Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum (Rye Cask)(Bermuda) – Review

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Oct 012025
 

The Family Reserve Old Rum released by Gosling’s is, aside from the single barrel “Papa Seal” edition, probably their top end, limited edition, premium rum, and depending on where you are, costs around CAN$80-100. I’m not sure how regularly they come out, since this is not mentioned on the bottle labels or the website, but based on secondary sources, I think it’s an annual thing. The original release, which was first seen in the early 2000s and is not a seriously limited anything, is the most commonly seen.

But in 2024, Gosling’s decided to put out something a bit different: the same Old FR Rum… aged for a further three years in Rye casks. That at least showed they were thinking a little outside the box and wanted to explore different variations of the standard line, though for my money I think they could have beefed it up a bit and not just stuck with the same old standard strength: after all, if you are releasing something more upscale, the people who have the coin to afford it are likely to have more experience with spirits that are of a higher proof anyway, so what’s the issue?

Be that as it may, beyond the secondary maturation, the rum conforms to all the markers of the original: 40% ABV, a molasses-based blend, ex-bourbon ageing for the first 16-19 years, probably a pot-column still mashup. I’ve already commented on this lack of disclosure regarding production details, so won’t rehash my remarks here yet again.

So, what’s it like? Well, all in all, not bad. The extra ageing makes itself felt on the nose with some light sweetness, nougat, almonds, unsweetened chocolate and coffee grounds, with a nice touch of dried prunes and raisins. There’s a vague mint and briny note here that’s probably the rye cask influence, plus vanilla and caramel and even an overripe apple or two to mix things up. 

It’s as warm and and easy on the palate as the nose – there is no aggressiveness here. That’s both a good and a bad thing, depending on your preferences, but I will say it’s really pleasant. The tastes hearken to light citrus (tangerines, ruby grapefruit), with additional notes of bubble gum, black pepper, vanilla, cinnamon, toffee, honey, oak, wet coffee grounds. The finish is consistent with the Original FR edition, which is to say, nothing special, repeating all the notes we’ve already seen on the nose and the palate – dried fruits, honey, pepper, slight citrus, vanilla and some sweet..

Some online reviews remark on the impact that the rye ageing imparts – I don’t get much of that myself, however, and the improvement of the profile it displays could just as easily come from better barrel management and additional ageing as the whisky influence. Overall, it’s a good rum for those who swim in the shallow waters of living room strength and a little extra complexity, without venturing out past the reef into the deeper trenches of shark territory. 

I was not an enthusiastic fan of the “straight” Family Reserve – I might have been, earlier in my rum journey – here, this one succeeds in a way that the Original doesn’t. It displays, for want of a better word, just a shade more character. It tastes pretty good and noses well, it showcases some more zip and pep which is welcome, and if it fails on the counts of disclosure and on proof point, well, I can’t say I didn’t have a good time drinking it without guardrails or a life vest… or a shark cage. 

Maybe that’s a recommendation after all.

(#1131)(83/100) ⭐⭐⭐½

Company background (from Review #1129)

Gosling’s hails from Bermuda, which is a British Overseas Territory, Britain’s oldest: the company is closely identified with the island and is, aside from tourism and some manufacturing, a mainstay of Bermuda’s non-financial-services economy. 

The Gosling enterprise has been in business on Bermuda since 1806, when the ship’s charter for business in the USA expired while on the high seas. So instead of landing in Virginia, James Gosling, the son of a wine and spirits merchant in England, went ashore in St. George’s instead, and set up shop there with his brother, trading in spirits he had brought with him. Rum blending from imported distillates began in 1860, with the Old Rum brand launching three years later. The company’s rums were originally sold directly from barrels to customers who brought their own bottles, a practise that continued until the Great War; however, Goslings’ rums’ popularity and sales took off when they began salvaging used champagne bottles from the British navy’s officer’s mess, filling those with rum and sealing them with black wax.

The Old Rum was renamed the Black Seal, with the now-famous seal logo designed and coming into use in 1948: the champagne bottles are rarer now, used only for the Family Reserve line, but the logo has remained in use ever since. It is the company’s flagship brand and goes hand in glove with their signature cocktail “The Dark ‘n’ Stormy, which was developed in the mid 1960s and trademarked in 1980 (and rigorously enforced).

Other notes

  • Video recap link
  • The bottle number is 11595/24 – my conjecture is that the last two digits represent the year of release.
  • Even though the rum is titled as having a Rye “finish”, my personal opinion is that any secondary ageing exceeding one year is no longer a finish but a secondary maturation.

