Rum Review: Worthy Park Single Estate Reserve

I am more and more drinking only rums promising no additives. Some of these are the product of ageing in wood other than ex-bourbon, but the wood is dry. There is no mixing of spirits only the influence of their past presence in the wood. I am trying not to be a snob about this. There are still a few rums having a just a little added sugar (English Harbour) or more (El Dorado 15), or maybe a little sherry (Dos Maderas 5+5), that I still like very much. At least I think I would when I get around to having them again.

But more and more there are really good rums with no additives available on the American market, and I can only drink and afford so much. The last ingredient here is a new up-scale brick and mortar store Bitters & Bottles but 10 minutes drive from my home with a spectacular rum (and both whiskeys and whiskies) collection. Consequently, in the last year I’ve bought nothing but these rums from a half-dozen producers, but in particular from Foursquare and Hamilton (many reviews of both lines here). Even now, buying these for a year, there are a few of each producer sitting in my closet not yet tried. There have come to be so many of them.

Yet even among these, perhaps one or two dozen producers out of many hundreds available available in the U.S. there is a huge range of effects and it is good to keep reminding yourself of how much different two rums can be. I found this recently no better illustrated than the difference between the Foursquare PREMISE I reviewed last time and this Worth Park. The PREMISE smacks of sweetness and fresh fruit, although no sugar is added to it. It is aged for 10 years both in ex-bourbon and ex-dry-sherry casks, and comes to us at 46% ABV. The Worthy Park is dry with notes of over-ripe fruit, aged 6-10 years (according to the label) in “once used” ex-bourbon casks, bottled at 45%. But their aromas and flavors could not be more different. I’m guessing, but I suspect the casks are not charred and come from a non-smokey sort of bourbon. There are no charred oak flavors.

The bottle shape stands out a bit. There is a nice synthetic cork stopper. Let’s look at the rum.

Color: Pale amber, light copper.

Legs: Thin legs, fast at first, slow down as they go.

Nose: Ripe dark fruit, deep molasses, alcohol, ripe banana, caramel toffee, coffee. A very rich nose with a promise of Jamaican funk like a Pusser’s or Appleton Estate.

Sip: Crisp, thin body, clear, some fire in a medium slightly bitter finish, dry, thin body, and only the slightest hint of over-ripe ester funk to remind you this is a Jamaican rum. A very clear dry rum. That’s amazing. Given how much ester seems to be present on the nose, the taste has only the slightest (though unmistakeable) hint of it. As I finish the glass the rum stays crisp. Its body doesn’t seem to thicken up as many do.

There is one down side to drinking these. They do tend to be pricey. This Worthy Park was $60, a little steep for me, but it did come highly recommended, I can see why. As goes cigar pairing (the cigar pictured is the last of my Padilla San Andres Reserva, I haven’t found any combination yet as good as everything seems to be with the Premise. But this is a great rum and a great counterpoint to sweeter offerings if you are in the mood for a change.

Review: Foursquare Premise Rum

Another offering from Richard Seale. Premise is one of those special barrel bottlings released in the last few years by Foursquare Rum and available in American brick and mortar stores (with good rum collections) for about $55. A tad more than the earlier “Port Cask” and “Zinfandel Finish” releases. Although it isn’t in the name I’m told to think of this as a “sherry cask” rum. As in all the other releases, these are supposed to be dry ex-sherry casks, and the rum contains no additives.

The rum is a medium amber, not pale, but by no means dark. More brass than copper colored. When swirled in the glass it forms medium thick legs that flow pretty fast. Bottled at 46% ABV a good down the middle strength given the present fashion for “naval strength” rums. Smooth and delicious as it is, it had enough fire going down to convince you there is real alcohol present. The rum is aged 3 years in ex-bourbon wood and then 7 more in ex-sherry wood. More detail can be found here at the fatrumpirate site.

On the nose there is intense Caramel, toffee, brown sugar, raisin, even apple or green grape, and maybe light ripe pineapple. Also enough alcohol to push it all out, I don’t get any petrol or varnish notes. This is one sweet and slightly bright-fruity aroma with a little oak thrown in.

