El Dorado Cask Strength, Single Still 2009 12 YO (PM) Guyana Rum – Review

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Aug 142024
 

Today’s review is all about an El Dorado rum from Guyana’s famed (and only remaining) distillery, DDL. The backstory is quite fascinating because it shines a light into how large companies which lack the nimble footwork and quick reaction time of small upstart independents, can — once they get going and commit their resources to the job — produce something really good. However, I’ll add that as a note below the main review so you don’t expire of boredom before discovering how the rum actually is.

The 12YO 2009 El Dorado rum, is one of the single still expressions which began to surface around 2018 or so with a surprising lack of fanfare. Most of these new products were from the three wooden stills, issued at 40%, with occasional outliers popping to the surface now and then – like store specialty bottlings, or the recent LBI edition, for example. However, there were attempts to muscle in on the high end market by providing some cask strength editions as well – this is one of them, bottled at 56.7% and from the Port Mourant double wooden pot still. But with the outturn, alas, not mentioned.

Well, since DDL no longer sells the heritage stills’ distillate for export, we should be grateful.  And indeed, here, there is much to be grateful for, because while I must from the outset confess my preference and liking for the PM rums, even those who aren’t familiar with the profile or prefer other countries’ wares can find much to enjoy here.

Consider the nose: it starts off fruity, deep, dark and woody, with strong notes of plums, prunes and licorice: one might almost call that the PM signature scent.  To that can be added cinnamon, a dusting of nutmeg and turmeric, well tanned leather and even a touch of smoke, plus some brininess and olives, but never so much as to overwhelm the core aromas.  The strength really helps those pop, let me tell you – this is on par with any good independently bottled PM I’ve ever tried, and actually exceeds quite a few.

Does the palate hold up its end?  Indeed it does – it’s lovely. Not too strong, not too sharp, just solid workmanship landing like a stone hammer on the tongue. Most of what is immediately discernible is fruit: lots of dark fruit, a smorgasbord of fruit, black cake levels of the stuff.  There are prunes, plums, apricots, orange slices, blackcurrants, ripe purple cherries, dragon fruit, lychees…the list goes on. In a lesser rum these might have been too tart, but they are anchored by duskier tastes of licorice, cardamom, cinnamon, honey, caramel and a kind of freshly planed cedar plank that makes a powerful statement all by itself.  The finish dials things back a notch and exits the scene with a soft summing up of the preceding: honey-caramel, fruit-infused black cake, anise, vague tannins and some citrus to tie the lot up in a bow.

Honesty compels to me to admit that my tastes bend towards the PM profile, and I’ve had a lot of experience with rums from that still; and so I tend to be a bit more enthusiastic than others whose preferences are understandably elsewhere. The woodiness and anise notes of a PM (of any age) aren’t necessarily for everyone.

But I acknowledge the achievement of DDL here, and sing the praises of this rum, because while indies nowadays get the lion’s share of the encomiums and hosannas for presenting a new Guyanese rum they got from Scheer or some broker, the original distillery, with all those magical stills, isn’t sitting on its ass and waiting around for sales to happen. However slowly, the company is trying to take note of the market and make some hi-test hooch that some people – a sliver of the rum-swilling population to be sure – might actually want to drink and collect and pay real money for. 

In other words, DDL is not going gently into that good night or resting on past achievements, but moving, developing, adapting. With this 12 YO from 2009, they show they’ve lost nothing, forgotten nothing, and can still do serious work….and here, have produced a scintillating gem of a rum, one that I’d be happy to buy again.

(#1086)(87/100) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Other notes

Background

It is interesting to witness the evolution of DDL and the rums coming off of those famed heritage stills. The best known of these are the wooden stills commonly named Versailles (single pot), Port Mourant (double pot) and Enmore (coffey), with the French Savalle right alongside, and the somewhat less known high ester still lurking in the background. 

Back in 1992 (when the ground-breaking 15 YO made its debut) and until around 2014 or so, the various stills’ outputs were blended in varying proportions to make up the standard line of the company’s El Dorado rums (including the local versions such as the King of Diamonds). These were the 3YO, 5YO, 8YO, 12YO, 15YO, 21YO and the occasionally-issued 25YO. No one outside the company knew, let alone much cared, about those stills, and they were not seen as selling points. Until, that is, Velier started issuing rums and showcasing the stills specifically and creating an enormous swell of interest in them.

Seeing the popularity of these limited edition single-still full-proof bottlings, DDL stopped issuing rums to Velier in 2014 and launched their own “independent-style” rums that showcased the stills – they were called the “Rare Editions” and three series over three years were issued.  However, they did not always sell well for various reasons — and for a company which was used to selling hundreds of thousands of bottles at a marginal price point, it could not have been that interesting to have a few hundred or a few thousand expensive bottlings not contributing to the bottom line…and so the Rares were eventually pulled. DDL experimented with other versions like the 12YO and 15YO wine aged editions, the quartet of blended-in-the barrel rums called “Four Colours,” the occasional high end vanity releases like the 50th Independence Edition, or occasional new 25YOs. None really took off.

However, starting in 2018 or so, they took a new tack: they started issuing various aged rums that showcased the stills directly, and instead of making them special editions, they simply added them to the standard El Dorado lineup, using the same bottle shapes, and only slightly varying the labels. There were three main types: one was a series of vintage 40% rums from the three individual wooden stills, which have a broader consumer appeal (not the least because of the unthreatening strength); then a series of full-proof bottlings of varying ages, sometimes single still, sometime single barrel, sometimes for third parties (like Wine & Beyond’s 2006 and 2012 releases); and lastly the cask strength single-still releases that are the grown-up versions of the forty percenters mentioned above.

What distinguishes such specialty releases (which is what they are) is that they are folded into the same visual ethos of the “regular” line of 12-15-21 year old rums, so there is instant recognizability – indeed, in some cases the look is so similar that they are in danger of being overlooked/ But they are distinct and they are DDL rums and while there is, as there must be, some variation in quality, overall I believe that such series of rums are now firmly part of DDL’s portfolio, and that’s a good thing for all of us.

 

L’Esprit Diamond 2017 “Still Strength” White Rum (1º Ed.) – Review

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Feb 242023
 

When it comes to Guyanese rum, I’m afraid that much as I enjoy DDL’s wares from time to time – more so of late, since they took the bull by the horns and released rums with less additions –  the really good stuff, the best stuff, to me, still comes from the indies.  Alas, Velier has moved away from the Demerara rums and I can’t afford the ones that remain on the secondary market, but fortunately for us all, there is no shortage of other independent bottlers out there to satisfy our thirst for the output of those lovely wooden heritage stills.  

And one of the more intriguing developments in the Demerara rumisphere by these indies, is the (occasional) release of high proof unaged white rums which were previously deemed the province of the French island rhum makers, and the Jamaicans.  We’ve seen a few of these hefty molasses-based whites before, of course, whether aged a little or not at all – any list of bartenders’ favourites can’t be complete without the J Wray 63%, Hampden’s Rum Fire and Worthy Park’s Rum Bar rums, and to be sure there are others from St. Vincent, Grenada, Suriname and even Guyana (where the DDL Superior High Wine is a sort of local classic to this day).

For the most part, however, something like the L’Esprit MPM is a rare thing.  A one-off unaged white from the Port Mourant pot still, we’ve actually seen its near-twin before – the “Cuvee Edgar” 2º Edition, which shared much of the DNA of the rum we’re hear to discuss today – the First Edition. Both are Port Mourant wooden pot still rums (the label is a misprint where it says “single pot still”), both were issued to celebrate the birth of Tristan Prodhomme’s son Edgar, both are rested and not aged for about a year in inert steel tanks, and both jacked up to a strength that would have your nether regions puckering (85%), and frankly, when tasting it I wondered if it wasn’t just a bit too much for us mere mortals.

Because think about it: 40% ABV is standard strength and if taken too quickly is still a bit of a bash to the snoot when sniffed and a quick stab to the glottis when sampled. This rum is more than twice that strength, and believe me, it shows, it’s not afraid to say it, and looking at it, remembering the last time, I morbidly wondered what it had had for breakfast that day: diced and fried reviewers, maybe?

A deeper inhale than a delicate little somelier-taking-a-toot sniff I took of this clear popskull might have caused my DNA to unravel, so I took my time. Which was a good idea, as the fierce power of the aromas was off the charts; on the flip side, it allowed a lot to come through over the ten minutes I initially spent with it (the glass ended up going for two days). First, there was a near-rank orange juice past the sell-by date; then dry, fruity, meaty, briny notes all at once, savage and hard hitting. It had the soft dampness of dew on a cool misty morning in trees nestled in mountain foothills; the gasoline stink of an open jerry-can, and yet all that was offset by hot samosas and a badly made currywurst in an cheap imbiss down in Steglitz. It was dirty and aromatic and not even halfway done yet, because the aromas kept pouring out of the glass: anise and lemongrass, a touch of bitters, mauby, sorrel, unsweetened bitter chocolate and just a ton of overripe prunes, before doing a segue into a garbage pile in hot weather mixed up with the musky pungency of an untended outhouse. Yeah I know, it’s a lot and sounds this side of awful, but damn, this thing was intense, it was fun to try, and fending off the strength became a kind of game to see who would win, me or the rum.

