Secret Treasures Trinidad (Caroni) 1996 7 Year Old Rum – Review

 No Responses »
May 102021
 

In the maelstrom of ongoing indie releases coming at us from every direction almost every month, it’s easy to overlook some of the older rums, or even some of the older companies. Secret Treasures is one of these — I had discovered their charms on the same trip where I found the first Veliers, all those long years ago, at a time when the concept of independent bottlers was a relatively small scale phenomenon. Back then I bought the company’s Enmore 1989, and both Grandma Caner and I liked it so much we polished off the thing in under a week, and started looking around for more.

Over the years I bought a few others, got a few samples and reviewed the few I scored, and then ownership changed.  The last rums Haromex (the new distributor) put out the door  before they changed the ethos of the brand was the twin St Lucian John Dore and Vendome pot still rums in 2014 and subsequent releases were radically different. The company and the Secret Treasures brand has faded from view since then, and few consider their rums great finds (when they consider them at all) as other, newer indies jostle for the place it once held (for a more complete historical picture, see below)

This is where I’m supposed to make some nostalgic Old Fart kind of comment where I wax rhapsodic about the long forgotten and unappreciated rums of yore, undisovered steals and diamonds in the rough which weren’t appreciated at the time by the aggressive young rum pros of today, blah blah blah.  Unfortunately, that’s not the case here. The rum – a Caroni, one of a few released – fell unaccountably short of the high bar set by Velier and other independents, and remains a forgotten, forgettable curiosity, noted more for the associated name than any intrinsic quality it possesses itself.

Let’s do the tasting, then, to demonstrate why somehow this thing falls down flat. The nose gives a promising indicator of things to come, but which don’t.  It immediately reeks of the characteristic petrol, tar and road asphalt in hot weather which so defines Caroni.  It is dry and sere and surprisingly hot for a near-standard-proofed rum (42% ABV), dark and with notes of sugar water, rubber, acetones, fruits – unripe red cherries and strawberries, pears and ripe green apples.  There is also a touch of vanilla and light molasses, but nothing strong or overpowering.

A salty sweet sugar water greets the tongue with warmth and firmness.  All the fleshy and watery fruits we’re familiar with parade around – pears, watermelons, white guavas, papaya, kiwi fruits, even cucumbers all take a bow.  A trace of olives and occasional whiff of strawberries and petrol are barely noticeable, so one can only wonder where, after such a promising beginning, they all vanished to. Eloped, maybe. Certainly they bailed and left the rum with nothing but memories and a good wish to lead to its inevitably disappointing denouement, which was short, breathy, light and watery, and barely registered some vanilla, brine, a fruit or two and exactly zero points of distinction.

Secret Treasures did put out a few really exceptional rums — their lack of marketing, lack of visibility and lack of distribution mostly relegated them to obscurity (the Enmore 1989 mentioned above is a case in point) — and as is usually the case with small volume bottlers, the outturn of the original line was somewhat hit or miss, and not everything they bottled was gold. This Trini rum was something of a waste of time, for example, weak, unfocused, undistinguished, practically anonymous.  Oh it was a rum all right, identifiable as a Caroni, just not much of one. Perhaps it should have been left in the barrels a few more years. Many more years. And then finished in sherry casks. And then spiced up. Then it might have had a profile I’d actually notice. But then again, maybe not. 

(#819)(78/100)

Other Notes

  • Outturn 1304 bottles.  Distilled 1996, bottled August 2003 in Switzerland. The unproven implication is that it was completely aged in Trinidad.
  • The Ultimate Rum Guide notes it as being a “West Indies Distillery” without further elaboration, and the accompanying photo is wrong. I’ve left them a note to that effect
  • Richard Seale remarked in a FB comment on this review, “Age is an important factor in the latter day success of Caroni. This one may also be blended with neutral spirit – this was a practice in Trinidad – blending an aged rum with neutral spirit but keeping the age claim!”

Historical background

Initially Secret Treasures was the brand of a Swiss concern called Fassbind SA (SA stands for Société Anonyme, the equivalent to PLC – the wesbite is at www.Fassbind.ch) — who had 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 remains Switzerland’s oldest distillery. 

They make grappa, schnapps and other spirits and branched out into rums in the early 2000s but not as a producer: in the usual fashion, rums at that time were sourced, aged at the origin distillery (it is unclear whether this is still happening in 2021), and then shipped to Switzerland for dilution with Swiss spring water to drinking strength (no other inclusions). In that way they conformed to the principles of many of the modern indies. 