The flavor is surprisingly sweet maybe sweeter than the port and zinfandel bottlings. Lots of brown sugar, light caramel, maybe a little tobacco, sherried oak. The sweetness is a little less up front on subsequent sips. Finish is long and sweet, there is no bitterness here. Not a lot of fruit in the flavor for me, but what there is isn’t dark but light. The body is distinctly creamy, a little thick.

You know I always drink rum paired with a cigar. It so happens that the only wine I really like paired with cigars is sherry. Needless to say a “sherry cask” finished rum from foursquare was going to hit the spot. It does. Goes well with every stick I’ve tried, 5 of them at this point. A little expensive yes, but if you have developed a palate for unadulterated rums lately you’re going to want to try this one.

Happy sipping!

Rum Review: Hamilton Demerara River

The label on the back of this bottle says: “The bottle of rum in your hand was blended from carefully selected rums distilled and aged up to five years in Guyana then bottled in the U.S. without adding any sugar or other sweetener. The rich dark fruit, spice, smoky wood, and tobacco notes in this rum add a unique flavor to cocktails and Tiki drinks…”

Looking this up on the web it turns out that this rum is bottled from the same blend as the Hamilton Overproof 151 rum but dialled back to a less eye watering 86 proof (43% ABV). It is, presumably, made from molasses extracted from Demerara River (in Guyana) sugar plantations. Why Demerara sugar is so highly prized for rum I do not know, but it is true that all the “Demerara rums” I’ve tried (like El Dorado) are pretty darn good. As it turns out, according to this interesting essay on Demerara rums there is only ONE DISTILLERY (Diamond) in Guyana now and all Demerara-based rums start there. How do they do this? The key (from the linked article above) is: “The challenge for the Diamond Distillery is to maintain the distinctiveness of the many different brands while having them all under one roof. One way they do this is by using a variety of different stills including the only wood stills left in the world.” Here is a link to the Diamond distillery’s page.

So now you know… Let’s get on to the tasting

Color: medium-dark amber, red, orange. Not the darkest rum but on the dark side
Legs: tiny beads coalesce to thick tear drops and run slowly
Aroma: Heavy hit of prune and raisin, slight alcohol, caramel and treacle, apricot, sweet smoke. Very rich aroma, I could delight in this sensory experience a long time.

Flavor: Mixed-up. Light touches of tobacco, light brown sugar, a little oak, dark fruit. Sweet and rich without a lot of flavor separation. Reminds me of a creamier, sweeter version of English Harbour. Flavors are amalgamated and come forward as one delicious offering. Smooth, long sweet finish, a bit of heat rises slowly after the swallow, and sustains itself quite long, the prune-raisin and tobacco in the aroma coming up at the end on the nose and back of the throat. Nice experience!

It is hard to believe that nothing is added to this rum to smooth it. If the oldest rum in the blend is 5 years this seems rather dark in color and the smoothness in it can only come from the blend . Yes, English Harbour is smooth and only 5 years old, but it does have a little sugar in it. This rum is distinctly richer than English Harbour but reminiscent of it. At $24 at my supplier it also competes with English Harbour on price, and while I love that rum and always have some around, I will be adding this Hamilton to my permanent collection as well.

Highly recommended if you are looking for a smooth and easy-going rum to enjoy neat or in cocktails. For your interest here is a link to Hamilton’s Ministry of Rum

For those living in or around the San Francisco Bay Area, here is a link to Bitters & Bottles, my local (South San Francisco) retailer maintaining a superb rum collection!

Hamilton Navy Strength Rum

I first encountered Hamilton rums late in 2016 when I tried the Saint Lucian 2006, an ester fueled funky rum in the Jamaican style. Since that time I’ve found and tried three others, the ’86, the Pot Still Gold, and now this latest and best of all by far the Navy Strength.

At 57% ABV this is a true “navy strength” rum. This phrase comes from the fact that at 56% and above, a gun powder wet with a little rum will still light (it doesn’t explode, but burns something like a sparkler) while below 56% it will not. Given this much alcohol (and I am assuming there is no added sugar here, an implicit promise of the Hamilton line) I expect some heat. I was not disappointed.

