner, or the village where it is located. It was finally released to the market in 2021, but the cause for the delay is unknown. The rum, like Clairin Le Rocher (but unlike the other three) is made from syrup, not pure cane juice; and like the Clairin Vaval, derives from a non-hybridized varietal of sugar cane called Madam Meuze, juice from which is also part of the clairin Benevolence blend. All the other stats are similar to the other clairins: hand harvested, wild yeast fermentation, run through a pot still, bottled without ageing at 53.2%.

Similar aspects or not, the Sonson stands resolutely by itself. On the initial nose, the sensation is of a miasma of fuel, benzine, brine and wax in a semi-controlled nasal explosion. The thing, no joke, reeks, and if it doesn’t quite mirror the gleeful wild insanity of the original Sajous – fondly if tremblingly remembered after all these years – well, it certainly cranks out burnt clutch and smoking motor oil drizzled with the smoke of a farting kerosene camp stove. Thankfully this is brief, and setting the glass aside for a bit and coming back an hour later, it appears almost sedate in comparison: acetone, nail polish remover and some serious olivular action (is that a word?), the aroma of a freshly painted room in a spanking new house. And after that there’s apple cider, slightly spoiled milk, gooseberries, orange rind and bananas in a sort of Haitian funk party, behind which are timid scents of sugar water, fleshy fruits, herbs and spicy-hot Thai veggie soup sporting some lemongrass. And all that in an unaged rum? Damn.

The surprising thing is, the palate is almost like a different animal. It’s luscious, it’s sweeter, more pungent, more tart. It channels watery, rather mild fruits – melons, pears, papaya – which in turn hold at bay the more sour elements like unripe pineapples, lemon zest and green mango chutney: you notice them, but they’re not overbearing. Somewhere in all of this one can taste mineral water, crackers and salt butter, the silkiness of a gin and tonic and the musky dampness of moss on a misty morning. It’s only on the finish that things finally settle down to something even remotely resembling a standard profile: it’s medium long, a little sweet, a little sour, a little briny, tart with yoghurt and a last touch of fruits and sweet red paprika.

Every clairin I’ve tried – and that includes the other four Velier-distributed versions, the Benevolence and a couple from Moscoso distillers – is different from every other. Even where there similar elements, they bend in different ways, and admittedly, sometimes it’s hard to remember that they are supposed to be sugar cane juice based drinks at all. The heft of the Sonson, and the amount of disorganised flavours at play within it, is really quite stunning…and disconcerting. I think it’s that first nose that confounds, because if one can get past its rough machine-shop rambunctiousness, it settles down and becomes really nice (within its limits – I agree, it’s not a rum for everyone).

It’s also a rum to take one’s time with: after leaving my glass on the go overnight, when I sniffed it the following morning most of the oily rubber notes had gone, leaving only fruit and cereal and estery aromas behind, and those were lovely. Yet the rum will polarize, because it is cut from a different cloth than most rums or rhums we know and like better, and its peculiarities will not find fertile ground everywhere. I believe that the clairin Sonson is a rum that required courage to make and fortitude to drink… and perhaps a brave and imaginative curiosity to love.

(#912)(83/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Other notes

  • The word clairin means “clear” in Haitian creole
  • Of the five Velier-released clairins, I still like Casimir, Vaval and Le Rocher best on a tasting basis, but admire the Sajous and the Sonson most for sheer audacity.
  • Other reviews in the blogosphere are middling positive:

 

Richland Single Estate Georgia Rum – Review

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Jul 132016
 

 

Richland 1*

By itself with nothing else around, it’ll do just fine as a light and casual sipper. It chips along easy, dances pretty around your palate, and has delicate notes that are quite enjoyable. In conjunction with others, it kinda chokes.

This review has been sitting, waiting, gathering dust, for many months now, and the bullet, so to speak, had to be bitten. If I had never tasted a raft of rums from around the world the day the Richland crossed my path, I might have liked it a lot more. But what did happen is that my friends and I did a deep field sample of maybe fifteen rums in a six hour session, and this one suffered in comparison. Not so much because it failed in and of itself, but because during that extended sampling exercise, it was compared with and contrasted to many other rums…and that really allowed us to get into it in a way that more casual imbibers probably wouldn’t. And sank it to the bottom of my pile.

