Naga Indochinese 10 YO Rum (Thailand) – Review

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Jun 082026
 

We’ve run into Naga and its rums before, back in 2019 at the Paris Rhumfest that year, when we tried their Indonesian lineup. There’s a reason those rums and not the ones from Thailand were there, and that backstory is so interesting (and lengthy) I have elected to include it below this review, so let’s just dive straight into the rum itself.

Naga is a branded rum from Thailand, supplied by one of the many distilleries owned by the spirits quasi-monopoly ThaiBev. The label incorporates many different elements: the word “Naga” for example, refers to a mythical water serpent in south Asian folklore, the rum is one of the upscale “Siam Edition” range, and it is made in Thailand from Thai sugar cane molasses, distilled five times on a column still (what, once wasn’t enough?), and aged for ten years in-country, in 200 liter charred ex-bourbon barrels. 

Reading  between the lines of the website, there is a lot of barrel recombination and “topping up” going on, which the brand rep told me was “dynamic ageing” but which I posit is more like fractional blending, or an ersatz solera system. The age seems to be a true ten year old, however, and when done, the rum is botted at 40% (for this edition), with strengths varying for other expressions that we’ll get to later. Leaving aside its local materials of origin, it is, then, very much a product in line with others around the world – a blend of a particular age, column still, standard strength.

I don’t write that last sentence with any sort of snark, just to place the rum more firmly in its niche. It is not some kind of ultra special limited edition with a sharp hook to pique your interest, but a completely commercial product that hits a lot of sweet spots at the same time – age, price, still, origin, strength. I have no direct evidence for this, but I suspect it’s the best selling rum of the line.

And when one tries it, it’s easy to see why it’s popular. Aromas of vanilla and coconut shavings dominate the nose, gentle and airy, with some cinnamon and sandalwood, and a whiff of candied oranges, all very light and effervescent.

Palate? So so. 40% ABV isn’t going to tear the roof off. It’s smooth and medium sweet, again with vanilla and coconut leading the charge. Add sugar, dial it down to 25% and you might have a Malibu. Still, that’s perhaps snooty of me – there are woody and tannic notes lurking in the background, which is nice; some bitter coffee grounds, and orange rind to cut it all. The finish is light and easy, here now, gone in a flash, nothing new there, but it’s clean and it doesn’t taste like it was doctored at all.

This is what I mean about it being a commercial product. There’s little here that would make you think it’s particularly special, and even less that would lead you to reference Thailand at all – close your eyes and it could be any mid-range rum from Panama, DR or Nicaragua, and indeed, when you look at the production stats, it does seem to be made more in keeping with the Spanish style of rum making.

That’s not a criticism, merely an observation, and because I have more rums from here in the queue I know better is coming.  But for now, for this ten year old rum, I’d take it as a pleasant and quaffable sundowner if I was holidaying there, without worrying about how I might get a whole lot more.

(#1148)(77/100) ⭐⭐⭐

Historical Background – Country, Brand and Founder

The Naga line of rums has a word on its label – “Indochinese” – that isn’t often understood, though it’s straightforward enough. Historically, linguistically and culturally it refers to southeast Asian countries like Burma (now Myanmar), Thailand, Malaya, Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam where Chinese and Indian influences melded into a synthesis of their own, with further political subdivisions like French Indochina (the latter three) entering the lexicon over time.

Thailand – called Siam until 1932, and this is also on the rum’s label – was, however, unusual, in that it was never actually a colony, possession or territory of either of the two great colonizing powers (though they exerted significant influence over it via ceding of territory, unequal treaties, and legal and trading concessions). This was because by an 1896 agreement between France and Britain, it served as a buffer between them, which neither would control, and so it allowed Thailand to preserve its autonomy in a way the others did not – at least to some extent.

Well, that’s the historical background, which now leads is to the company that makes the rum. Strictly speaking, there isn’t one – Naga is a brand name, not a company, run by a Frenchman named Sébastien Follope. He had worked for Bardinet (La Martiniquaise group) until  2007, then at a brand development agency until 2011 after which he pivoted to being a consultant and importer for rum brands, helping (for example) to introduce Optimus (DR) and Cihuatan (El Salvador) brands to European markets. In 2012, feeling the itch to create a brand of his own, he registered the Naga name (it was unique, easy to pronounce and spell, and wasn’t already taken by anyone else) and contacted the largest maker of rums in Thailand – ThaiBev, which has a near monopoly on the local spirits market. Thaibev has some 12 distilleries, of which four make rums – the Phraya brand released by Sang Som is one of them, Mekhong is another.