This from the Ministry of Rum website and here is a direct link to the page on this rum. There is a lot of information there about the history of this blend. Would love to do what Ed Hamilton does!

“60% Guyana rum at 154 proof and 40% Jamaican rum at 170 proof are blended together and slowly stirred for 48 hours before dilution to 114 proof with filtered well water at the Five & 20 Distillery in Westfield, NY. “

Color: Medium dark, copper red.
Legs: A few fast thin legs, and a lot of slow thick drops suggests a creamy experience.

Aroma: Dark fruit, prune, raisin, apricot, alcohol, molasses, oak, and burnt caramel (treacle).

Sipping: Lots of heat from the beginning to a long smooth and sweet finish. You get the dark fruit, molasses, burnt brown sugar, strong sherry notes, oak. Very creamy. I put a little water in this (1/4 t-spoon in a dram lowers the ABV from 57% to 55%, not very much) and it stands up well to it. The heat is a little reduced, bringing out coffee and chocolate notes from the rum while all the dark fruit remains. The heat is still there is a little reduced and the rum gets even creamier. The treacle turns into a less burnt brown sugar.

At around $44 this rum is on the expensive side for me, but only one of the Hamiltons I’ve tried (the ’86 at $24) is under $40 anyway. This is a superb rum. Think of Foursquare 2004 (for heat) with the rich flavors of their Port Cask, and more of them. If you like the higher ABV rums, this is one to try, the richest, thickest rum I’ve had with an ABV above the 40s. As far as I know, the Hamilton rums are available only in the U.S. Considering how many great rums we cannot get here are available to Europeans, it’s good to have a line like this on my side of the Atlantic.

Pairing with cigars? Of course! This rum works best with the less sweet cigars bringing out nutty brown sugar sweetness in the smoke. Highly recommended.

Hamilton Pot Still Gold

Another rum from the collection of Ed Hamilton. This one different in that there is no explicit “declaration of honesty” (added sugar?) and looking this up on the Ministry of Rum website doesn’t add much. Here is what it says:

Black rum distilled from fermented molasses. Aged up to five years.

A blend of light, very light and heavy pot still rums from the Worthy Park Estate where rum has been made since 1670. Colored with gold-tint sugar-based caramel, this pot still rum embodies the heavy aroma and flavor of Jamaican rum. Over-ripe bananas dominate the aroma and yield to spice, sugar cane and ripe fruit in the body. The finish is reminiscent of the aroma with ripe bananas and vegetal notes.

I cannot fathom what is “black” about this. As you can see from the photos, it is the palest rum I’ve ever had. Any paler and it would be perfectly clear.

Bottled at 46.5% ABV. There is no age statement on the bottle.

Glass: Thin fast legs at first followed by a thicker, slower wave. Never quite seen anything like this. There are distinctly two different legs. Perhaps the difference between the light and heavy rums in the blend?

Aroma: Nose of alcohol, bright pineapple, ripe banana, and light caramel. Some dark fruit aromas (prune/raisn?) too belying the rum’s color. If you have too many straight hits it starts to take on a varnish quality. Making me dizzy.

Flavor: Bright pineapple and citrus, a little bit of raw sugar and I get a distinct note of mint and anise! the rum has a hint of Schnapps in it! I can taste youth in the rum but depth at the same time. It is much smoother than I would expect with a “young rum” with something like a minty black cherry cough drop on a surprisingly long aftertaste.

I’m trusting that the Hamilton name means there is no added sugar in here. the label says nothing about it. The bottle has no “batch number” on it either. Obviously a blend and surprisingly (or at least seemingly) the components are distinctly sensible.

This is a little like Smith & Cross (you can also taste two rums there) but smoother, much less “in your face”, and with a mint/anise twist. A good substitute in the rotation. the Smith & Cross was getting a bit overpowering. For $24 Hamilton’s “Jamaica Pot Still Gold” an outstanding find for those times when I feel like a change from dark rums.