 

Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum (Bermuda) – Review

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Sep 292025
 

In the current lineup from Goslings, the Bermuda-based blenders and bottlers (as far as I know they are not distilling rums), there are four different quasi-premium products: the “Spirited Seas” 44% ABV rum which is partially matured on the high seas, the “Papa Seal” single barrel aged rum at 41.5%, and two variations of the “Family Reserve Old Rum” at 40%, one of which we will look at today.

In the last century or before it may really have been the practise for estates and distilleries – many owned privately – to hold back some exceptional barrels to bottle for the lords of the manor and their families, or members of the upper management.  Such “reserved” stocks, often older than the norm, were gradually commercialized, and released with titles like Chairman’s Reserve, Family Reserve, Private Stock, President’s Choice, or whatever, meant to capitalize on their unique, limited, elevated nature. They are, of course, meant to be premium rums, and priced accordingly, and if we proles could afford a bottle, then we could sip – vicariously, to be sure – at the tables of the upper crust and consider ourselves grateful (or so the theory goes).

The Gosling’s Family Reserve Old Rum, first brought to market in the very early 2000s (I’ve heard 2003, or 2005), is one of these. Subject to my opinion below, let’s accept (for now) that it’s a molasses-based pot-column blend, aged for sixteen to nineteen years, released at 40% and costing around Can$70-100, when it can be found. 

Considering the nose showcases some of its weaknesses to a modern audiences: it’s thin, it’s weak and takes far too long to open up. After about ten minutes in a covered glass, there’s little to mark it as being premium anything: we get some wet grass, dark cherries, cinnamon, caramel, toffee, a touch of white chocolate, and some dried raisins. With effort, one might make out some overripe oranges, bananas and walnuts, but that’s reaching.

The palate is similarly unprepossessing. It is soft and easy to sip, of course – the strength and the ageing have sanded off any rough edges – with notes of leather, vanilla, sweet smoky paprika and freshly cut bell peppers, plus honey and maybe a wine-y hint or two. Some raisins, some crushed nuts, stale coffee grounds and all this leads to a short, lacklustre finish that’s an indeterminate mish-mash of caramel, vanilla, orange peel, and those coffee grounds again.

From these brief notes, you can clearly see I’m not impressed, because, for a rum positioning itself as special, there’s not enough to justify either the cachet or the price. For its time, I guess it did its job. In this day and age, it’s fails the Stewart Affordability Conjecture, in spades. It’s clearly a rum, decent enough – it just doesn’t deliver anything we don’t already get elsewhere with more flair at lesser prices. And if you want a comparison, just take down any Foursquare ECS edition bottled at a similar strength, and meditate on the difference between this pleasant but one-dimensional rum, and real craftsmanship.  But you know, the virtual disappearance of the rum from any kind of “best-of” lists or medal winners in recent years makes the karmic point better than any rebuttal I could write here, so I’ll just shrug, smile and move on.

(#1130)(80/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Company background (from Review #1129)

Gosling’s hails from Bermuda, which is a British Overseas Territory, Britain’s oldest: the company is closely identified with the island and is, aside from tourism and some manufacturing, a mainstay of Bermuda’s non-financial-services economy. 

The Gosling enterprise has been in business on Bermuda since 1806, when the ship’s charter for business in the USA expired while on the high seas (the ship was apparently becalmed for longer than expected). So instead of landing in Virginia, James Gosling, the son of a wine and spirits merchant in England, went ashore in St. George’s instead, and set up shop there with his brother Ambrose, trading in spirits he had brought with him. Rum blending from imported distillates began in 1860, with the Old Rum brand launching three years later. The company’s rums were originally sold directly from barrels to customers who brought their own bottles, a practise that continued until the Great War; however, Goslings’ rums’ popularity and sales took off when they began salvaging used champagne bottles from the British navy’s officer’s mess, filling those with rum and sealing them with black wax.

The Old Rum was renamed the Black Seal, with the now-famous seal logo designed and coming into use in 1948: the champagne bottles are rarer now, used only for the Family Reserve line, but the logo has remained in use ever since. It is the company’s flagship brand and goes hand in glove with their signature cocktail “The Dark ‘n’ Stormy, which was developed in the mid 1960s and trademarked in 1980 (and rigorously enforced).

Commentary | Opinion

First released in 2005, the Family Reserve Old Rum proudly adheres — on both the label and the website — to all the annoying lack of disclosure I remarked on with the 151 Overproof. The provenance is murky, the outturn is unknown, the blend is supposedly but unconfirmed to be pot and column distillates, and it’s aged “up to” sixteen years – hardly the best way to flog a much-touted premium product which the Caribbean Journal named its Rum of the Year in 2012 (Goslings on their undated website entry for the rum, casually restates this as “the Caribbean Journal named Goslings Family Reserve Old Rum the No.1 aged rum in the world.”)