Richland 2It’s a US entry into the cane juice rhum (not “agricole”) world, distilled from locally grown sugar cane rendered down into “honey” in a copper pot still, aged around four years or so in charred American oak barrels, bottled at 43%, and on that basis it certainly has all the proper boxes ticked. Fascinatingly enough, future plans are to have each bottle numbered so the exact barrel from which it came is traceable. I refer you to Dave Russell’s in-depth essay on the rum (which he liked much more than I did), which saves me the trouble of regurgitating it all here. One surprise – are there really no other rum producers in the USA who use a pot still and sugar cane honey in a single pass? Surprising, but interesting all the same. Kudos.

Now, nose and taste wise, the rum, a gold one, was pretty good: easy-going, delicate, light and very sweet. Behind a rather surprising rubber opening smell, lurked the florals, a lot of them. It was like being in an airconditioned flower shop just after a delivery came in, redolent of lavender and perfumed soap and shampoo (I guarantee, no other reviewer will mention that), 7-up and bubble gum. It tiptoed around the nose, and other, equally light notes of sugar water and lemon grass and a little vanilla, coconut, came through.

Sipping it resolved some issues, created others and circled back to the original. The nose did provide the promise of some complexity but the palate didn’t deliver quite as much: it was warm and more basic, and the hint of agricole-profile that might have been expected was not distinctively there. What indeed it tasted like was an uneasy mixture of bananas, sugar water and air-freshener, mixed with potpourri and cooking herbs (dill and rosemary) and even a stick of licorice. After some time the sweet took a back seat, some tartness of apples and oak took over, caramel and vanilla and smoke became more readily discernible, to dominate the rest of the extended tasting. And underlying it all, throughout the session from start to finish, that travelling-bag scent refused to go away — although honesty compels me to admit I was the only one who seemed to notice it. Thank God it was faint. Finish was perfectly serviceable, warm and not too spicy, more rubber, more air freshener, more flowers, more vanilla, more oak…and if that doesn’t sound pleasing, well, it was, quite light and airy and melded reasonably well.

Cutting to the chase, my opinion is that it’s decent, without being particularly spectacular. The taste is an uneasy marriage of competing individual notes that hearken back to almost different profiles altogether, like a sharp agricole trying to be a Bajan. Doesn’t really work. Plus, over a long time, going back to it every half hour or so, the metamorphosis from light and tasty sipping rum into some weird sweet air-freshener-like liquid also sank it for me. It may be a batch thing, since this is a pot still, small batch artisanal rum, and some variations of quality are to be expected.

Comparison might be the key here. Taste it alone, you’re fine. You’ll like it, as long as light-bodied, unaggressive tamped-down 40% agricoles are your thing. Try it as part of an extended range of good rums, let the thing stand and aerate for a while, put aside any preconceived notions and you’d be surprised how much changes in both the rum, and your estimation of it. In my case, that wasn’t for the better.

(#282 / 75/100)

Lost Spirits Navy Style Rum – Review

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Nov 252015
 
LP_Navy

Photo Courtesy of duRhum.com

Leave aside the hype and controversy, and try this without preconceptions. You may be surprised, intrigued and even pleased with the result. I was, I was and I wasn’t, not entirely…but you might be.

If by now you are not aware that Lost Spirits out of California has developed a “molecular reactor” that supposedly mimics the ageing of a twenty year rum in six days, then you have not been paying attention (or aren’t that deep into rum geekdom). The idea is not itself altogether new, and detractors have sniffed that snake oil sellers have been talking forever about using magical means, family recipes and all kinds of fancy methods to speed up ageing and the profile of old spirits, in products that aren’t actually aged. Still, with the continual advances in modern tech, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that some smart guy in a garage somewhere can perhaps do such a thing. Certainly Lost Spirits makes that claim. They have intense enthusiasm, hand built stills, and a good knowledge of chemistry and biology to assist in replicating more traditional methods of production without actually using many of them. The output is more important than the process, you might say.

The Navy Style rum they have made is a booming near-overproof rum that smartly elevates the North American drinking public’s perception of rum by issuing it at 68%, and which comes in a tall slim bottle that has an old fashioned label channelling the aesthetic design philosophy of both technology and 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery (that’s what Josh Miller called “steampunk” in his own recent review of the rum). Just to get the background out of the way, this thing is unadulterated, without additives of any kind, including colouring. It is made from baking grade molasses and evaporated sugar cane juice (I suppose we could call that “honey”).