Hamilton 86 Guyana Rum

Another from Ed Hamilton creator of the Ministry of Rum. A Guyana Demerara River rum I expect this to be both sweet and smooth. I was not disappointed. The bottle says 43% ABV product of Guyana distilled and aged on the banks of the Demerara river. Who doesn’t like Demerara rums? On the back label: “A blend of rums aged up to five years in Guyana and then bottled in the U.S. without adding any sugar or other sweetener.

Color: Dark mahogany red, rich looking.

Legs: A few fast thin legs descend from a swirl, but many little beads also form and slowly coalesce.

Aroma: Heady molasses, coffee, chocolate, burnt caramel (treacle), prune, strike you along with just a little alcohol. The nose is fantastically rich. There are no “young rum” acetone notes, only delicious darkness. This smells very sweet. No ester funk in the aroma at all.

Flavor: Smooth, dark fruit, less sweet than it smells. Very creamy blended flavors favoring prune, tobacco, and coffee but subtle. No one flavor leaps out and there is something a little different from every swallow. No funk! Warm but not at all hot or sharp. Smooth, smooth, smooth. Medley of aromas disappears in the flavor to a subtle dark fruit sweetness, creamy throughout. Long finish warm creamy rich with just a touch of bitterness at the very end. It reminds me of the Foursquare Port Cask or maybe a richer version of English Harbour.

This is my second “Hamilton Rum”, the first being a very high ester (funky) St. Lucian 2006. Also rich, but very funky. This one is very different. Ed has a good nose for good rum of all kinds. This bottle cost me $42 (the St. Lucian was $60 something)! Fantastic deal for such a well crafted rum! Highly recommended.

Comparing Foursquare Port to Zinfandel Cask Rum

Foursquare seems to come up with an endless variety of good rums. I discovered the Port Cask Finish last year, and then found a retailer who also carried the Zinfandel Cask Blend. I’ve reviewed each of these separately and also the Foursquare 2004. But these two in particular seemed so similar I wanted to see what they were like side-by-side.

As goes information concerning the production and aging of these rums I can do no better than to quote the blog site of the fatrumpirate. The links following the quotes will take you directly to his reviews of these two rums as my own are linked above.

“The Port Cask Finish is a blend of pot and column distilled rum all distilled, blended and bottled at Foursquare. The Port Cask Finish is actually a bit misleading. Many producers would rate it as “double aged”. The rum is aged for 3 years in Bourbon Barrels and is then re-casked into 220 litre Port Casks for a second maturation of 6 years.”

“[The] Zinfandel Cask Blend is a mix of Pot and Column distilled rum which has been first aged in Bourbon casks before being finished in Zinfandel casks. In total the rum has been aged for 11 years.”

Both rums are produced at the Foursquare distillery in Barbados. The Port Cask comes at 40% AVB and the Zinfandel Cask at 43%. This isn’t much of a difference, but it is noticeable on the swallow. I am operating on the assumption that both of these rums start out in the same distillate and the whole of their differences comes from the aging process, 9 years for the Port and 11 years for the Zinfandel. The above linked website does not say for how long the zinfandel version ages in ex-zin barrels, but I have to believe that it is for many of those 11 total years.

Both rums come without additives, no extra sugar or coloring. “Honest rums” as this phrase is used on all the blogs these days. I have read that the ex port and zinfandel barrels used were dry. There was no wine sloshing around as is often the case with other wine-finished rums. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing by the way. I suspect there is a little bit of Spanish sherry in Dos Maderas 5+5 (review linked) and that is one delicious rum.

I’ve been through one whole bottle of the Port Cask at this point, but so far only this (pictured) bottle of the Zinfandel Cask. As a result, this particular Zin version has evolved for about 3 weeks in its opened bottle, but the Port Cask only a week and as you can see I’ve had only 3 or 4 glasses from the pictured bottle. So to some extent I am comparing apples to oranges, but I hope the comparison will still be useful.

I’ll not go into all the swirling legs business here I did that in the earlier reviews linked above. But I do want to call attention to the color of these rums which you can see from the photos is as nearly identical as it can be. I sometimes think the Port Cask is a tiny bit darker, but some photo experiments suggest this is just a trick of the light.

