Rum Review: Santa Teresa 1796

Color: Medium amber, about half way between my lightest and darkest rums
In the glass: Thin fast running legs when swirled
Aroma: Mild, little alcohol, fruit like banana, apricot, brown sugar, caramel, tiny bit of acetone.
Mouth: Short finish, smooth with little fire, noticeably creamy.
Flavor: Compressed. There is brown sugar, some caramel, some other notes, perhaps oak, that all seem to be compressed together into a flat meld. The flavor is pleasant but doesn’t seem to have much depth and richness. Sweet, but not very sweet. Added sugar is low, between 0-7g/l so the rum’s sweetness is obtained legitimately.
Cigar pairing potential: Excellent! Goes with everything from light to dark, nutty and leather sweet, roasted vegetables, and flowers to darker chocolate notes. Does not go very well with extremely dark cigars like the Asylum Nyctophilia which gains nothing from it. Doesn’t work with very grassy or vegetal cigars either, but otherwise works with almost everything that has a little sweetness to it.

Santa Teresa 1796 was the third rum I picked up some years back when my retailer ran out of Mocambo 20 and Pamparo Aniversario R.E. It was the same price as the second of these and I went through three or four bottles when the price went up and I stopped buying it. By that time, I had sampled and bought a dozen other rums.

At some point later on I found it on sale at another retailer at 20% discount so I bought a few bottles. I was surprised when I didn’t like it nearly as much as I had before. Perhaps the other rums had spoiled me even though they were, with a few exceptions, much less expensive! As described above it isn’t bad, just seems flat and one dimensional compared to other rums in the same and even lower price ranges. I wondered what would happen if I ever found the Mocambo or Pampero Aniversario again, and eventually I did. They both remained delicious to my palate so it was definitely the Santa Teresa. Still good, but not great.

But having gone through a third of this bottle now I remember why I liked this rum. It pairs superbly with most of the cigars I like. Anything with a little sweetness, nut, leather, or brown sugar goes great. I’m sampling it now with a L’Atelier La Mission 1959 and the result is very good! Will I pick it up again? At $55/bottle around here no, but if I see it for $42 again I will!