Fassbind’s local distribution was acquired in 2014 by Best Taste Trading GMBH, a Swiss distributor, yet they seem to have walked away from the rum side of the business, as the company website makes mention of the rum line at all. Current labels on newer editions of the Secret Treasures line refers to a German liquor distribution company called Haromex as the bottler, which some further digging shows as acquiring the Secret Treasures brand name back in 2005: perhaps Fassbind or Best Taste Trading had no interest in the indie bottling operation and sold it off as neither Swiss concern has any of the branded bottles in their portfolio.

Certainly the business has changed: there are no more of the pale yellow labels and sourced single barrel expressions as I found back in 2012.  Now Secret Treasures is all standard strength anonymous blends like aged “Caribbean” and “South American” rum, a completely new bottle design and the Haromex logo prominently displayed with the words “Product of Germany” on the label.

 

Coruba 12 year old “Cigar” Jamaican rum – Review

 3 Responses »
Feb 242013
 

 

Photo courtesy of and (c) Cocktail Wonk

A proverbial harridan of rums, thin, dry, harsh and critical of everything you do with and to it. I call mine “Jimbo.”

Coruba. That brings back memories. Remember that original shuddering bastard of a mixer I reviewed some years back? It was made in Jamaica but mostly sold in New Zealand, with a trickle going in other directions (like Alberta, or Europe, where a friend picked it up for me for about fifty Euros). It was rough and tough and a powerful inducement to give up spirits altogether. I wrote rather humourously in my original Coruba review, that one should trot it out – generously – for favoured enemies when they come visiting, which I thought may have been a bit harsh. Until I ran into its twelve year old brother, that is.

To paraphrase Josh Miller from the Inu a Kena blog: “I’m mixing a twelve year old Jamaican rum! WTF?”. But it’s true.

The source of this rum is probably a young Appleton (reasonable, since it’s made by the Appleton boys at J. Wray for the Swiss based concern “the Rum Company” which may be as far away from Fassbind’s Secret Treasures line as you can get). In 1967 the Coruba rum was first imported to Europe: its name comes from the name Companies Rum Basel (or Compagnie Rhumière de Bâle) – which is the name of the company in Jamaica which was among the most famous of the islands’ 128 distilleries at the time when the original company was established in 1889. In 1929, the Rum Company Kingston was founded under the management of Rudolf Waeckerlin-Fiechter in order to complete production process of the rum in Jamaica. Since 1962, the marque has been produced by J. Wray & Nephew, and the blending and the bottling for the whole of Europe still takes place in the Rum Company in Basel, which has become a part of the Haecky Group in the meantime.

It was aged in small (no further description available) casks that once held (of course) bourbon and beyond that my research hit a dead end, and I was able to glean no more info on its constituents. But my feeling based on taste and profile suggested a column still product, not one from a pot still.

All this is window dressing through. Bluntly, this is one of the few aged rums I really don’t care for neat. Most are made with care and attention, and a view to rising up the scale to even older versions to come (take the St Nicholas Abbey 12, Cockspur 12, El Dorado 12, and the Appleton 12 as examples). And Coruba does have an 18 and 25 year old knocking about which I’d like to get and see if they up the ante a shade. But that pussyfoots around the central issue of this rum, and that is that it doesn’t work for me.

Take away the labelling on this bottle and what you’re actually left with is the English Harbour 10 year old bottle plus a wooden-cork combo stopper. Not anything to complain about, and actually, quite nice, even if the label was a bit busy to the eye (I’m a fan of beauty in simplicity). It spoke to its manufacture by the Rum Company out of Kingston, the ISW gold medal it won in 2008 and its ageing in “old oak casks” as well as its “handcrafted” nature, which just had me moving on with the same impatience I always feel in the grocery shop when I see idyllic rural farms and hard-working midwestern families pictured on a box of some industrial-level-manufactured product.

The Coruba 12 year old was one of the lightest-hued aged rums I’ve had in a while, being somewhere between amber and honey-coloured (but not blonde). Both the Cockspur 12 and the El Dorado 12 with which I tried it, were darker. The aroma on opening was quite biting, and more than a little astringent – for a 40% aged rum I found this disappointing to say the least, because the other two competitors had noses that were so much richer and deeper – the best I could say about the Coruba was that I liked the subtle scents of flowers, fresh-cut grasses and faint lemon zest, even if it lacked some more complex fruity notes I would have liked. And let me tell you, like the serpent in the garden of Eden, there was an unwelcome note of excess nail polish coiling behind it all that was utterly discombobulating. Again…wtf?