Thankfully the palate calmed down; it was still a massive gut punch, yet it was somehow not as intent on causing damage as it was proving it was the biggest and baddest thing in the room that day.  First off was rubber, plastic and lots of furniture polish  Then it got sweet and creamy, channelled some Danish cookies and whipped cream, and added anise and a light fruit jam spread over salt crackers; and just to prove it had more up its sleeves than just its arms, there was a whiff of some olive oil spread over toasted black bread.  It sure wasn’t your standard profile, but it the same time it was pungent, riotous, brutal and expressive to a fault.

And the finish, well that was epically long – briny, dry, deep, reeking of toasted bread, crackers, fish in olive oil (!!), smoke from a kero stove, licorice and damp sawdust, yet not sharp or damage inducing at all.  It was more like a massive teutonic monument, solidly implacable, demanding you respect its awesomeness.  Or something like that.  As you can tell, I was quite enthused.

In a recent virtual tasting I was part of, an O Reizinho Madeira 9 month old near-white agricole rhum from Boutique-y was one of my favourites of the evening, but it confused the hell out of the whisky guys in attendance, who grudgingly admitted it had some chops (then crossed themselves while looking furtively around to see if anyone had heard), but struggled to put into words exactly what made it so good – perhaps it was because unaged whisky has never been a thing in the malty world except maybe among moonshiners the way unaged rum has been for us. Given their perplexity, I’m not sure I would dare give them this one to try — if the O Reiz made them scratch their sporrans, the L’Esprit might unravel their kilts altogether.  

Because to my mind, it’s not just that L’Esprit makes great rums and Tristan knows how to pick ‘em – it’s simply that of all the Guyanese rums made on all those many stills, Port Mourants at any age seem to be the pick of the litter. Here that’s proved once again — I liked it a lot, even more than the 2º Edition, and that was no slouch either. For its pungency, its richness, its depth, the neverending finish, all those insane tastes and yes, even the strength. The rum is fierce, it’s powerful, it jets fire from each nostril and were you to expel a belch and a flatus after a sip of it, seismometers would quiver and the bar would be empty a second later. It’s that kind of experience, and who wouldn’t want to try it for all that, if even just the one time?

(#975)(88/100)

Tamosi “Kanaima” (Versailles) 16 YO Guyanese Rum – Review

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Feb 102023
 

Memories are short in this day and age of always-on ADD infotainment, yet I remember quite clearly the short and sharp social media posts that erupted over the naming of Tamosi’s first rum “Kanaima,” which was considered disrespectful appropriation and misnaming (at the very least) of an Amerindian term by a commercial entity (see backgrounder below this review for an expanded discussion of the matter).

For those who are not familiar with the term “kanaima”, it variously refers to a spiritual force of the jungle which can be tapped into, a spirit being, or (in my own favourite) the name of an Amerindian deity, whose most famous manifestation may be A.J. Seymour’s wonderful narrative poem “The Legend of Kaieteur” which I highly recommend everyone read, and which starts:

Now Makonaima the Great Spirit dwelt
In the huge mountain rock that throbbed and felt
The swift black waters of Potaro’s race
Pause on the lip, commit themselves to space
And dive the half mile to the rocks beneath.
Black were the rocks with sharp and angry teeth
And on those teeth the eager waters died
Lost their black body, and up the mountainside
Above the gorge that seethed and foamed and hissed
Rose, resurrected, as lovely mist.

Well, that’s probably more than what you wanted (the poem is much longer1)  You came here for a rum review, not an extended lesson in Guyanese verse or a treatise on amerindian spiritual naming sources. Still it says something about the word, and to this day “kanaima” (small k) is often used when speaking in the bush about spirits, especially shape-shifting were-jaguars, which are expanded on in the about page for the rum.

Introduction and naming aside, here are the bare stats: it’s a continentally aged 16 year old Guyanese Versailles wooden pot still rum from 2004, aged in ex-bourbon casks and bottled at 58.9%. Some caramel was added for colouring, and the company founded by UK-based Guyanese Benjamin Boothe has continued with its releases and naming practises ever since. Like Nobilis or Rum Artesanal, two other small indies founded at about the same time, Tamosi has raised the game of limited releases with high-quality selections that have kept its reputation polished to a shine.

Tasting notes are about what one would expect if one was into Guyanese rums generally, and the wooden heritage stills specifically. The nose, for example, is so Versailles-like, it squeaks; it’s rare that I get an aroma so clearly identifiable with and relatable to that still, because usually there are aspects of the other two stills hovering around that cloud the analysis.  Here it is woody, bright, pure, clean, sparkling, tannic, and chock full of sawdust and wet wooden shavings freshly shaved off an uncut piece of lumber. There’s licorice, leather, tannins, cider, grapes, salt, a few dark fruits, cinnamon and bitter black tea leavened with just a smidge of condensed milk and cardamom.

The palate is rich and deep: the proof really helps here – stronger would not work nearly as well. It’s slightly bitter to taste, with mauby, cinnamon and coffee grounds, plus a touch of almonds and molasses. Once it calms down, it gets better, channelling the same bush tea the nose suggested, a little licorice and a few dark fruits. The overwhelming impression one is left with is not fruitiness but rather aromatic tobaccos and newly-sawn lumber, and that it works as well as it does is impressive. One false note, one element more than another and the whole carefully balanced edifice would shatter and collapse. But somehow that never happens, and with a long, crisp, dark finish that closes things off — licorice, salt caramel, black grapes, molasses, hot sweet tea, cider and brine — it ends by being a wonderfully well-assembled VSG rum and one I enjoyed thoroughly.

I’ve often thought that it takes real skill to bring a Versailles-still rum to its full potential, and there are a lot of hit and miss expressions out there. Ten years ago something of this calibre would likely have made a bigger splash than it did, even without the attendant publicity surrounding the name. Because to get a VSG marque rum this good is a rarity – PM and Enmore and Diamond and even Uitvlugt tend to have slightly higher reputations and more easily approachable profiles, while Versailles…well, not so much. And of course, now, a few years on, the Kanaima has faded from sight somewhat as newer indies and newer releases and newer halo rums come to the fore and replace it.

But I think the rum is some kind of wonderful on its own terms, and shouldn’t be overlooked or left to rust.  It’s on the far side of raw, still possessing some attitude, complex to a fault and recognizable Guyanese, while being tamed just enough by time and barrel action to be enjoyable. It’s original and deeply rough and tasty as all get out — and while I can’t quite go as far as Marius of Single Cask Rum when he said it was, “the best VSG to come out of DDL to date,” I think it’s for sure one of the top expressions of the marque and from the still to ever make it to the wider public.

(#971)(86/100) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Background

As noted, Benjamin Boothe, a first generation Guyanese immigrant to Britain (he lives in Amsterdam now), started the indie brand called Tamosi in 2020, named after aspects of Carib and Amerindian cosmology. Because his ethnic and cultural background is also West Indian, he hit on the idea of drawing attention to, and honouring, the names of local deities and spirits from indigenous and imported folklore, and named his first rum “Kanaima” explaining the choice and its background both on the bottle label and on the company website. It is clear that this was no quickie commercial marketing scheme, but something deeply felt – the level of research Mr. Boothe brought to the table was not inconsiderable (which is something a lot of other indies which claim to honour historical heritage don’t really do beyond the superficial).

You will recall that this was at the height of several interlocking and vicious social and cultural rum wars: the Barbados GI, the j’ouvert rum from Michael B. Jordan, Velier’s imbroglio with the extolling of Haiti’s undeveloped pastoralism, the “Plantation” and “Esclavo“ names, BLM, and all sorts of posts coming out almost daily about racism, diversity, gender bias, appropriation and so on. 

So it was probably no surprise that almost immediately people came out of the social media woodwork to accuse him of cultural insensitivity towards indigenous religious beliefs (though few if any of the commentators were indigenous themselves). Academics with purportedly years of research into the matter challenged his assertions. Comments came thick and fast, claiming it was historically incorrect, and rank neo-colonialist cultural appropriation if not outright theft by some guy not even from the region and as usual, some of it became quite ugly. Boothe engaged with his detractors and explained his rationale, which boiled down to this: too many historical callouts in the rum world’s marketing were either superficial or limited in focus, and his own very extensive researches had shown there was quite a bit more to early sugar and rum production that involved other ethnic groups and their interactions, and this was one way to provide more information and background to that aspect of things. To my knowledge not one of his interlocutors conceded he had a point, which to my mind says rather more about them than the argument they were trying to make.

Moreover, not only did Boothe have a West Indian heritage himself, his research was no slapdash cut-and-paste shallow excerpt from a primary school text or someone else’s online post, but a close reading of many historical tomes, academic papers and primary sources to which he had dedicated much time and effort. In other words, the naming convention chosen was being done with respect and knowledge, by someone who had a cultural connection to the term much closer than, say, that of Michael B. Jordan, whose tactless trademarking of j’ouvert to name his rum at around the same time, without a smidgen of relationship to the term, also raised hackles.