Maybe those were simpler and more innocent times in the rumiverse, and maybe my impatience with marketing-speak informs my snark. Frankly, it surpasses my understanding how in this modern day and age, when the provision of information has been a hotly discussed point for over a decade, we still have to be Sherlock Holmes to get some bare bones, basic info. Goslings positions the rum as some kind of premium rum while telling us almost nothing about it. It was perhaps understandable back in the day, but now, it’s indefensible. 

Other notes

  • Video recap link
  • The bottle number is 4992/19 – my conjecture is that the last two digits represent the year of release.

Goslings 151 Proof Black Seal Bermuda Black Rum – Review

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Sep 262025
 

Goslings remains a well-regarded rum brand for Americans in particular, even if most rum geeks pass it by these days, in favour of better rums with more disclosure and more distinct flavour profiles. At the time when I began my own rum journey, they were a mainstay of the affordable and easily mixable rums (Appleton, Cruzan, Doorley’s, Flor de Cana, Pussers and El Dorado were others), but over the years they have receded somewhat from the minds of many. Still, the brand exists and has an ever expanding stable of releases, it couldn’t very well be ignored forever. So when I passed through Toronto’s Little Sister bar and restaurant where my friend Robin Wynne hangs his hat these days, and I saw he had some bottles on his shelf…well, what’s a guy to do? 

I’ll provide a more detailed company backgrounder below this review: for the moment, let me just mention that there’s a lack of information about what goes into Goslings rums which I find highly irritating in this day and age. It is never mentioned where the base distillate for their various releases comes from – not for the Black Seal, the 151, the Spirited Seas, Family Reserve or Single Barrel, none of them. We also don’t know the still of origin, or the age; however, House of Malt website in the UK notes it as being a minimum of three years old, and aged in charred barrels. However, given the hue, it’s obviously got E150 chucked in to ensure the dark colour gives the (misleading) impression of more serious ageing. 

So: it’s a 151 overproof rum (see here for an in-depth article on the subject) at 75.5% ABV, sulking in the glass, dark of hue and sullen in mien, inspiring nothing but nervousness brought about by traumatic encounters with others of its tribe… like, oh, the Bacardi 151. The first smells are hot and fierce and thin, redolent of plastic and furniture polish, but fortunately the nose settles its ass down after a bit, and then one gets mostly leather, smoke, carmel and molasses. There’s some damp tobacco and cinnamon, some raisins, maybe a fig or two – overall, it’s not too bad, if one has the patience to wait a while for the alcohol to burn off so the aromas can be more clearly sensed.

I genuinely believe that even at that strength, the taste is surprisingly good for a rum that numbered itself among the entry-level bottom-feeders. Once one recovers one’s voice and the tonsils settle down from the attack of sharp alcohol, there are notes of plasticine, rubber, and candy floss, as well as hints of white chocolate and an uninspired macchiato with too much foam. Add to that some cinnamon, molasses, caramel, toffee, almonds, cardamom, stale coffee grounds (!), plus some bitterness and dried fruits in the backseat, and that’s pretty much it. At that strength the exit takes its own sweet time, but overall, long as it is, the finish adds little that’s new to the party, so I’ll leave it there.

The question that arises, after tasting it is: where does the distillate originate? Bermuda doesn’t have a sugar industry or a serious distillation tradition and Goslings seems to have always imported its stocks. I have an unconfirmed report that Foursquare has provided barrels in the past, but the countries that jumped to mind for me as I tasted it were more Guyana and Trinidad. It remains an unanswered question for now, so if it’s terroire you want, look elsewhere, ’cause it ain’t here.

Most people who’ve written long or short evaluations of Gosling’s 151 over the last decade rate it at around 7/10, which I think is about right. There is more under the hood than I thought there would be, but that statement has to be parsed carefully. For one, the very dark reddish brown tint is unnatural, even for a rum aged for three years in charred barrels; the tastes are very traditional, heralding back to two decades ago when blends were everything and we were never told what the components were. But, we’ve moved on since those more innocent times, and here there’s little that’s new or exciting – the selling point is, of course, the strength, which suits it for exactly what it is, i.e., a mixing ingredient for strong cocktails.

That said, as a rum speaking for Bermuda based on tastes, hardly. It’s indeterminate, fairly straightforward and well done, yet offers little that’s exciting.  It’s just a decent rum, that’s all: if that’s all you’re after, if you could care less about terroire, and the strength doesn’t put you off…well, then it’s worth a buy. I guess.