On the nose, the Zinfandel Cask is sharper, there is more alcohol. There is also raisin, grape, some burnt caramel and light brown sugar, more than a hint of tobacco and oak. There isn’t a lot of sweetness in the aroma and only the barest hint of “pot still funk”. Oak is more prevalent but the aromas are nicely distinguished. By contrast the Port Cask is much more mellow and melded. It’s harder to tease out separate notes, but they are definitely sweeter. No oak to speak of in the Port Cask, some dark fruit, molasses, a little vanilla, and maybe almond. I don’t notice any tobacco or funk, but something like a hint of milk chocolate. I don’t think of rums as smokey compared to bourbon, but between these two, the Zinfandel has more burnt notes.

The flavors are as different as the noses. The Port Cask is smoother with less fire on the swallow and a short to medium but sweet finish. There is dark plum and raisin, brown sugar, black cherry, and chocolate, but like the aromas, they are more melded than the flavors of the Zin. The Port gives very little alcohol taste on the tongue and no funk. The rum is creamy and gets creamier as you go through the glass. I don’t detect any oak in it.

The Zinfandel Cask is less sweet and less creamy but it has some of both. It has a much longer after taste carrying a bit of oak bitterness as does the initial flavor. It is a little less smooth and the alcohol makes it hard to find distinct fruit notes, but I do get burnt brown sugar notes even without any sweetness. There is no funk I detect in the flavor. Although less sweet and more distinctly oaky than the Port Cask, the Zinfandel Cask is bolder, a more manly rum. It carries a forceful flavor kick compared to the subtlety of the Port Cask which is more rounded and nuanced. At least this is so at their bottled strength.

I did try an experiment, adding just enough water to a half ounce of the Zinfandel Cask to bring it down to 40% ABV. As expected there was less alcohol on the nose and a little less fire on the swallow, but still not as smooth as the Port Cask. The water maybe brought out a little raisin in the flavor of the Zin, and there was some funk there too, but way in the background. The Zinfandel Cask was still more oaky and not as creamy as the Port Cask though. The two remained quite distinct so it isn’t only the ABV making these two good rums different.

These are both excellent rums and both on the distinctly drier side of the rum world. In some ways they come out the way you might expect. Port is sweeter and less acidic than Zinfandel and this comes across in the noses and the flavors. Both in the mid $40 price range near me, I will certainly be keeping them around as long as I can. As I understand it both are generous (thousands) if limited bottlings. Once they are gone, well, you know…

Rum Review: Real McCoy small batch 12 year old rum

Back in the days of prohibition in the U.S., the spirits sold in the speakeasies (or maybe from the back of a truck) were frequently watered down. The story goes that one particular rum runner, Bill McCoy, loaded a boat with rum in the Caribbean, and sailed it up to New York where he remained in international waters (the 3 mile limit) and passed his rum on to boats that came out to meet him making I would think a tidy profit in the process. Bill McCoy gained a reputation for moving only honest unadulterated product into the black market channels for distilled spirits. “The real McCoy” became American idiom for “honest whiskey”, and soon after for anything genuine.

The Real McCoy rum series (there is a 3 year, 5 year, and 12 year) is the creation of Bailey Pryor who did a documentary on Bill McCoy and in the process met R. L. Seale of Foursquare rums. The Real McCoy is a result of their collaboration, a “Barbados style” (it says so on the label) rum mixing pot and column still distillates. According to the website (linked here) a good part of the idea was to keep the rum honest. Each of the age statements represent the youngest rum in the standard blended product. It is also made without added sugars or anything else.

A picture of the standard 12 year blend (black label) appears at the end of the review. There are reviews of the standard 12 year on several well known rum sites like Inu Akena and The Fat Rum Pirate. It appears to be a very good rum, but alas I have not tried it…

What I have tried, pictured here, is a special “small batch” 2016 release aged in both charred American bourbon, and Portuguese Madeira casks for a full 12 years (total). I assume it is a blend, the label makes no mention of a single barrel. The white label sets it off, bottled at 46% ABV (as compared to 40% for the production blend). The price of this special product is about $50, while the standard blend is about $40. It comes in a nice old fashioned sort of bar bottle, with a plastic-capped cork stopper that gives a satisfying pop when pulled. Let’s get to the rum…

Color: Medium amber, slightly red. Very appealing.