However, Boothe stuck to his guns; he defended his choices, refused to alter his company’s or his rums’ names, and as usual, memories faded, the world moved on and Tamosi is a fact of life now (as are all other bottles issued under the brand, which continue the theme of being named after local spirits and deities of the country of origin). With one exception, nobody has raised the issue since that time – unlike, say, Plantation or Esclavo business, which reliably pops up for a question and a mention on reddit or Facebook at least once every few months.  And there the matter lies.

 

Cadenhead’s Guyana Rum “VSG” 1990 Enmore Distillery 13 YO – Review

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May 272021
 

Image provided courtesy of Jörn Kielhorn

Cadenhead’s defiantly massive codpiece, this 73.6% Mudland slugger, was among the strongest rums they ever unleashed upon an unsuspecting public, in 2003 2; it took no prisoners and provided no apologies and was stubbornly, intransigently, mulishly what it was – an undiluted can of pure whup-ass.  It must have scared the living bejeezus out of so many people when it was released, that all existing bottles were carefully hidden and buried and squirelled away, and blood oaths were sworn to preserve forever the silence of the grave upon its owners. 

Few rums this powerful outside the famed 151s were ever issued in the days before The Age, a genteel time of light and inoffensive blends, when noses were sniffily raised at the agricoles’ overgenerous 50º, and when 46% was considered shockingly outré, almost uncouth…not really fit for civilized company.  Even Velier, who practically redefined what Demeraras could be, balked at going too far in the proof direction back then. And yet, the Cadenhead rum really wasn’t that bad – though it must be mentioned that the growly ABV was to some extent also to its detriment.

That it exuded wild pot-still badassery in all directions was beyond question, and its nose was at pains to demonstrate it wasn’t bluffing. It was pungent. It was sharp. It threw around enormous notes of brine, pineapple, citrus, gooseberries and 5-finger.  Some caramel.  Some vanilla. There were other hints of sorrel, anise and hard Thai yellow mangoes, and yet, oddly, hardly any of the standard spicy and lumber-related aspects that could have been expected from the Versailles single wooden pot still of origin. Paradoxically, the very strength that may have recommended it to many, proved a vehicle to mask the subtleties of the still of origin.

And it didn’t slow down in the slightest when sipped, landing on the tongue with a kind of blunt force trauma that might actually be illegal in some states. Heavy salt caramel ice cream, red olives and brine, leather, oaky spice and aromatic tobacco led the charge.  Fruits were there, both sharp and ripe — prunes, blackberries, black grapes, apples — but these receded, fast, and were briefly replaced by anise, molasses and white chocolate almost too buried under the avalanche of oomph to stand out. The tastes of black bread and sour cream, cream cheese, honey, tobacco, plus a last welcome taste of strawberries and whipped cream weren’t bad at all, just too damned fleeting to be appreciated before poof, they vanished. 

Image provided courtesy of Jörn Kielhorn

Points for the finish which calmed the **** down: it was long and warm instead of crazy hot, creamy with caramel, toffee, salt, chocolate plus coffee grounds and aromatic tobacco — so, in brief, really nice — but the fruits that should have acted in counterpoint, were, alas, long gone. 

All that said, we’re talking about a pretty complex rum here, lots of stuff careening off the wall, with a sort of supercharged glee that might be displayed by a portasan to which someone strapped wheels and a jet engine.  That’s the problem, for me, it’s too much show and no go, and even letting it rest was insufficient to tone it down and allow a more leisurely examination of its profile.  The strength was there, it squatted toad-like on the senses, and it masked nuances a slightly weaker drink might have showcased more effectively (so water was a must with it).

But I’ll give it a guarded recommendation anyway – as one friend of mine says, he prefers the VSG taste profile over any other Demerara, so a rum like this is definitely for those like him – though I think care should be taken here, and as with all Versailles rums, it will be hit or miss for many.  After all, just because it’s enough of a bruiser to intoxicate Opthimus Prime does not elevate it to cult status, and is no reason to casually get one yourself just because it does. 

(#824)(83/100)

Other Notes

This thing had some interesting effects: it made me realize that I can’t count properly, as my list of 21 of the strongest rums in the world now contains 33; that Cadenhead doesn’t just not have a list of what the letter-marques on their Dated Distillation series mean, but don’t have a comprehensive list of their releases either and (c) their staff are really quite helpful and want to assist in such obscure quests even at the expense of their own sanity.

My remarks in the opening paragraph relate to the rum’s almost complete lack of an online footprint – until this review takes off, you will find only a single reference to it.  So some thanks are in order, to all those people who helped me trace the thing. Alex Van der Veer, cheapeau mon ami. Morton Pedersen over at the Cadenheads fans’ FB page, thanks. Nathan and Mitch at Cadenhead (UK), appreciate your time and effort; same goes to Angus and Kiss in the Denmark shop, who really tried.  And most of all, Alex (again) and Jörn Kielhorn, who got me the pictures I needed.

Bristol Spirits Classic Rum 1985 Versailles 13YO – Review

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Oct 192020
 

If one rates popularity or the reach of a brand by how many joyful fanboys post pictures of their latest acquisition on social media and chirp how lucky they are to have gotten it, surely Velier’s oeuvre leads the pack, followed by Foursquare, and after them come trotting Kraken and Bumbu and maybe an agricole or two from Martinique.  Nowhere in this pantheon (I use the term loosely) is Bristol Spirits to be found – yet, in the late 1990s right up to the mid 2010s, Bristol was releasing some very good juice indeed, including the near legendary 30 year old Port Mourant 1980 and some rums from the 1970s that were just joys to sample.

In fact, so popular were they, that the company even ventured out into blends and spiced rums, like the Caribbean Collection (Trinidad), Mauritius cane juice rhum, Bristol Black and so on. They released rums from Haiti, Mauritius, Peru, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad, Cuba, Barbados (Rockley 1986, lovely stuff) and raised the profile of the islands’ rums just as the wave of the rum renaissance was breaking. Not for them the single barrel approach – most of the time they followed Rum Nation’s ethos of mixing several barrels into one release.

Since then, Bristol has fallen somewhat out of favour —  I think Mr. John Barrett may be retiring, if not already withdrawn from the rum scene — and it’s rare to see their bottles for sale outside of an auction, where their prices vary directly with age, from £1800 for a 1974 Demerara to as little as £45 for a 2003 Cuban. This 1985 Versailles was bottled in 1998 at a time when nobody knew a damned thing about the stills, and back then probably sank without a trace – nowadays, it’ll cost you five hundred quid, easy.

The Versailles wooden single pot still is one of the three wooden heritage stills (the Savalle is a fourth but not of wood) now housed at Diamond estate where DDL has its headquarters.  It’s distillate is usually blended with others to produce blends with distinctive profiles, yet for years many bottlers have tried to issue them on their own, with varying results – and it is my contention that it takes real skill to bring the raw untrammelled ferocity of a cask strength wooden pot still hooch to some level of elegance sufficient to create a disturbance in the Force.

Bristol, I think, came pretty close with this relatively soft 46% Demerara.  The easier strength may have been the right decision because it calmed down what would otherwise have been quite a seriously sharp and even bitter nose.  That nose opened with rubber and plasticine and a hot glue gun smoking away on the freshly sanded wooden workbench.  There were pencil shavings, a trace of oaky bitterness, caramel, toffee, vanilla and slowly a firm series of crisp fruity notes came to the fore: green apples, raisins, grapes, apples, pears, and then a surprisingly delicate herbal touch of thyme, mint, and basil. Marius of Single Cask, who wrote a good evaluation of a number of Versailles 1985 vintages, commented on a marzipan hint, but I didn’t get that at all.

The taste, though, was where I think it really came into its own. It was just lovely: lots of fruit right off – pears, apples, peaches, guavas, kiwi, both ripe and unripe, crisp and fleshy and a contrast in opposites. The herbs remained, though somewhat muted now, and a delicately clear and sharp line of citrus ran in and out of the profile, like a really good dry Riesling punctuated by tart green grapes; and a drop or two of rather unnecessary water revealed a background touch of unsweetened yogurt to balance everything off. Really nice to taste, moving sedately to a finish no less impressive, but acting more or less as a summation of the entire experience, adding just a dry burnt sugar note that was very pleasing.

Overall its a very good Versailles, one of the better ones I’ve tried. Unlike Marius I thought the strength was not a negative but a positive (he felt it was excessively diluted), because otherwise other sharper and less savoury aspects might have taken precedence and upset the fragile balance upon which my personal appreciation of the rum rested.  Nowadays we consider the “low” ABV somewhat wussy, but remember, at that time in the nineties, to release a rum at 46% was  considered recklessly daring – even ten years later, people were still telling Foursquare not to release the ECS Mark I 1998 at more than standard strength. 

