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.

Rum Information / Reference Material

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
Stills, Stills and More Stills – Short essay on distillation methodologies
The Age Of Velier’s Demeraras (June 2018)
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. Gets an annual revisit and update so as to be current.
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)
Creating the Ultimate Rum Database – Part 1: Early Efforts
Creating the Ultimate Rum Database – Part 2: The RumX App

Essays on Tangential Rum Matters

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 (also known as “Movers and Shakers of the Rum World.”)
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.
12 Unusual Bottle Shapes and Designs…just because they existed and I felt like it (June 2019)
Notes on WIRD’s Rockley Still in Barbados (November 2021)
A User’s Guide to Surviving A Rum Festival (September 2022)

Video Essays

Other Sugar Cane Spirits – A Series On Indigenous / Artisanal Cane Juice Spirits

Jan 2022 – Kokuto Shōchū (Japan)

Formal Tastings, Lists and Multiple Rum Side-by-Sides

Lists

General

Note to File – Longform Answers, Comments & Discussions on Other Sites / Platforms

Where the issues were of interest and importance, I’ve commented at length on in other fora (mostly reddit) many times, and several of these are mini-opinions or even full essays on their own. I include them here for completeness.

Reddit

Some notes on my tasting methods (Aug 2023)
The Rum Equivalent of Jim Murray’s “Whisky Bible” (Aug 2022)
Urging caution with the rhetoric around the new Barbados GI (July 2022, here and here)
Riffing on Australian Rums (July 2022)
Sponsored content and advertorials commentary (based on a Tony Sachs article) (July 2022)
Comments on the SMWS’s lack of (good) rum bottlings (July 2022)
A Retrospective on Velier’s Demeraras and Caronis for a new enthusiast (June 2022)
Comment on 2022 San Francisco World Spirits Competition (May 2022)
Comment on the simplistic article “Why Are Fine Rums Not Known?” (April 2022)
Discussion on Foursquare LFT Rum naming (April 2022)
What Is a rum really worth? (August 2021)
The Mishandling of Michael B. Jordan’s “J’Ouvert” Rum (June 2021)
Rebutting HipLatina’s story of Bacardi and rum (June 2021)
Some notes on Ferrand purchase of SPD stocks (March 2021)
Classifications and white rums (February 2021)
Sourcing and dosing of rums (January 2021)
Appropriation and the naming of Tamosi rums (October 2020)
In Defense of Pietrek’s Editorial Standards (August 2020)
Barbados GI and WIRD’s stance (Jan 2020)(Nov 2019)
Zacapa 23 and sweetening (November 2019)
Why small samples for reviewing aren’t a bad thing (September 2019)(January 2022)
Expanding on the “Age of Velier’s Demeraras” essay (June 2018)
Rum Rating site and other reviewers’ usefulness (Feb 2017)

Shameless Plug Section: Mentions, Selfies & Interviews

November 2016: The RumLab kindly ran me through their ten point interview questionaire
November 2018: Guyana’s daily paper the “Stabroek News” reflected on the Skeldon 1973, rum, the 2018 Tasting of the Century, Velier and The Lone Caner.
May 2019: Rum Compass also asked me to weigh in…abot the rum world, my background, thoughts, experiences….it was fun to do (if somewhat self serving).
March 2020: The American Rum Report commented at length on skepticism about American rum, using the review of the Mad River PC Limited edition Rum as a reference and talking point.
April 2020: Rumcast said some nice words about the site at around 22:30 of their podcast #6 and in the same month Rum Ration (online) magazine listed the Lone Caner as one of five must-read rum sites for the curious drinker.
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.
July 2021: The Whisky Magazine issued their second Rum edition and gave The Lone Caner a small feature page alongside some other writers of note in the current rumworld.
July 2021: The podcast RumCast and I talked about the Key Rums series of rums plus a look at various issues and what it takes to write the way I do. A Part II of my July 2020 interview, really.
August 2021: I wrote a small piece in SMWS’s “Unfiltered” in house magazine, on why their members should be trying rums.
October 2021: Jordan Michelman wrote a piece for Punch Magazine about Japanese rums, and since I provided him some background material, he was kind enough to mention the site and a quote or two.
January 2022: Tony Sachs, who writes so very engagingly on matters spirituous and has turned into a good friend, gave me a gracious hat tip in this Forbes Magazine roundup of what cocktail and spirits gurus are looking forward to drinking in 2022.
October 2022: Roger of Le Blog a Roger did an email interview with me for his blog. Here’s the French language post, and here’s my original email transcript in English.
April 2024: Rum Revival credited me with helping him get into white rums, which was nice of him

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