Legs: When you swirl the rum in the glass the tiniest droplets form and take forever to coalesce into very thick drops that run very slowly down the glass.

Aroma: Apricot, burnt sugars (treacle), molasses, raisin, some alcohol, tobacco. As always there seems to be something different in every whiff. Good smells though. Want to keep breathing it in.

Flavors: Very creamy from the beginning. There is the burnt sugar from the nose, but also a distinctly cinnamon note, some chocolate, tobacco, ripe grape, apricot again, and a little touch of oaky bitterness. The finish is long, smooth, and sweet. Some heat comes up but gets spread out over the finish and never burns. Very nice. The Foursquare pedigree is notable in the creaminess and depth of the flavors. Very nice.

For the price ($49) at my retailer this is close to as good as the slightly less expensive ($42) Foursquare Zinfandel and Port cask products. Purely a matter of taste here, I think the Real McCoy is a little more complex perhaps but less cleanly refreshing. In any case it is a very good rum and I know I will have to pick up a bottle of the standard black label 12 year on my next visit to my local retailer so I can review that one too.

The cigar pictured above is a Rodrigo “Corona Project” house blend I reviewed before over here. The rum goes well with every smoke I’ve tried with it. If there’s a little roasted nut or sweet woodiness in the cigar, this rum will bring it out a bit.

Drink up me hearties!

Rum Review: Smith & Cross

There is a comment to a review somewhere that begins “anyone who says they drink this rum neat is a lieing sack of…. “. No need to complete the sentence this being a family forum and all…

But I’m here to tell you that it ain’t so! Not only do I drink this rum neat, it is actually best that way. I expected something harsh. That is not what I get here… But let’s take things in order.

Bottled at 57% ABV there is going to be some fire here. The back label says it is a mix of Plummer and Wedderburn pot still rums. It is 100% pot still. “Plummer” and “Wedderburn” turn out to be names in a classification system used (perhaps) by the British admiralty and I cannot find much else about this particular system, but I’ll keep looking. Smith & Cross is a 50/50 mix of Wedderburn aged less than 1 year, and Plummer aged from 18 months to 3 years. It seems to me that these age ranges leave a lot of room for flavor and texture differences from batch to batch. I imagine each rum might be blended with various barrels of itself before the two types are mixed. In any case this is a young rum compared to most of what I’ve been drinking lately.

I did learn that this is a “high ester” rum (you can taste that) and that these esters come from the distillery’s use of dunder. Esters are molecules formed from combination of various alcohols and acids. Our nose happens to be sensitive to esters. That is, we smell them, they are an important part of what we call flavor, and their aromas are like all kinds of ripe fruit. If I recall my chemistry years butyric acid and ethyl alcohol form a banana smelling ester. Esters come from a few places in the production chain, notably fermentation. They are volatile molecules and so come over from the finished mash to the distillate. Some also develop in aging depending on the barrels. Ester production is greatly enhanced if the distiller uses dunder.

A dunder is what is left over from a previous fermentation run. It tends to be pretty disgusting, and often some of this stuff is left to age in pits for a while where it gets even more disgusting. I’ve never been there but I’m told the smell of ripe dunder will make you sick. If true it’s because of all the esters, an extraordinary number and density of esters! It turns out that if you take a little bit of this stuff and mix it into the still along with a fresh batch of sugars and yeasts (Smith & Cross use natural yeasts native to Jamaica), those esters get into the distillate and from there into the barrels where they end up producing an incredibly rich and usually fruity rum. Let’s get to the rum!

Color: Pale light amber, almost yellow
Legs: The rum forms tiny droplets that take forever to form into legs and run thick and slowly down the glass

The nose is full of ripe fruit. Pineapple dominates and there is grape, banana, and rich brown sugar. There is alcohol on the nose but not as much as I expected from a young 57% ABV, and there is also a little of that Jamaican funk but not a lot.