After some supply issues in 2014 – the supplier abruptly cancelled the initial order – Sebastien pivoted to releasing some Indonesian arracks instead which led to his line of Naga Indonesian rums (Java reserve, Pearl of Jakarta, Anggur, etc). But in 2019, probably after this Indonesian lineup proved to be popular, whatever issues the supplier had were resolved and the use of Thai rums was greenlit, with all sorts of restrictions on what could (or could not) be mentioned in the literature – “Thailand” and “ThaiBev” being the two most surprising. This is why the “Siam Edition and “Indochinese Rum” feature on the label. This restriction apparently changed in 2023, but the labels remain as they are for now.

Other notes

  • YouTube video review link
  • I’ve read online references that sniff at the way the label references a romantic colonialist nostalgia, but here I’ve tried to make it clear why those names were chosen
  • It’s curious that many Asian rum brands that have started to become more prominent in western rum festivals, are run by French emigres. Naga is one of them, and so is Sampan, Issan, Renaissance, Belami, Nagura, Chalong Bay and Mia.

Phraya “Deep Matured” Aged Thailand Rum – Review

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Mar 162026
 

The top end release of the Phraya triptych of aged rums that is released by Sang Som distillery in Thailand clearly seeks to dominate the premium aged rum space in Asia, and proudly boasts of the 8 gold medals it has won in various spirits competitions from 2012 to 2024. The bottle is handsome to a fault, the backstory is cute, the wording evokes interest, the price is high enough to suggest exclusivity, and the website is really pretty, with lots of nice photos and words.

Unfortunately, when we take all this apart, what remains is somewhat less than the sum of its parts. And that’s a shame for their premium edition, the so called “Deep Matured” Gold Rum since one is left with a vague feeling that more could have been attempted.  I tried all three of Phraya’s rums (Elements, Elements 8YO and this one) at the same time for over a few hours, and feel that this one rum may suffer most from not exceeding the expectations engendered by the presentation and marketing materials.

The production notes aren’t significantly different for any of these rums: age seems to be the only differential, and this is where perhaps more information rather than market-speak would have made a difference to our perceptions. Molasses made from local Thai cane, short fermentation, multi-column-still distillation, and then ageing in charred ex bourbon barrels for 7-12 years (the words “deep matured” have no meaning at all beyond being evocative), and bottled at 40%. 

Nose first: it’s clean and dry, even crisp, giving rise to scents of flambeed bananas, caramel, coffee grounds, toffee, salted dark chocolate, mocha and almonds – in fact the nuttiness is the clearest differentiator between this and the other two. Some overripe fruit, honey, coconut shavings, and there’s a whiff of oaken tannins and leather, perhaps some smoke to round things off. It’s rounded and soft, quite easy to sniff.

This soft roundness persists when you taste it. That’s not entirely a good thing: sure, we can taste leather, smoke, bananas, brown sugar, crushed almonds and cashews, vanilla, plus some cardamom and cloves. That part is nice, because it adds to the relative blandness of the other two rums in the lineup. What’s missing is a little balance that some lighter, crisper citrus would have brought to the party – there’s some fruit, sure, but it’s all overripe soft flavours – squishy mangoes, overripe pineapples, plums…nothing that gives it any kind of edge. Now, this makes it go down easy, and the finish repeats many of the same notes, yet all it does is make it a relatively unadventurous, soft sipping rum that doesn’t dare much and goes nowhere fast.

Some of the fault for this lies in the strength – I confess to feeling some impatience with that 40%. We’re in 2026 now, and you would think that anyone paying attention and reading the tea leaves would up the oomph on their top end rums by at least a point or five, yet no, Sang Som stayed stubbornly stuck at living room strength. Maybe that was for tax or export purposes, but you know what? I don’t care – because at the top of the company scale, one expects something different, better, more intriguing: a bit more bite and serrations, not an incremental improvement from the lower editions.

So, I’m disappointed. The rum is not precisely insipid – like the much derided Millonario rums from Rum Nation, there’s rather more under the hood than appears at first sip; yet it leaves us wishing for more, somehow, something that would excite our interest, tickle our noses and challenge our palates. Decent as it is, the Phraya Gold rum ends up being  just another middle aged rum that tries to use slick presentation to sell something that could have been better.

(#1142)(82/100) (⭐⭐⭐½)

Opinion – Phraya rums generally.

So with this review I looked at the range of Sang Som’s upscale offerings, and must concede that for now, it’s a muted sound and fury signifying very little, sorry. As with all rums that are made for different parts of the world and different cultures, I should be careful in that assessment, however, since what may not work for me will certainly work elsewhere (as the size of the company attests, they do have their market)

This leads me to wonder exactly who the rum is meant for.  Back in 2024 Phraya (or Sangsom Distillery, its owner) was starting to pop up on the western festival circuit, but the company’s rums had been available for years before that and made nary a splash. Even now they don’t, in spite of all the flash and glitter I mentioned in my opening blurb.