ABV aside, what I did feel was the barrel didn’t have enough of an effect, overall, and it could have rested for a few more years without harm, and indeed, been even better afterwards. Marco Freyr of Barrel Aged Mind who wrote about the rum himself in 2014 and was the source of the sample, thought that much of the youthful freshness of the original distillate was maintained and could have been aged longer without harm.  But clearly, both he and Marius really liked the thing, as did I. It’s a wonderful expression from the year, and even if there are older Versailles rums out there (like Bristol’s own 1985 22 Year Old which I’d dearly love to sample one day), to try this one from the dawn of rum’s ascent to the heights, when the wooden stills were just rising to prominence and attention, is an experience not to be foregone.

(#770)(87/100)

Cadenhead Uitvlugt 1964 36 YO Guyana Rum (PM) – Review

 1 Response »
Aug 052020
 

The Cadenhead 1964 Port Mourant is one of the great unicorns of our time, a rum whose 36 years of ageing sail majestically across the senses, impervious and indifferent to the up-and-coming claimants for the crown of “oldest” and “strongest’ and “bestest” and “mostest”.  Not since the Age of Velier have we seen anything like this and in some ways it supersedes even those behemoths we had all ignored back in the day, because they were “too expensive.”

And expensive this is: in June 2020 a variant bottle of this thing (bottled in 2000, 70% ABV) was bid up past all reason on Rum Auctioneer until it went under the hammer for a cool £3,000, which makes it pricier than rums from the 1930s and 1940s sporting amazing pedigrees of their own (though still less than a Velier Skeldon 1978). There’s another one now available in the August 2020 auction (the one I’m writing about here, bottled in 2001). Such prices dissuade all but the most foolhardy, the deep-pocketed or those who “clan-up” — and rightfully so, for surely no rum is worth that kind of coin, and who in this day and age has it anyway? 

And those stats, whew! 36 years old, pre-independence 1964 distillation (this, when finding anything from as recently the 1980s is already a problem fraught with the potential susurration of rapidly emptying wallets), Port Mourant distillate at a time when it was still at Uitvlugt, 69.3% of turbo-charged thrust – these things suggest an extraordinary rum, which usually fills me with dread as a reviewer: for, how could any rum live up to that kind of hype? Yet somehow, against my fears,  Cadenhead has indeed released something exceptional.  

Consider the nose: I loved it. It smelled like it was reared in an ultramodern Swiss lab and fed a diet of woodchips from DDLs stills and given only liquid molasses runoff to drink to dilute the raw caramel. It was a smoothly powerful rush of wood, well-polished old leather, smoke, licorice peas, stewed apples, prunes, and oak tannins. No rubber, no acetone, no paint stripper, just controlled thick ferocity. Some salted caramel, and molasses, flowers and as I stayed with it the subtler aromas of fennel, rosemary, masala and cumin and a twist of lemon zest all emerged. 

Clearly unsatisfied with just that, it toughened up something serious when tasted.  It showcased less a sense of shuddering sharpness aiming only to inflict careless pain, than the surefooted solidity of a Mack truck piloted high high speed by a really good stuntman.  It’s creamy, hot, redolent of caramel, sweet bon bons and molasses.  Anise.  Whipped cream in a fruit salad of raisins, prunes and caramelized apples.  Just a flirt of salt, and also some pine-sol mixing it up with soft flowers, coffee grounds and macadamia chocolate cookies. None of the ageing was wasted, and it did exactly what it meant to, no more, no less, with grace and power and the sense of complete control at all times. Even the finish demonstrated this: it was enormously long lasting, coming together at the last with a sort of burly, brutal rhythm of toffee, toblerone, almonds, coffee and citrus that shouldn’t work, but somehow manages to salvage real elegance from all that rough stuff and full, firm tastes.  It’s a great conclusion to a seriously well aged rum.

The Cadenhead Uitvlugt 1964 followed all the traditional ways an indie has of producing a rum, except then it proceeded to dial it up to 11, added steroids, horse tranqs and industrial strength factory cleanser, and released it to just about zero acclaim (I mean, have you ever herd of it?).  It’s excellence lay in how it came together over time, I think – it started at a low idle, then gained force as it moved along. The early tasting notes and impressions could come from any one of a dozen rums, but as it developed we see a great original product coming into focus, something we have perhaps tried before, and which remains buried in the recesses of our tasting memories, but which we rarely recall being done this well.

So, circling back to the original point, is it worth the money?  If you have it, yes, of course.  If you don’t, maybe you can dream, as I did, of scoring a sample. “To me this is the Holy Grail” remarked Gregers Nielsen when we were discussing the bottle, and now, having tried it, I can completely understand his unrequited love (or should that be lust?) for it.  Maybe, if I could, I’d pawn the family silver to get it as well — but in the meantime, for now, I was simply happy to have received the generosity of Alex Van Der Veer, and toasted him happily as I drank this really quite superlative piece of rum history.

(#750)(91/100)

Other notes

It goes without saying this is continentally aged,  The outturn is unknown.

1423 S.B.S. Versailles 2003 12 Year Old Guyana Rum – Review

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Aug 032020
 

The three wooden stills now all gathered at DDL’s Diamond facility are called Heritage stills, their wooden greenheart components regularly serviced and replaced, and the questions they pose about the matter of Theseus’s ship are usually ignored. That’s not really important, though, because they may be the three most famous stills in existence, and the taste profiles of the rums they create are known by all dedicated rumistas, who enjoy nothing more than relentlessly analyzing them for the minutest variations and then bickering about it in a never-ending cheerful squabble.

My own preference has always been for the stern elegance of the Port Mourant, and the Enmore coffey still produces rums that are complex, graceful and sophisticated when done right.  But the Versailles still is something of an ugly stepchild – you’ll go far and look long to find an unqualified positive review of any rum it spits out.  I’ve always felt that it takes rare skill to bring the rough and raw VSG pot still profile to its full potential…none of the familiar indies has had more than occasional success with it, and even Velier never really bothered to produce much Versailles rum at the height of the Age.

This brings us to the Danish company 1423: it makes many mass-market rums for the broader supermarket shelves in Europe, but is perhaps better known worldwide for its boutique rum arm the Single Barrel Selection, which specializes in single cask, limited bottlings. These aim squarely at the connoisseurs’ palates and wallets, and have gained a quiet reputation (and a following) for their quality rums and geographical range.  The Diamond 2003 is a case in point – it’s 12 years old (bottled in 2015), has a finish in marsala casks, comes off the Versailles single wooden pot still and is bottled at a completely solid 62.8% with an outturn of 264 bottles. And it’s quite a hoot to drink, let me tell you

“Something is rotten in the State of Diamond,” I wrote cheerfully after a good deep sniff, “…and just enough to make it interesting.” Which was quite true – it smelled of fruits and vegetables starting to go off, and added some deep oak tannins which thankfully did not get overbearing but receded rapidly.  To this was added almonds, peaches, prunes, anise, strawberries, some light vanilla and raisins, all tied together in a neat bow by a briny note and some zesty citrus.  

The palate was also quite good, irrespective of how much (or how little) additional taste the finish provided.  It had the creaminess of salted caramel ice cream, the dark fruitiness of raisins and prunes and black cake and overall struck me as a deceptively simple, very solidly-constructed rum. The good stuff came from around the edges – you could sense some fennel and licorice and vanilla, and perhaps some nuttiness, red wine, indian spices and cloves, all dancing around that central pillar without taking center stage themselves. The finish didn’t try for anything new or exotic, but was content to sum up all that had gone before, and gave last notes of toffee, cumin, masala spice, caramel, dark fruits and brine, a nice sweet-salt amalgam, without any sharpness or bite on the exit at all.  Nice.

There has been occasional confusion among the stills in the past: e.g. the SBS Enmore 1988 which I am still convinced is a Versailles; but this is (in my opinion) neither a PM nor an Enmore and if there’s any further confusion it may derive from the marsala cask whose influence is faint, but enough to skew one’s mind away from a pure VSG kind of aroma.

And it’s good, very good indeed. Even Duncan Taylor with their 27 YO 1985 couldn’t better it, DDL’s own Rare Release wasn’t significantly better (I’ve heard the Mezan and Samaroli variations are excellent but have not tried them). But it seems to me that the VSG marque is really not meant to be a standalone except for purists and deep divers – it works much better as part of a blend, which is indeed what DDL uses it for in its aged releases, rarely issuing it on its own.  

Summing up then, with all those difficulties in trapping the best profile out of a notoriously temperamental still, it’s completely to its credit that 1423 managed to wring as much flavour and class out of a relatively young Versailles distillate aged in Europe as they did.  Perhaps their 1988 Enmore was in fact from that still also, but this one is no slouch on its own terms, has less ambiguities about its origins to boot and is an all ’round fine drink to have on the shelf.

(#749)(85/100)

Other Notes

  • The length of finish in marsala casks is unknown, if SBS responds to the query I sent, I’ll update.
  • Thanks to Nicolai Wachmann for the sample.