Palate…meh. Thin bodied and both spicy and briny at the same time, a shade harsh on the tongue, like some Dickensian headmaster of old, rod held upright to whip my misbehaving, misbegotten behind. I am not kidding when I tell you that I tasted dry, musty, tobacco and leather first off (almost morphing into cardboard that’s been in the basement too long), with vague caramel, unsweetened dark chocolate, vanilla and burnt sugar notes following on as the rum opened up, followed by a flirt of ripe cherries. But all subtler, sweeter flavours were rapidly overrun by that salty, dry, tobacco background, which, now that I think about it, is probably why they named this one “Cigar”…not because the rum is good to have with one, but because it tastes like one. A dry one at that. As for the finish, sorry, no happy ending there…short, acerbic, unremarkable, and it sure didn’t like me much. Too dry, too peppery, and gave back not enough.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that I merely sample rums to review, and am not a really regular or serial drinker. Because a rum like this, for the price it cost and the profile it presented, would make a normal person swear off rum for good and maybe switch to whiskies (and indeed, I think there are a lot of elements to this rum that an anorak might appreciate more than I would or did). Others with a samaritan-like bent might just use it to address battlefield trauma. Me, I’m just disappointed. Perhaps it’s a depressing rum for me because I had had higher hopes for it.

Long story short, this is a rum that if it were a film noir, I suspect it would have been that film at the point where it’s raining. Hard. Without the neon lights. Just as someone gets offed by his lady love, for whom he cared more than she deserved.

(#146. 75/100)

Other notes

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)

Coruba Dark Jamaica Rum – Review

 4 Responses »
Feb 252010
 

First posted 25 February 2010 on Liquorature.

(#011)(Unscored)

Short, sharp sword to the guts when had neat, this rum is without question something to use as a mix and not to risk taking alone.  Needs refinement to be taken seriously, but since it’s cheap as all get-out, it does have a perverse attraction on that basis alone. Go for it if you’re feeling a bit brave today.

***

This is another one of those reviews that I wrote in order to give some weight to the Single Digit Rums.  Having tasted it, shuddered and reached for the coke, I can understand both why it costs so little, and why it’ll probably never make the table of the Club.

SDRs are in the main the bottom end of the ranking scale, and part of that is because they represent what I term the tipple for the masses – it’s the sort of thing I grew up on, had many a good conversation over, and eventually moved away from as my tastes became more snooty (and hence, expensive).  The Jamaica distillery of J. Wray & Nephew, home of  Appleton makes this low end rum and it’s marketed by Compagnie Rhumière Bale out of Basel, in Switzerland – using 30 marks to create it utilizing the solera method – primarily as a mixer and a base for cocktails and other drinks.  Given that the age is unmentioned anywhere on the label, and taking into account its somewhat raw searing taste, I venture to suggest it’s five years old or less.

The thing is, a rum this dark, I kinda expected just a tad more…a strong molasses taste maybe, a burnt-sugar kind of nose.  Something that was rude, vulgar and overpowering, that happily booted and spurred across the palate and would never see the tables of the rich but which at least had some kind of obnoxious character all its own (say what one will about the Bundie, no-one can deny it has a taste and prescence not readily ignored). None of that is really in evidence in the Coruba, because the spirit fumes overpower everything fast. Now, if one flexes one’s snoot and gives it a long and decent snort, one may be able to separate the fruit and perhaps some whiskey: certainly the taste is there – I detected some apricot and sugar on the way down.

The problem is that the finish is too short and harsh, and you know me: I really have an issue with that damned whiskey burn.  So neat and on the rocks, I’d stay away from it, since this is clearly not a sipping rum.  Even when mixed, alas, it lacks the release of flavour that characterizes the aristocrat of the working class tipple, the EH5 (which has become a low-end baseline all its own, by the way). Which is a shame, because once the burn goes away and you manage to swallow, you do actually taste something of the toffee and caramel at the back of the throat. Unfortunately, that’s more than likely just the coke or ginger beer.

In summary then, Coruba really fails as a sipper either neat or on the rocks. On the assumption that it’s a mixer, I’d put it on the bottom shelf.  If I was desperate for a drink I’d take it, but it’s got so much competition at the same price point that it’s probably best to just use it in one’s cooking without giving it pretensions to your liquor cabinet…unless a favoured enemy is dropping in for a visit, in which case, be generous.

Update 25 Oct 2010: I just reviewed an article on Wikipedia which states that Coruba is not marketed in Jamaica, but primarily in New Zealand, where it has held the top selling rum spot since the 1970s. If anyone from NZ can comment on that I’d appreciate it, since it sure is news to me, and it’s curious that I found a Kiwi rum in Alberta.

Other Notes

The Cocktail Wonk provides some background information on the company behind the brand as he discusses the “Cigar” release, but it’s useful here too.