I have a feeling that the main market remains Asia, where such easy rums have a much longer and stronger tradition. If you were to gather a few mass market rums from there – Old Monk, Amrut’s stuff, Mekhong, Tanduay are some examples – you see the sort of similarity that perhaps is the reason they sell like crazy… but mostly there. This similarity is where I believe that such companies should tweak their production a little more to make them stand out and maybe differentiate themselves enough to go global. Granted, breaking into the major non-Asian markets, no matter where, may feel like a thankless task given the obstacles and regulations – but perhaps if they were to come up with something more original and more unique, while never entirely losing their local style… well, maybe we’d feel more positive about taking a flyer on a fifty-quid rum.

Other notes

  • Video recap link
  • Sang Som distillery was founded in 1977, and is supposed to be the oldest in Thailand.  It is located in Nakhon Pathom province, which is just to the west of the capital, Bangkok.
  • That Rum Drinker and The Fat Rum Pirate both rated it the equivalent of 4 stars out of 10, which is about 70 points on my scale.
  • The Phraya brand was first established in 2011 by Sang Som Distillery, itself owned by the spirits conglomerate known as ThaiBev. The name derives from a old time title of Thai nobility and can still be found in other contexts, such as the Chao Phraya river that runs through Bangkok. In the brand lineup, there are three different editions: the “Elements” standard edition, the Elements 8YO, and then this premium release, the impressively named “Phraya Double Matured Gold Rum”, which is a blend of 7-12YO rums.
  • “Elements” is pretty much a branding and marketing term, and refers to the four ancient elements of reality – fire, air, earth and water – which impact the making of rum. Me, I think it’s occasionally something of a stretch, but ok. The important thing to note is that the rum derives from molasses made from Thai sugar cane, has a short fermentation time, is run through a multi-column still, then aged in charred ex-Bourbon barrels. The barrels are apparently stored next to a series of lagoons that (according to the company website) cool the ambient temperature and somewhat retard the tropical ageing process.

Phraya “Elements” 8YO Thailand Rum – Review

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Mar 132026
 

In a previous review I looked at the entry level Phraya aged rum from Thailand, called “Elements”, and this one is not too far distanced from that one, except in so far that it has a definitive age statement – 8 years. However, it is an ongoing blended rum, so there is not a year of distillation or bottling to be found anywhere – and, as the brand rep at the German Rum Festival remarked to me, it is a relatively new product, having been introduced in 2023, almost a decade after the original edition came to market. Clearly, then, the original “Elements” sold well enough to warrant something a bit more upscale.

Production details remain the same: molasses from local sugar, short fermentation time, column still distillation, aged in charred ex-bourbon barrels, released at standard strength (40%). In that sense it is something of a Cuban / Latin / Spanish style rum, though I see little evidence of a set of white haired old maestros roneros standing around like old bull elephants at a watering hole, tasting carefully, muttering to themselves and doing their careful blending and barrel magic, the way they do in Cuba and elsewhere.

Which leads us to the tasting notes of this eight year old rum, now that we know that age aside it’s not a thousand miles away from its predecessor. The nose is quite nice –  easy, unaggressive, rum like. It noses lightly sweet, with overripe red grapes, oranges, mangoes n the edge of going off, plus some honey, vanilla and cardamom. There’s a really faint briny and fusel oil note being hinted at, but it’s too vague to comer to grips with and disappears too fast.

The palate? Well, it’s better than the previous version, though this may be damning it with faint praise. Slightly dry, slightly sweet. Grapes, honey, coconut shavings, crushed walnuts, a hint of macha tea (weird, right?). Again, cardamom, vanilla, some dry polished leather and smoke and if there’s any bitterness from the oak it was aged in, I couldn’t spot it.  The same is true of the finish, which is short, easy, and gives little more than some light fruits, honey and, of course, the vanilla. Ho hum.

As with the original Phraya Elements, we’re looking at a decent midrange rum that yes, can be sipped, and yes it will please, and no, there’s nothing bad to say about it – my feeling is simply that like its predecessor, it breaks no new ground. Tasted blind, you wouldn’t discern any serious differences with other middling-aged rums from elsewhere. To be fair, the aromas and flavours come out cleanly and crisply, with just enough complexity to make it better than sweetened nonsense, yet simultaneously with too little of anything – intensity or originality – to make a serious statement for either itself or Thailand. Aside from its exotic location, then, I’d much rather take a Bacardi Ocho for its lesser price, and the Hampden 8YO for a more intense and better flavour profile, and if I was restricting myself to Thai rums only, well, Issan and Chalong bay would still get my bahts first.