RomDeluxe R2 “Wild Jaguar” Enmore 17 YO – Review

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Jun 282020
 

On the first day and at the opening hour of the 2019 Berlin Rumfest, a motley collection of scruffy rum folks met at the back of the hall. Alex Sandu (the young Oxford-based Romanian barman who’s now making a name for himself on the Rum Barrel site) was talking with me about what it takes to manage and maintain a rum site. Indy and Jazz Singh of Rumcask and Skylark Spirits drifted by and sat down, and we all sighed rapturously with the memory of a rum session we had had at Lebensstern rum bar the evening before. Nicolai Wachmann, anonymous rum ninja from Denmark, having left us earlier to go look for junk food outside, rejoined us while still furiously chomping at the semi-masticated remains of his fifth burger, and we all amused ourselves shouting cheerful and childish insults at Gregers Nielsen, who was running the 1423 stand a few feet away. This is the way we soberly conscientious rum chums keep the flag of Rumdom flying high. People must know we take our duties seriously.

Things calmed down when Johnny Drejer approached, though, because in his fist he carried a bottle a lot of us hadn’t seen yet – the second in Romdeluxe’s “Wild Series” of rums, the Guyanese Enmore, with a black and white photo of a Jaguar glaring fiercely out. This was a 61.5% rum, 17 years old (2002 vintage, I believe), from one of the wooden stills (guess which?) — it had not formally gone on sale yet, and he had been presented with it for his 65th birthday a few days before (yeah, he looks awesome for his age).  Since we already knew of the elephantine proportions of the Wild Tiger Release 1, we all immediately tried to elbow each other out of the way in our hurry to thrust our glasses at him, and demanded our rightful shares. And to his credit, Johnny, gentleman to the last, shared generously without hesitation or charge before hastily retreating to more civilized areas of the ‘Fest where rabid aficionados would not assault his immaculate person or pinch his birthday prize, and might remember he was actually only 50.

Now, 61.5% might seem like a lot, and indeed — if you’re not ready for it —  it will try its best to take your face off. But nosing it with no more than the usual care suggests that it really is quite civilized…creamy, even.  Certainly one can inhale rich aromas of pencil shavings, butterscotch, sawdust and licorice, all standard for Enmore distillate. I can’t say I sensed much in the way of florals or citrus except as a brief background hint; most of the secondary wave consists of black bread, dark fruits, brie, cereals, almonds, anise and crushed walnuts. Maybe a whiff of mocha if you strain. 

All this is fairly common, even boilerplate. It’s on the palate that it rises to the occasion and shows some more chops.  Now the label notes it was primarily continentally aged so some tropical ageing can be inferred; it’s just shy of hot on the tongue, extremely robust, and very tasty indeed…yet also not rough or sharp.  You can taste unsweetened chocolate, anise, blancmange, salted caramel and coffee grounds to start with, and as it relaxes and opens up and you get used to its bold profile, musky, dark fruits like raisins, prunes, not very sweet but with a lot of body.  I like the damp sawdust and licorice, the way I always do in an Enmore-still rum, and the long, fragrant finish was pleasant to a fault.  Johnny, who had measured the strength of the rum and was mentioned on the label, had gotten himself a pretty nice dram.

Romdeluxe in Denmark is – or started out as – more a commercial rum club that makes private label bottlings and runs promotions, than a true independent bottler — but since they have issued several releases, I’ll call them an indie and move right on from there.  Their “Wild Series” of rums has evinced a lot of attention, not just because of its variety but because of the beauty of the stark black and white photography of the large cats with which they adorn their products.  

So far there is a tiger (R1 Hampden, Jamaica), jaguar (R2 Enmore, Guyana), puma (R3 Panama), black panther (R4 Belize), lion (R5, Bellevue, Guadeloupe) and leopard (R6 Caroni, Trinidad). I don’t know whether the photos are commissioned or from a stock library – what I do know is they are very striking, and you won’t be passing these on a shelf any time you see one.  The stats on some of these rums are also quite impressive – take, for example, the strength of the Wild Tiger (85.2% ABV), or the age of the Wild Lion (25 years).  These guys clearly aren’t messing around and understand you have to stand out from an ever more crowd gathering of indies these days, if you want to make a sale.

Still, perhaps because I’ve had so many of rums from the Enmore still, my impression is that this one doesn’t ascend to the heights. It’s a completely decent rum and at that strength you’re getting flavour and a reasonably complex profile. However, it isn’t really unique, and won’t wow your socks off – originality is not its forte, and it seems, rather, to be a restatement of much that has gone before. So it’s easy to like and appreciate, but conversely, leaves no lasting imprint on the mind.  A month from now, like just about everyone who was there that afternoon sampling this thing, you won’t recall many memorable characteristics of the rum itself, or much that made it stand out…except perhaps for the fact that it was nice. Oh yeah, and that boss design. If that’s what makes you buy it, then I guess its work is done. Me, I’m saving for some of the others.

(#740)(83/100)

1423 S.B.S. Enmore 1988 28 Year Old Guyana Rum – Review

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Jul 112019
 

Photo (c) 1423.dk

There’s another S.B.S rum from Trinidad I should really be writing about, tried on that magical evening in Paris when I ran heedless and headfirst into the Mauritius 2008 and the Jamaican DOK 2018, but naah – there’s this other one they made back in 2016, probably long sold out and gone, which I remember equally well.  And that’s the S.B.S. Enmore, distilled in 1988, bottled twenty seven years later, with the sort of solid 51.8% ABV strength that would make the near legendary Bristol Spirits PM 1980 nod approvingly and dab a single ethanol tear from its metaphorical eye.

1423, the parent company making the Single Barrel Selection series laboured in obscurity in Denmark for years, it seems to me, before coming to the attention of the larger world with startling suddenness.  All this time – ever since 2009 when they released their first rum from barrel #1423 – this small concern founded by four friends (now five) expanded. And although they were primarily into distribution, they never ceased sourcing and bottling their own rums on the side – this culminated around 2016 with the formation of the more exclusive SBS brand, which, as the name implies, does rums from single barrels.  The first year they bottled juice from Panama, Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica, Fiji and Guyana, and haven’t stopped running since.

You’ll forgive me for having a soft spot for Guyanese rums.  The profile of the wooden stills’ output appeals to me more than most, when it isn’t dumbed down and tarted up with the sweet stuff (I move off fast when that happens because if I wanted a Tiger Bay strumpet I’d go there to get rolled, thank you very much).  Anyway SBS follows the indie maxim of not messing with what’s in the barrel, so we have something clean here, as I’d expect.

It smells perfectly fine.  It reeks of well polished leather, aromatic tobacco smoke, prunes and unsweetened dark chocolate, and that’s just for openers.  There’s also raisins, salted caramel, brine, an olive or two, some mild coffee and some moist brown sugar that still has the whiff of molasses in it. And behind all that is damp black earth, rotting bananas and a darkness that makes you think perhaps it’s trying to channel a HP Lovecraft or something.

I enjoyed the nose for sure, but it’s the taste that makes or breaks a wooden still rum.  Here, it was excellent – thick, dark, and almost creamy, like Irish coffee. Some licorice and mint chocolate led off, a bit of raisins, toffee, nougat, a twitch of ripe apples.  And then it opened up and out came the coffee, the leather, salt caramel, prunes, plums, blackberries, molasses … and was that ripe avocados with salt I was getting in the background?  Quite possibly – the richness of the rum, both in taste and in texture, could hardly be faulted. And the finish was excellent, solid and breathy, not giving anything new, but sort of summing things up – so, some leather, tobacco, stale coffee grounds, caramel and those fruits again, fainter this time.

Now, there’s no doubt in my mind that this was as Guyanese as pepperpot and DDL – the real question is, which still made the rum?  The label says it’s an Enmore from a pot still, all of SBS’s records (here and here) say “Enmore” and “pot” but the Enmore still itself is a wooden coffey, so that only leaves two options – either the label is wrong, or it’s one of the two other stills, the Port Mourant wooden double pot, or the Versailles wooden single pot. And since Marco makes no mention of the PM still ever going near Enmore (it was moved to Albion, then to Uitvlugt and then to Diamond), and since the Versailles still was in Enmore in 1995 (the last year that estate’s distillery made rum) then the balance of probability says it’s a Versailles, as Marius of Single Cask Rum stated without attribution in his own rundown of the SBS rums. 

Assuming my line of reasoning is correct, then it’s a Versailles-still rum (SBS are digging to clear this mystery up on my behalf after I contacted them about the discrepancy), but maybe this is all just pedantry and anal-retentive detail mongering.  After all, it tastes a lot like the Moon Import Enmore 1988-2011 which supposedly was a coffey still rum from there, and even if it was (or wasn’t), who that drinks this thing really deep-down cares? I thought that the rum was more solid and “thicker” than a true — and usually more elegant — Enmore, yet more civilized than the Versailles rums tend to be. It was deep, dark, and delicious, a very good rum indeed for those who like that profile, and if we can’t identify its origins with precision, at least we can drink it, enjoy it, love it — and thank SBS for bringing it to our attention.  We just don’t see enough of such rums any more and that’s reason enough to appreciate what they did, even without the business about which still it came off of.

(#640)(86/100)

Other notes

  • Distilled November 1988, bottled October 2016.  For my money that’s a 28 year old
  • Many thanks to Nicolai Wachmann, who sourced me the sample quite a while back. I seem to have lost my glass-and-sample-bottle picture, hence my using stock photos
  • The rum is red brown in colour, very pretty in a glass.