The nose was intriguing: an interesting fusion of very hot aromas, both familiar and strange. Initially it presented with vanilla, prunes, black grapes, some molasses, a faint hint of anise, some oak, and a bit of clean citrus. But sharper ethanol and less appealing mineral notes of wet charcoal and saltpetr emerged at the back end, and here I was left wondering where the meld of Jamaican dunder and fruitiness of the Demeraras and Bajans was hiding itself.

Similar thoughts came to mind as I tasted it. Yes it was bold and very heated – we could hardly expect less from a rum this strong – I just thought it was all a bit discombobulated. There were salty, green-olive notes, some soy and grappa and red wine, all mixed up with an undercurrent of molasses. It was quite rough, and stampeded across the palate without the finesse that other rums of that strength have shown is possible. Adding water ameliorated that somewhat, and brought other flavours out of hiding – brown sugar, vegetals, dried grass, more undefined citrus zest, and a tang of more red grapes, caramel and molasses, all tied up with sharper oak tannins and ginger root. The finish, as befits such a strong drink, was long and dry, with little that was new arriving onstage – oak, some wet coffee grounds, more of that strange mineral background, and a twitch of herbs.

Lost Spirits have made a rum that they want to show off as a poster boy for their technology: whether they succeeded in creating a Navy rum is questionable. There are quite a few variations of the type – Lamb’s, Pusser’s, Wood’s 100, Potter’s, the Black Tot to name but a few – so much so that true or not, right or wrong, those are the profiles that the consuming public sees and expects to be represented by the sobriquet “Navy”. On that level, the Lost Spirit rum doesn’t come up to snuff. And while other reviewers have remarked on the esters they sensed (which is part of the selling point of the rum, that genuflection to old-style dunder pits), I didn’t find there were that many complex spicy, fruity and floral notes that would give any of the more traditional rum makers cause to choke into their tasting glasses.

Recently mon ami Cyril of DuRhum took apart three Lost Spirits rums, and flat out declared that in his estimation they could not possibly class with the very rums they were seeking to supplant. Both Josh at Inu-a-kena and Tiare over by A Mountain of Crushed Ice were much more positive in their evaluations, as was Serge at Whiskyfun. I am neither as displeased by Lost Spirits as Cyril was, nor as enthusiastic as my other friends – to my mind the company and its tech still have quite some way to go if they intend to take on really aged big guns made by master blenders with many generations of experience backing them up. Western nations are great proponents of the notion that technology can conquer everything, and maybe they’re right…but only sometimes.

However, let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater, and give Lost Spirits credit for what they have achieved. I liked the strength and intensity, for example – LS has had the balls to take American rums past the 40% that dominates their market. The taste was intriguing, original, not entirely bad, and there were many aspects of the profile I enjoyed. Where it fails is in its resultant product, which wanders too far afield while failing to cohere. And therefore it falls short on its promise: the promise that they could produce a profile of any aged rum without actually ageing it. That simply didn’t happen here.

I’m a firm believer in technology and its potential – but as with many brand new ideas and their execution, the hype so far is greater than the reality. The subtleties of a great aged rum are so multi-faceted, so enormously complex, and so chaotically intertwined with age and barrel and distillate and fermentation and even terroire, that while one day I have no doubt a combination of physics, chemistry and biology (and chutzpah) will fool a taster into believing he’s got an undiscovered masterpiece on his hands, this rum, for today, isn’t quite it.

(#242. 83/100)

Other notes:

  • Control rums this time around were a few old Demeraras, the BBR Jamaica 1977, Woods 100 and of course the Black Tot. It’s in the comparison that the LS Navy 68% snaps more clearly into focus and you see where it both succeeds and falls short.
  • Note that Navy rums, according to Mr. Broome’s informative booklet on the ‘Tot, only had a small percentage of the blend come from Jamaica (sailors didn’t like it). Yet most of the online literature on Lost Spirits places great emphasis on how they are recreating the resultant profile of dunder pits and high ester counts (more or less associated with Jamaica), when in fact this was not the major part of the navy style of rum.
  • Also… just because I don’t (thus far) endorse or highly praise this line of rums, doesn’t mean others don’t. North Americans are quite positive in their assessments, while European writers thus far remain silent (perhaps due to availability). So some references for your research, should you be curious: