The Danes love their rum. Like, I mean, really love it. For a country as small as they are (just under six million), they drink more than any of the other Scandinavian countries. AH Riise, Skotlander and Hansen are major rum brands, there are an even dozen or small and mid-sized distilleries making rum scattered around the small country, and they have had some really cool indie bottlers over there – 1423, Rom Deluxe, Norse Cask and Nobilis, for example – possessing reputations that are nothing to sneeze at.
It is this last named company, that is behind the rum we’re discussing today: the 2022 release of Nobilis’s 54.3% ABV Edition No.42 Guyana 8YO (they’re up to No.54 or 55 as of early 2026).
It’s interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s not a single still Guyanese rum, but a blended-in-the-barrel edition of two stills’ marques – the Port Mourant wooden still (PM) and the Demerara High Ester pot still (DHE), and secondly, that barrel was an Oloroso cask. Now, I have not tried the recent DDL-issued DHE/PM blend – others have and gave it reasonable reviews – but certainly it does make one’s ears prick up, not least because the DHE is not very common, esters are the flavour du jour, and anyone who likes Guyanese rums enjoys seeing what pretzels the stills’ combinations can twist themselves into.
Let’s dive straight in. The nose immediately recalls the damp dark loamy texture of a wet forest floor; there are lots of dark cherries and plums and blackberries, and it smells somewhat mellow rather than sharp. Soft mangoes, raisins, red wine, slightly sweet, prune juice, papayas, and enough funk to suggest an open air vegetable market. Oddly, not a whole lot of the sharper strawberries or pineapples or acetones of a true high ester rum, which suggests that proportion of the blend is minimal. As for sawn lumber, woody notes and licorice that characterizes the PM marque… yeah, but no. That’s hardly there at all.
These nosing notes leave me somewhat uneasy, because they imply that the label promises something that the blend itself does not entirely deliver (except the wine part). Still, when tasted, it has its points. Dry and woody notes, very firm, with some leather, smoke, vanilla, caramel, and cigars. Here the fruits are more forward-facing: ripe mangoes, kiwi fruit, papaya, watermelon, red grapes, and just a tuch of citrus. There’s a pleasant hint of cinnamon and vanilla after a while, with orange peel standing in for the citrus. The finish is pretty good: long, fragrant, dry, mostly spices and herbs (cinnamon and vanilla, some rosemary), sandalwood and again, a combination of fruits – soft mangoes, papaya, grapes and kiwi … not a whole lot and nothing new, just enough to be noticeable.
As I said, there’s not a whole lot of Port Mourant to be tasted in this blend – we’re missing the crisp licorice and sawn lumber tannins that distinguish it – and DHE and the Oloroso barrels did their bit to dampen the effect without entirely replacing them with their own specific tasting imprint. It makes the whole experience somewhat indeterminate – we know it’s a Demerara rum, we just can’t classify it properly in our mental map of the country.
So – does it work? Up to a point, yes. Just not enough, to me, although I have to be careful here — because a cask strength, wine-barrel-aged blended Demerara rum from those two stills is not something we see every day. Let’s just say that I liked the rum without being unduly enthusiastic about it. Fortunately, there are many more releases coming through the door from Nobilis, so I have no fear that somewhere on their lineup I’ll find the one I really like. I’ve tasted enough of their rums already to know that for sure.
(#1146)(84/100) ⭐⭐⭐½
Other notes
- YouTube video review link
- 217 bottle outturn, representing half the original cask. The other half was decanted into another cask, and continues to age (probably in the UK, like this one).
Brief company background
Nobilis is a company and brand that has been turning up at European festivals quite regularly since they were founded by an ex-1423 employee named Kenneth Autzen. Inspired by some private bottlings he had made for the Denmark Caroni Fan club in 2019 and 2020, he was convinced there was still space in the local and EU market for another indie bottler, and established Nobilis in 2021, just in time for the explosion of online spirits ordering during COVID).
They have made their reputation with some seriously aged rums – their No.1 was a 32YO Enmore, and in between their two-decades-old rums from all over the map, they have released some 30+ year olds, as well as one of the strongest rums around, a Montebello 3YO at 82.3%. Ken takes his sh*t seriously, as you can see, and is pressing all the buttons at once.