Excellence Rhum Diamond MPM 2005 11 YO Guyana Rum – Review

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Feb 142019
 

Photo (c) Excellence Rhum

Few profiles in the rum world are as distinctive Port Mourant, deriving from DDL’s double wooden pot still in Guyana. Now, the Versailles single wooden pot still rums always struck me as bit ragged and fierce, requiring rare skill to bring to their full potential, while the Enmores are occasionally too subtle: but somehow the PM tends to find the sweet spot between them and is almost always a good dram, whether continentally or tropically aged.  I’ve consistently scored PM rums well, which may say more about me than the rum, but never mind.

Here we have another independent bottling from that still – it comes from the Excellence Collection put out by the French store Excellence Rhum (where I’ve dropped a fair bit of coin over the years). Which in turn is run by Alexandre Beudet, who started the physical store and its associated online site in 2013 and now lists close on two thousand rums of all kinds.  Since many stores like to show off their chops by issuing a limited “store edition” of their own, it’s not an illogical or uncommon step for them to take.

It’s definitely appreciated that it was released at a formidable 60.1% – as I’ve noted before, such high proof points in rums are not some fiendish plot meant to tie your glottis up in a pretzel (which is what I’ve always suspected about 151s), but a way to showcase an intense and powerful taste profile, to the max.

Certainly on the nose, that worked: hot and dry as the Sahara, it presented all the initial attributes of a pot still rum – paint, fingernail polish, rubber, acetones and rotten bananas to start, reminding me quite a bit of the Velier PM White and a lot fiercer than a gentler ultra-old rum like, oh the Norse Cask 1975. Once it relaxed I smelled brine, gherkins, sauerkraut, sweet and sour sauce, soya, vegetable soup, some compost and a lot of licorice, vanilla; and lastly, fruits that feel like they were left too long in the open sun close by Stabroek market.  Florals and spices, though these remain very much in the background. Whatever the case, “rich” would not be a word out of place to describe it.

If the aromas were rich, so was the palate: more sweet than salt, literally bursting with additional flavours – of anise, caramel, vanilla, tons of dark fruits (and some sharper, greener ones like apples).  There was also a peculiar – but far from unpleasant – hint of sawdust, cardboard, and the mustiness of dry abandoned rooms in a house too large to live in. But when all is said and done, it was the florals, licorice and darker fruits that held the heights, and this continued right down to the finish, which was long and aromatic, redolent of port-infused cigarillos, more licorice, creaminess, with a touch of rubber, acetones…and of course more fruits.

While PM rums do reasonably well with me because that’s the way my tastes bend, a caveat is that I also taste a whole lot of them, and that implies a PM rum had better be damned good to excite my serious interest and earn some undiluted fanboy favour and fervor….and a truly exemplary score.  I started into the rum with a certain indulgent, “Yeah, let’s see what we have this time” attitude, and then stuck around to appreciate what had been accomplished. This is not the best of all Port Mourants, and I think a couple of drops of water might be useful, but the fact is that any rum of its family tree which I have on the go for a few hours and several glasses, is by no means a failure. It provides all the tastes which showcase the country, the still and the bottler, and proves once again that even with all of the many variations we’ve tried, there’s still room for another one.

(#599)(87/100)

Other Notes

  • Major points for the back label design, which provides all the info we seek, but forgot to mention how many bottles we get to buy (thanks go to Fabien who pointed me in his comment below, to a link that showed 247 bottles).
    • Distilled May 2005, bottled April 2017.
    • Angel’s share 31%
    • 20% Tropical, 80% Continental Ageing

Velier Enmore 1988 19 Year Old Rum

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May 052018
 
Enmore 1988 1

Photo (c) Barrel-Aged-Mind

Rumaniacs Review # 077 | 0508

The 1988 Enmore vintage has quite a lot of siblings from the same year: Berry Brothers, Bristol Spirits, Compagnie des Indes, the Whisky Agency, Rum Cask and Silver Seal have all issued rums from that year, with varying ages and qualities — some more and better, some less and less.  But all are variations on a theme, that of the Enmore wooden still from Guyana now housed at Diamond, and perhaps only rum geeks with their laser-like focus bother to get them all in an effort to write a dense analysis of the finest, most minute differences. This one is, to my mind, one of the better ones…even though it’s likely that this is not from the Enmore wooden coffey still, but the Versailles single wooden pot still (see other notes below).

Colour – Dark blonde

Strength – 51.9%

Nose – Yummy. Surprisingly light at first nosing, then develops some heft and complexity after a few minutes, so don’t rush into it. Coffee, petrol, wax notes at first, opening up into oak, fruits, anise, olives, prunes, dates and not-so-sweet fruits and molasses.  It’s deceptive, because at first it doesn’t seem like much, and then it just keeps coming and providing more and more aromas. Just because it starts quiet and unobtrusive sure doesn’t mean it ends up that way.

Palate – Coffee, oak, fruitiness, some toffee, wax and shoe polish open the show, as well as being briny and with olives galore plus a little bit of sour cream – these come out a little bit at a time and meld really well.  Lemon zest, coconut and background anise notes develop as it opens up (this is definitely one you want to take your time with).  It’s crisp and clear, skirting “thin” by a whisker, yet even so, satisfactorily rich, tart, creamy and flavourful.  There’s a even a wisp of molasses lurking in the background which is quite pleasant.  It’s warm, well-balanced, and pretty much under control the whole time.

Finish – 51.9% is a good strength: it allows the finish to go without hurry, as it heads for a creamy, briny, lemony and licorice-like exit, with perhaps some coffee grounds and bitter chocolate wrapping up the whole experience in a bow.

Thoughts – Two years ago I rated it 89 points in Paris.  This time around, trying it with a few other Enmores (including the DDL Rare First Batch Enmore 1993), I felt it remained an excellent product, even though it slipped just a little in the company it kept.  But just a smidgen, within the margin of error, and it remains a great exemplar of the wooden stills and the country that no-one would ever be ashamed to own, and to share.

(88/100)

Other Notes

  • The label states the rum derives from the Single Wooden Pot Still – but that’s not the Enmore (which is the “filing cabinet” shaped wooden coffey continuous still) but the Versailles.  Luca has confirmed elsewhere that it is Versailles (which means the label is a misprint), and I’ve been told that several of the 1988s share this confusion…which likely arose because while this still originated in Versailles, it was moved variously to Enmore and Uitvlugt, before finding its final home in Diamond (DDL Website)
  • The translation of the Italian on the back label notes that the rum is aged in Europe (continental).

Velier Enmore (Versailles Still) 1988 19 Year Old Rum – Review

 7 Responses »
Apr 222016
 

Enmore

It is a rum of enormous taste and great breadth of profile…and if it had been a little less serious, a little more forceful, I would have called mine Falstaff.

In spite of its light blonde colour, there has always been something dark and dour, almost Heathcliff-ish, about the Enmore rums, including this 1988 variation (maybe it’s the bottle design of black-on-dark-red). It’s a brilliantly done piece of work, a drone-quality delivery system for ensuring your taste buds get every bit of nuance that can be squeezed out.  And that, let me tell you, is quite a bit.

So many people have written about Velier and its products (myself among them), in particular the Demeraras which made the company’s reputation, that I won’t rehash the background, as there are sufficient reference materials out there for anyone to get the details. With respect to this rum, however, some additional information is necessary.  According to the label, it was continental aged, not the more heavily hyped tropical ageing that Velier espouses these days.  Also, since it was distilled in November 1988 and bottled in March of 2008 it’s actually a nineteen year old rum, not twenty (which is why I’ve titled the review that way).  And lastly, it  was not one of those rums Velier selected in situ in Guyana and then bottled, but originally shipped to Europe in bulk and then chosen for bottling there.  So in these respects it is somewhat at a tangent to more famous rums from the Italian company.

Does this matter to me?  Not really.  I like the wooden stills’ outputs as a whole, and have tried several Enmores, including the too-weak EHP issued by DDL itself in 2007.  Overall, rare as they are, they are all worth (mostly) the coin, and if my love is more given to Port Mourant rums, this one does the brand no dishonour.  In fact, it’s a very good product, adhering to many of the pointers we look for in rums from Guyana in general, and Velier in particular.

EHP_2

Getting right into it, I loved the nose…it was just short of spectacular, opening with coffee, toffee, and anise.  Rich thick petrol and wax and shoe polish aromas developed rapidly, but they were well dialled down and in no way intrusive. Newcomer to rum who read this may shake their heads and ask “How can anyone taste crap like that and like it?” but trust me on this, the melding of these smells with the emergent molasses and fruity background, is really quite delicious, and I spent better than fifteen minutes coming back to it, over and over again,

Hay blonde (or light gold) in colour, one might think this meant a wussie little muffin of a rum. Nope. It was bottled at a mouth watering 51.9%, tasting it was a restrained kinetic experience – not on the level of the >60% beefcakes Velier occasionally amuses itself with (you know, the kind of rums where you can hear the minigun shells plinking on the ground as you drink) but sporting a taste vibrant enough to shake the shop I was in, if not so fiery as to require tongs to lift and pour. Medium-to-full bodied, the initial attack was straw, cedar, hay, dust and very little sweet of any kind.  The wax and petrol, and smoky flavours were all there, yet not at all dominant, more a lighter counterpoint to others, which, after a few minutes, began a slow and stately barrage across the palate: dried dates, raisins, tart ripe mangoes, cloves, papaya, flowers, dark chocolate and a slight briny sense underlying it all. It was, I must stress, quite a powerful overall drink, in spite of it not being as strong as others I’ve tried over the years. “Firmly intense” might describe it best.

The finish was one to savour as well. It was of medium length, a little dry, and gave up no particularly new notes to titillate, merely developed from the richness the preceded it.  Some additional sweet came forward here, a vague molasses and caramel, more chocolate – the best thing about it was a lovely creaminess at the back end, which did not detract in the slightest from dark fruits, more freshly sawn wood, a little smoke, brine and chocolate.

Velier was bottling rums since around 2000, and for my money their golden years occurred when they issued the best of the Demeraras, around 2005-20103– that’s when the 1970s editions rolled out (like the Skeldon and PM, for example). And if, good as it is, the Enmore 1988 doesn’t ascend quite to the heights of many others, no lover of Demerara rums can fail to appreciate what Luca did when he issued it. The Enmore falls right into that band of remarkable Velier offerings, and the romantic in me supposes that it was made at a time when Luca was mature enough in his choices to pick well, but still young enough to remember the reasons why he loved rums in the first place.  All the reasons he loved them. This rum is one of the showcases of the still, the country, and the man.

(#267. 89/100)

Other notes

  • 419 bottle outturn from two barrels.
  • Personal thanks and a big hat tip go to Pietro Caputo of Italy, who sent me the sample gratis.
  • Top and bottom pictures come from Marco Freyr of Barrel-Aged-Mind, who also reviewed this rum.

Enmore 1988 1

 

Velier Port Mourant 1974 33 Year Old Rum

 No Responses »
Nov 242015
 

Port Mourant 1974 cropRumaniacs Review 012 | 0412

The Velier retrospectives continue.  So sad they’re out of production, and that DDL aren’t letting Luca take any more barrels from their old stocks.  The dinosaurs like this one continue to be collector’s items…the good Lord only knows where the 1972 is at these days. I last looked at this lovely rum back in 2013, when I was able to get a bottle into Calgary (bought in 2012, don’t get me started on the headaches that took), and its rep has only grown since then.

Colour – mahogany

Strength 54.5%

Nose – Just lovely, so very distinctive. The DDL Single Barrel PM is both younger and less intense, and showcases what they could do if they had the courage Velier displayed here. Cardboard, anise, cherries and prunes lead off. That characteristic dark licorice and raisins emerge over time, even the tang of some balsamic vinegar, and wafting through all that is the smell of musty old books.  That may not sound appealing, but trust me on this…it is.

Palate – All we have expected, all we have been led to await, comes straight to the fore here. It’s like all PMs ever made, just a bit boosted and with a character just individual enough to be its own. Heated and a little jagged, smoothening out only after a few minutes. Licorice, tar and the fruity mix inside a dark black cake.  Part of what makes this rum so impressive is the overall texture – luscious may under-describe how well the PM melds on the tongue.  With water, some sweetness creeps slyly in, caramel and toffee and cinnamon emerge, and though it is somewhat dry, what we are left with is the fruits, the wood, the tar, the magical amalgam that spells Port Mourant.

Finish – less succulent than I recalled…it’s a little bit dry, and very nicely heated.  Even at 54.5% (which may be the perfect strength for what has been bottled), the fade goes on for ages, leaving some cinnamon, anise, light brown sugar and almonds to remind you to have some more.

Thoughts – A solid, fantastic old rum, one of those aged offerings that sets its own standards, and against which other PMs are measured. I’d never say no to another bottle, or even another taste. And I’ll never stop complaining to DDL that this is where they should put some effort.

(90/100)

Bristol Spirits Port Mourant 1980 30 Year Old Demerara Rum – Review

 4 Responses »
May 162013
 

 

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The PM 30 year old by Bristol Spirits is to El Dorados as fish wasabi is to a green salad. Both are nutritious, both are tasty, both are good to have…but only one is a work of art. This one.

This is what happens when a rum maker throws caution to the winds, takes a standard table tipple, ages it to within a whisker of falling down dead of old age, and then torques it up to a grin-inducing, tonsil-tickling 51%. You get a rum that’s redolent of bat-bleep-hydrophobia. If this was a photo of a sports car, you’d better believe it would be on every rum drinker’s wall in a framed place of honour. About the only other rum like it I’ve tried in recent memory is the Berry Bros & Rudd Reserve Demerara 1975, which may also be thirty years old, and is also from the same still.

Bristol Spirits, producers of craft spirits from single barrels aged beyond all reason, have done something quite wonderful here. Somehow, they have muted the seemingly inevitable bite and bitterness of oaken tannins usually imparted by such a long slumber in the barrels, and produced a thirty year old ambrosia that takes its place among the very best of full-proofed rums ever made. And given that even the Maltmonster gave it his grudging seal of approval (he may have been making nice to me because he drank it at my house, though I prefer to think otherwise), you can understand something of the rum’s quality.

Port Mourant is a plantation in Guyana that has been around since 1732 and is actually closer to the Berbice River than to the Demerara (the “Demerara” moniker is more a designation of rum-style than geography). Theirs was a double wooden pot still, which is now housed at Diamond, and which imparts remarkable depth of flavour to the rums originating from it.

Doubt me? Pour a glass and observe: when I did so, 51% of alcoholic fumes enveloped me in an extraordinary luscious and deep nose. When you read the following words you’ll wonder if I wasn’t slightly off my gourd, and you may disagree, but I absolutely adored the scents of wax crayons, honey, red cherries, freshly sawn lumber (cedar) and anise (that was the awesome part)…though only after the overproof scents of smoke and plasticine and petrol dissipated (that’s the crazy part). Perhaps it was the sheer depth and originality of it, the thickness and strength of it that so appealed to me.

D3S_5553

And the taste, the body…wow. This was like kissing the cheerleader in the noontime of your youth when all things were possible and nothing was beyond you. Unbelievably smooth for a 51% drink, heated and spicy, intense and dark, and richly aromatic to a fault. Fleshy fruit notes of apricots, pineapples and firm yellow mangos, and if I had a single beef about it is that the central pillars of molasses and licorice and anise took a commanding stance throughout that often obscured the subtler tastes that might have made this score even higher. I accept that massively aged full-proofs tend to have that paint, candle wax and turpentine (even kero) aspects to their palates, and I don’t always care for that: here at least such notes didn’t spring at me like a starving cheetah on steroids, but they were there, and it would be remiss of me not to point it out. I was okay with it…you may not be. Let me just suggest that if you don’t mind going off the standard taste-train a bit and are akin to Islay maltsters who sing Gaelic paeans at midnight to the pleasures of Octomore’s massive peatiness, you’ll understand where I’m going with this.

The finish of this all-round impressive rum was long and deep, stayed with me for a long while. It left me with fond reminiscences of smoke, well-oiled soft leather, linseed oil (of the sort you cure your cricket bat with), anise and molasses, and took its own sweet time saying adieu. Here was a rum just made for sipping on a cold night in winter. It warmed it tantalized, it gave back, and in all respects reminded me of what it was I look for in high end, full-proof, aged rums. Strength, depth, intensity, complexity, originality. The PM 1980 had them all.

I believe we are born with our minds open to wonderful experiences, and only slowly learn or are forced into limiting ourselves to narrower and more circumscribed tastes. Our natural curiosity is deadened by incessantly streaming informercials and mass-marketing, which attempt to convince us that sales equates to quality, and which discourage exploration of unique and off-the-rails products that exist solely in their own universe (I could say the same things about either books or movies, by the way – the issue is not relegated to merely spirits). And so, products as great as the PM 1980, are often unknown, little spoken about, and have vanishingly small sales.

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Mind you, this wonderful thirty year old not the best rum in the world. Of course not. No rum ever will be, irrespective of its Jovian altitude, not least because of variations in individual taste. But, y’know it’s close. And it’s as close as we might ever get, now that consolidation of rum production is the name of the game, now that bland and easy-going appeal-to-the-masses is the way to get sales and overtake Bacardi. We may be at the end of a kind of Golden Age of rum production, where distilleries made mad concoctions just ’cause they could; and these days, it’s unlikely that a major company will have the huevos to green-light the investment in time and money, to wait this long, to develop something this exclusive, ever again (Appleton’s fifty year old may be the exception that proves the rule). Maybe that’s all the justification I really need, to shell out this much cash for something this transient….and this good.