(#1141)(81/100) (⭐⭐⭐½)

Other notes

  • Video recap link
  • Sang Som distillery was founded in 1977, and is supposed to be the oldest in Thailand.  It is located in Nakhon Pathom province, which is just to the west of the capital, Bangkok.
  • The Phraya brand was first established in 2011 by Sang Som Distillery, itself owned by the spirits conglomerate known as ThaiBev. The name derives from a old time title of Thai nobility and can still be found in other contexts, such as the Chao Phraya river that runs through Bangkok. In the brand lineup, there are three different editions: the “Elements” standard edition, the Elements 8YO (this one), and then their premium edition, the simply named “Phraya Rum”, which is a blend of 7-12YO rums.
  • “Elements” is pretty much a branding and marketing term, and refers to the four ancient elements of reality – fire, air, earth and water – which impact the making of rum. Me, I think it’s occasionally something of a stretch, but ok. The important thing to note is that the rum derives from molasses made from Thai sugar cane, has a short fermentation time, is run through a multi-column still, then aged in charred ex-Bourbon barrels for five to seven years. The barrels are apparently stored next to a series of lagoons that (according to the company website) cool the ambient temperature and somewhat retard the tropical ageing process.

Phraya “Elements” Thailand Rum – Review

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Mar 102026
 

With the release of the Shakara rum by Velier a couple of years ago, and small-distillery bottlings made by Chalong Bay and Issan, Thailand has come into the spotlight as an Asian rum producer to which we should perhaps be paying more attention. For now the rums we know about are made mostly by such small producers, because even the big guns in Asia are somewhat less known (or revered) in the west – Mekhong, Naga, Tanduay, and ThaiBev’s Sang Som are some of them.

To this stable has been added the Phraya brand, first established in 2011 by the above-mentioned Sang Som Distillery, itself owned by the spirits conglomerate known as ThaiBev. The name derives from a old time title of Thai nobility and can still be found in other contexts, such as the Chao Phraya river that runs through Bangkok. In the brand lineup, there are three different editions: the “Elements” which we are looking at today, the 8YO, and then their premium edition, the “Phraya Deep Matured Rum”, which is a blend of 7-12YO rums.

“Elements” is pretty much a branding and marketing term, and refers to the four ancient elements of reality – fire, air, earth and water – which impact the making of rum. Me, I think it’s occasionally something of a stretch, but ok. The important thing to note is that the rum derives from molasses made from Thai sugar cane, has a short fermentation time, is run through a multi-column still, then aged in charred ex-Bourbon barrels for five to seven years. The barrels  are apparently stored next to a series of lagoons that (according to the company website) cool the ambient temperature and somewhat retard the tropical ageing process.

I am not convinced that any of these aspects particularly help or hinder what in the end, is a perfectly serviceable mid range 40% ABV rum for those who aren’t ito the spirit, and not one that stands out in any significant way. The nose is pleasant: deep caramel and vanilla notes, toffee, light smokiness, underlain with black grapes, red wine, and the deep scent of overripe mangoes. There’s a touch of citrus to provide a little bite, but not much more. Sweet?  Not really.

The taste is similarly unadventurous: at standard strength we aren’t seeing much more than the nose already gave us: honey, vanilla, creme brulee, toffee, with lighter fruity notes, the vague crispness of lychees and lemon zest (and not a whole lot of that), then coconut shavings and some kind of cola. The finish is clean and light – syrup, caramel, honey, vanilla, and that’s just about it.

Of late I’ve wandered around the world and tried rums from as many countries as I can, hoping to find new and interesting products that take the spirit in interesting directions, if not actual new ones. For all its size and popularity in Asia, I’m afraid this Phraya isn’t really it – it’s on par with a young Havana Club or Bacardi, which is not surprising since the short-fermentation, column-still, barrel driven philosophy is the same for all of them. It’s a decent enough product, does not feel “sugared-up” at all, and can be had by itself, neat, as a hot-weather drink, sure. Unfortunately, that’s all it is, and any hopes we had for something a bit more off the reservation remain unfulfilled … for now.

(#1140)(79/100) (⭐⭐⭐)

Other notes

  • Video recap link
  • Sang Som distillery was founded in 1977, and is supposed to be the oldest in Thailand.  It is located in Nakhon Pathom province, which is just to the west of the capital, Bangkok.
  • Not many reviews out there.  Serge Valentin of WhiskyFun rated it 75 points.