Flavors reflect the nose well. Pineapple comes first followed by other ripe fruits, dark fruit, brown sugar, molasses, and caramel. This rum is creamy from the first sip. I don’t know how they do that without any additives but it’s amazing. On the swallow there is fire, but it quickly transforms into a smooth and sweet medium finish. The funk is there too, but not overmuch and the fruit definitely dominates over the funk. I tried adding a little water. That brings out the funk a bit more but at the cost of diluting the fruit. I prefer this rum neat despite its ABV.

This is the second fruity rum I’ve come across lately, the other being the Mezan Jamaican. The flavors seem related. The Mezan also smacks of pineapple and other tropical fruits, but in the Mezan they are fresh fruit flavors while in the Smith & Cross they come across very ripe. There isn’t any dark fruit in the Mezan and the funk while present there is lighter, but the up-front pineapple definitely ties the two rums together.

At $40 locally I will surely be buying more Smith & Cross.

Rum Review: Mezan XO Jamaican

This is something different. I’ve encountered that a lot lately. Investment grade Caroni (interesting, but not for me at its price), two Foursquare rums (both fantastic), Pusser’s Gunpowder proof (fantastic), and now this Mezan Jamaican XO. Different would be an understatement, not only compared to the last few, but to everything else I’ve ever had. Only a Papa’s Pilar light has been this pale, and I haven’t had one of those in a couple of years now.

Mezan is known for its single barrel rums from Jamaica, Guyana, Panama, and Trinidad. This is not a single barrel rum but a blend from Jamaican barrels. Mezan finds and buys rum from various distilleries then ages and releases them under their own name. Their expertise seems to be in the selection of barrels to buy and they’re pretty good at it.

The Mezan website declares the rum free of additives and but “lightly filtered”. The XO has no age statement, and other than being a blend of “various ages” no information on the actual ages of rums in the blend is given on the label or Mezan website. The label does say that aged rums are here blended and then re-aged to meld them. An honest rum is worth a try and Mezan has the street cred to be experiment worthy. Even better this rum was $40 which puts it in the high end of the low-price price range for me (English Harbour, Pusser’s Gunpowder, and Mocambo 20 are also about this much), affordable if I really like it. The Mezan website says it should be even less at $30, but then this is California . The XO is bottled at 40% ABV and has a tight plastic cap.

Color: very pale straw, only slightly yellow.

Legs: Tiny droplets form all along the border when you swirl it. A few slowly coalesce into a few thin legs that run slowly.

Nose: Less alcohol than I expected from the color but I remind myself this isn’t a “young rum”. There is lots of fruit on the nose: pineapple, apricot, white grape, and orange along with burnt sugar and light molasses.

Flavor: Bright and fruity. Some cherry, the pineapple, apricot, apple (??), grape, banana. Lots of fruit and also light brown sugar, something like a sweetened coffee, a hint of tobacco, and even some lemon. This is a very “bright rum” with lots of sparkling fruit notes. It is a little fiery going down, more than most 40% ABV rums, but that might be some of the young rums in the blend. A medium finish that turns slightly bitter. The texture is creamy and gets creamier as the rum mixes with air. The fruit and sweetness dials back near the end of the glass and a little oak comes out. But the creamy texture hangs out on the tongue and holds some of the fruit sweetness with it.

All in all a very different rum experience for me. Again worth being aware of how varied even honest rums can be. I’m used to the dark and over-ripe fruits but I don’t find those here. I also expected some “Jamaican funk”, but there is none to be found in this rum. For the price this is a great change-up from the darker rums I usually drink.

As usual I’ve paired this with a few cigars, but I haven’t found anything outstanding yet in any of the pairings but I have most of the bottle still, so there will be more to try. I’m also interested in how this rum will evolve in the bottle. Will let some sit for a while.

Worth $40? You bet! Not something I would drink every day, but a refreshing difference from time to time. I wonder how this will be on a warm day over a little ice.

Ruminations

"And a woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke" Kipling. "The Betrothed"

Tag: rum review