(#162. 90/100)

Other Notes

  • The labelling spells Port Mourant incorrectly. There is a Port Morant in Jamaica, though

Secret Treasures Single Cask Old Demerara Rum – Enmore 1989 14 year old

 5 Responses »
Aug 282012
 

I had to go to Germany to pick up this rum, and the greatest surprise for me was the fact that it’s a Swiss concern that makes it. Swiss? I can hear you say…what the hell are the cantons doing making what is culturally seen as a tropical (Caribbean, let’s be honest) tipple? Fassbind AG is taking a leaf out of the book of those dour Scots of Cadenhead and Bruichladdich et al, and have taken rum deriving from the Enmore distillery in Guyana, and bottled it after slumbering for fourteen years down there in Mudland.

This rum reinforces my belief that my personal tastes run primarily to Guyanese rums (with perhaps Panamanians running a close second). I honestly believe that this is one of the best rums of its price to be found (I paid under €40 for it at the awesome shop Rum Depot in Berlin, where some five hundred rums – the joint sells nothing else – cried out for my attention). It is, in my estimation, just short of exceptional.

Ensconced in a tall, cork-tipped, neatly etched, fascinatingly labelled bottle that may actually be originally meant for wine, this 42% single cask offering of dark brown hue made an uanpologetic grab for command of my senses immediately upon opening. To my surprise, I noted the same feinty, deep winey and red-grape notes that so characterized the Rum Nation Demerara 23 and Jamaica 25 rums (and which so, to my mind, ruin the Legendario by being too excessive): but as with those, I must mention how this scent should not dissuade you from forging ahead. Once the rum settled down, it developed into a rich melange of liquorice, rock candy and cinnamon, and was soft and deep and sweet to the nose, with no sting or nastiness that I could discern.

And if it was lovely on the nose, the arrival delivered: it had an oily full-bodied palate, presenting the thick strong legs of a Guyanese bushman used to drugging two quake o’ hassar out of the backdam every morning. Heated — yet not over-sharp — the first tastes were of honey and red grapes, peaches and fleshy fruits, which then billowed out into a well rounded profile that further developed into an excellent sipping rum, strong, deep and delicious. Even at the tail end, the finish didn’t falter: like Usain Bolt relaxedly cruising past the finish line on a good day, the rum exited with a long-lasting, heated and dusty-dry leatheriness redolent of old and well-loved family libraries. Good rum, this. I had four glasses one after the other, gave some to my nominally teetotaller mother to try, and she was so enraptured with it that I had to physically wrest the thing away after her fifth shot.

The Enmore sourced rum was distilled (by DDL) in their famous wooden Coffey still in 1989, and bottled in 2003 – subsequently, I believe all the wooden stills were moved to Diamond estate. 117 casks came out of the run, the 63rd of which delivered 897 bottles…this is the 504th. From what little research I have been able to do, it is clear that all ageing took place in Guyana, after which the bottles were shipped to Switzerland for labelling and further distribution to the shop that is probably not near you. I suspect from the richness of the rum and its dynamism on the palate, that this is not chill filtered, nor does it have any inclusions to alter the makeup.

Fassbind SA (SA stands for Société Anonyme, the equivalent to PLC – the wesbite is at www.Fassbind.ch) has been in the spirits business since 1846 when when Gottfried I. Fassbind founded the “Alte Urschwyzer”distillery in Oberarth to make eau de vie (a schnapps). He was a descendant of Dutch coopers who had emigrated to Switzerland in the 13th century and thus laid the foundation for what is now Switzerland’s oldest distillery. They make grappa, schnapps and other spirits and from what I gather, they branched out into rums in the early 2000s. Rums are carefully sourced, aged at the origin distillery, and then shipped to Switzerland for dilution with Swiss spring water to drinking strength (no other inclusions). In that way they conform to the principles of limited edition rums of other bottlers like Berry & Sons and Rudd, Bristol Spirits, Cadenhead, Bruichladdich’s Renegade line, or Cognac Ferrand’s Plantation Rums.

I can’t remember who it was that rather snarkily remarked “In a century of war and strife, Italy produced Galileo, Michelangelo, da Vinci and the Sistine Chapel; five hundred years of peace, and the Swiss invented the cuckoo clock.” I sort of take exception to that. I like things that work, that are precisely and exactingly put together, that do what they are built to do with a minimum of friggin’ around. That’s why I own manual, mechanical cameras, and have an equally mechanical Swiss watch (and no, I don’t have a cuckoo clock, you can stop your snickering there in the peanut gallery, fella). Fassbind, very much like other boutique rum makers, have a good handle on how to produce a phenomenally good limited edition rum. With this fascinating study in simplicity and complexity, they’ve delivered a good product at a price anyone can afford and should try at least once…always assuming they can find it.

(#117)(85/100)

Rum Nation Demerara 1985 23 Year Old Rum – Review

 No Responses »
Mar 172012
 

First published March 17th, 2012 on Liquorature

This rum fits on my collection like an expensive Italian suit. I don’t really need it, but bought it just the same. For how could I not? It’s actually better than the RN Jamaican 25 year old.

To let my humour and attitude slip just a bit: I gotta be honest, people, and admit that every now and then I get bored with rums. Another day, another dollar, another new rum to dissect. “The Cussmander Distillery’s new Rambunctious Rum has a standard proofing of 40% topped by a (yawn) rubber cap, and a wrapper made of Komodo dragons, blah blah blah”…. are we there yet? Burnt sugar, vanilla, some oak….yawn.

Today, I am reborn. Today I am again completely fascinated by the rums—as a drink, as an instrument of human ingenuity, as an expression of blending art and design to rival Strad violins and Dubai’s islands. Today I’m seriously considering drawing rums on my notebooks like an obsessed teenager seeing his first Lambo poster.

Cutting to the chase, Rum Nation’s second oldest product as of this writing, the Demerara 23 year old, is a rollicking reason to recall why we enjoy rums that take the concept in different directions. We don’t have to be satisfied with general purpose one-size-fits-all rums, but can stretch our minds and our imaginations to encompass the nutso Italian design ethic: this one in particular.

Made from rum sourced more than fifteen years ago and aged in bourbon casks and then finished in Pedro Jimenez  sherry casks, the Demerara 23 year old is, quite simply, as extraordinary a rum as I’ve never heard of, not least because it really is a shade on the crazy side. I almost hesitate to recommend it largely because of that quality. It shares a lot with its older sibling the Jamaican 25 – the sliding panel box with the old printing, the jute sacking, the bottle…but it goes one step further, by being just a shade better.  Not in spite of its testosterone inspired tonsil-baiting hydrophobia, but perhaps because of it.

At 43%, the nose was going to be a shade sharp, no surprises there: good in its way. But remember how I remarked on the sulphurous feinty notes of the RN Jamaica 25 year old? This one took it a step further, and must have decided that since it couldn’t be a pornstar’s parlour toy, it might as well be Batman’s rubber suit. The plastic and rubber notes were so much more in evidence, I almost put the damned thing down, yet a perverse masochism made me continue, and I’m glad I did – because once that mellowed out, rich, pure fumes of a really fantastic rum immediately enveloped my nose….better even than the RN Jamaica 25. Wood, perhaps cedar, some oak, dark brown sugar melting in a pan, pears and dates and apricots. And then, as if to flip me the bird, other notes of soggy biscuits, ageing leather, and a mustiness that was redolent of the patient, methodical, aged calmness of a well cared-for old wooden house in GT along the seawall (no, really).

And the taste, wow. Strong and intense, it was exactly sweet enough to counterbalance the influence of oak, had slow and powerful nuances of leather, savoury, spices, and softer tropical fruits…some citrus and banana, perhaps. Behind it all, yup, that slight prankish note of dissonance created by the rubber that wouldn’t go away. And yet the 43% made the flavours so intense it was almost conjugal bliss…the rum rolled down my throat as if it was a harpooned locomotive and announced its prescence like a load of stink – silently and with deadly force. It was kind of jarring to sense tastes this powerful married to notes both this lovely and this out-to-lunch.  The finish was on a level with everything that had gone before, long and lasting, intense and aromatic, with a vague orange peel note joining with dark sugar in a way I really liked. And yes, the sense that Batman had just bailed.

I said about the Jamaica 25 that it was a rude Italian gesture towards the concept of high volume and merely passable quality which sells just about three quarters of the rums in the world today. The Demerara 23 is made in exactly that iconoclastic vein and with exactly that mindset, and maybe a bit more – they are like Cadenhead, in their way, perhaps Bruichladdich, in their refusal to add anything to their products. Rum Nation’s markets are primarily in Europe, and say what you will about the economic situation there, they do have a somewhat more sophisticated tippling class over the pond. This is a rum aimed squarely at them: and at us over here who want to try something a shade loopy and have the courage to go there. For those who want to experience what a rum can taste like if taken out of its (and your) comfort zone, it’s a great way to get to know a variation most would be too timid to approach.

So try it. You may not necessarily like it as much as I did…but at least you’ll know something more about your tastes than when you started. Me, I think I’m gonna get me another shot. Or three. And try to find out from Fabio who the hell his master blender is.

(#104. 89.5/100)

Other Notes

  • A full biography of Rum Nation is available for those interested in the historical background of the company.
  • As far as I know it is distillate from the Port Mourant double wooden pot still.