(#1129)(78/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Company background

So: Goslings. Let’s recap the history for those who like to know this stuff. Gosling’s hails from Bermuda, which is a British Overseas Territory, Britain’s oldest: the company is closely identified with the island and is, aside from tourism and some manufacturing, a mainstay of Bermuda’s non-financial-services economy. 

The Gosling enterprise has been in business on Bermuda since 1806, when the ship’s charter for business in the USA expired while on the high seas. So instead of landing in Virginia, James Gosling, the son of a wine and spirits merchant in England, went ashore in St. George’s instead, and set up shop there with his brother. Rum blending from imported distillates began in 1860 (one wonders what they did before then), with the Old Rum brand launching three years later. The company’s rums were originally sold directly from barrels to customers who brought their own bottles, a practise that continued until the Great War; however, Goslings’ rums’ popularity and sales took off when they began salvaging used champagne bottles from the British navy’s officer’s mess, filling those with rum and sealing them with black wax.

The Old Rum was renamed the Black Seal, with the now-famous seal logo designed and coming into use in 1948: the champagne bottles are rarer now, used only for the Family Reserve line, but the logo has remained in use ever since. It is the company’s flagship brand and goes hand in glove with their signature cocktail “The Dark ‘n’ Stormy, which was developed in the mid 1960s and trademarked in 1980 (and rigorously enforced, as my friend Josh Miller of the rum website Inu-a-kena once found, to his chagrin).

Other notes

  • Video recap link
  • I could only find one hydrometer test on Gosling’s 151, and it was done in 2017 by The Fat Rum Pirate. It shows as pretty much “clean.”

Gosling’s Black Seal Bermuda Rum – Review

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Oct 132010
 

First posted 13 October 2010 on Liquorature

My younger brother and I have always had an excellent relationship, and the other day when I was in Toronto (I drove there from Cowtown) we had a small session, even though we didn’t have anything special to sample – to my surprise, the LCBO prices were higher than those in Calgary and so I simply laughed at the $550 for the Appleton 30 yr old, or the $120 for the El Dorado 21 and bought the Gosling’s Black Seal.

Gosling’s hails from Bermuda: like Appleton’s, Mount Gay or el Dorado, it is closely identified with its island of origin and is, aside from tourism, a mainstay of Bermuda’s economy and probably its main export. The Gosling enterprise has been in business on Bermuda since 1806, when instead of landing in Virginia, the founder went ashore in St. George’s and set up shop. The Dark Seal is their flagship product and goes hand in glove with their trademarked (yes, they have the rights to the name) cocktail “The Dark ‘n’ Stormy.”  Note that the rum was not named for the sea animal, but for the black sealing wax with which the first bottles were closed. For some reason, the company does not feel that you need to know how old it is, though their website entry does helpfully note that it is aged in charred American oak casks, and is a blend of pot and column still distillates.

The rum is dark with russet-red tints, and has a surprisingly medium body (I expected something heavier for a rum this dark). It is made from three distillates – I was unable to ascertain from where the raw stock is imported – aged three to six years in the standard once-used, charred oak barrels that once held bourbon.  What results is a nose of some sharpness (reminds me a bit of Buckley’s, to be honest), but which holds in elements of brown sugar, vanilla, and later, fruit and citrus peel of some kind. I thought I tasted cinnamon behind all the burnt sugar, but won’t swear to it, and my bro’ didn’t sniff it either.

On the tongue, the sharpness and spirit burn mar what is otherwise a decent drink – perhaps I should not be expecting too much from a young rum like this one – but it does have a stronger fruity taste than I had suspected, and the overall flavour profile hints at complexities marrying cirtus, apple and vanilla, all in reasonably good balance. The finish, alas, is short and bitchy, and what spices Gosling has added impart a last bit of undeserved bitterness…and once again I am reminded that in youthful, mostly unaged rums – I do not consider anything under five years to be aged at all, but I’m snotty that way so you may disregard me – not much effort is made to make the finish worthy of note.  Since such Single Digit Rums are often made only for cooking, mixing or as bases for something else, perhaps I should count myself as fortunate.

All the above aside, I wasn’t too displeased with what I found.  It’s sweet enough, a bit young and brash, lacks experience and complexity, but has a good heart.  After we had dinner, we poured ourselves our individual libations (me rum, him beer), relaxed, leaned back; and I thought to myself that there are worse things in life than sharing pleasant conversation of the sort only close siblings or best friends have, while sipping an unpretentious rum I didn’t have to worry about appreciating.

(#040)(Unscored)