Rum Essays
This Page contains various essays of a more factual nature that relate to rums, as well as articles or short pieces I have contributed to other fora and various lists compiled for my own amusement. For more subjective matters, see the “Opinions” page.
General Essays
- Rum – An Introduction – An intro to the site, and some words about rum
- Classifying Rum – a brief rundown of the various styles or types of rum in common useage
- The Proof’s In The Drinking – an explanation of ABV and proofs
- The Matter of Ratings – A first pass at explaining my ambivalence about scoring (2010)
- Stills, Stills and More Stills – Short essay on distillation methodologies
- Single Digit Rums – musings on rums less than ten years old (and often younger)
- Wives & the El Dorado Problem – how to afford your favourite tipple
- Liquor Privatization and Deregulation in Alberta – A somewhat unfocussed look at deregulation as it affected this Canadian province.
- Who was that masked man? – A series of thumbnail sketches of people who influenced the world of rum
- A Short & Personal Essay on Agricole Rums (July 2017) for Coeur de Chauffe as part of a roundup of bloggers’ opinion on agricoles.
- Some Miscellaneous Rum Trivia (August 2017) was written with contributions from across the blogosphere, in response to a guy on reddit who said he wanted some not-so-well-known factoids.
- Rum Cask asked for a list of my three favourite rums of 2017, so I gave them three times that many in this short piece in January 2018; repeated the exercise in early 2019, and again in 2020.
- The Age Of Velier’s Demeraras – Part 1 Background History to 2005 (June 2018)
- The Age Of Velier’s Demeraras – Part 2 The Rums of the Age (June 2018)
- The Age Of Velier’s Demeraras – Part 3 Legacy, Impact, Epilogue (June 2018)
- 12 Unusual Bottle Shapes and Designs…just because they existed and I felt like it (June 2019)
- Big, Bad & Brutal – A Short History of the 151s (April 2020)
- Plugging In To Rum- A Guide To Online Resources (November 2020) – A survey of the major websites and social media places that are available to rum fans who want to broaden their knowledge and engagement
- Barrels, Butts, Casks, Kegs, Tubs, Vats and More…a roundup of the most common (and some not so common) containers used to store and age spirits (March 2021)
Shameless Plug Section: Mentions, Selfies & Interviews
- November 2016 The RumLab kindly ran me through their ten point interview questionaire
- May 2019 Rum Compass also asked me to weigh in.
- April 2020 – Rumcast said some nice words about the site at around 22:30 of their podcast #6
- July 2020 – RumCask put the ‘Caner on the stand and let me ramble on for 90 minutes about blogging and the state of the rumiverse. Link leads to a YouTube video which has now unfortunately been truncated at 22 minutes.
- February 2021 – Japan Distilled, the online podcast-magazine of Japanese spirits, did a session on the nations rums and the ‘Caner came in for a hat tip around 28:17…probably because I talked to the guys on the subject when they were prepping it.
Formal Tastings and Multiple Rum Side-by-Sides
- A Tale of Four Fives
- Three Italian Fantasias
- Three Cachacas from Delicana
- Three More Cachacas from Delicana
- Three German Rums from Severin Simon
- Nine Rums From Out Of Left Field
- The Three Amigos – El Dorado’s Single Barrel Rums
- Velier PM Tasting Blowout
- El Dorado 15 Year Old “Wine Finished” Series
Lists
- Ten Decent Rums (Roughly) Under $50
- Ten Decent Rums (Roughly) Under $100
- Ten Decent Rums (Roughly) Under $200
- Eight Rums I’ll Never Buy Again
- Ten Reasons to Prefer Rums
- 21 Great Whites (2017)
- 21 More White Rums (2019)
- 9 Bajan Rums
- 8 Guyanese Rums from Velier & El Dorado (2018)
- 21 Of The Strongest Rums In The World (2019)
General
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