After seeing a post on the UK Rum Club Facebook group I signed up to be kept informed about a new offering from The Colours Of Rum called the Up Spirits Club, and kept informed I was! After forming a tasting committee to select which cask they were due to release they sent out periodic emails keeping us up to date on how the release was progressing. They even sent out a poll for the members of the club to decide which colour scheme they used for the branding on the bottle, an added bonus being that they went with the one I chose.

On 7th June, just after I had purchased a bottle of Foursquare ECS 2011, an email appeared in my inbox with a link to purchase the above bottle. Around the link was some information about the release which can be summarised as it having been distilled at Trinidad Distillers Limited (Angostura) in 2009 and aged for 10 years in the tropics (presumably Trinidad) and a further 4 years somewhere else (presumably Poland). 259 bottles were produced from a single cask and released at cask strength of 62.90 ABV.

The only orders I have made from Europe since Brexit was from sites which are VAT registered so this order resembled a bit of a risk. My gamble paid off when two weeks later my bottle arrived with no import or other taxes being levied. Premium is a word which is often misused in the rum world but I do think the presentation of this bottle earns that label. This is in line with the rest of the Colours Of Rum offerings, they do a good job. I should also add that this was the most secure cork seal I have ever come across. I had to use a little wine opening Swiss army knife thing to get to the point of being able to open it.

The nose has a kind of warming spice but not in a wintery Christmas pudding kind of way, more like a ginger cake for want of a better comparison. The first impression from drinking this rum is off the chart. I have tried a couple of Angostura releases but this is my first one from an independent bottler. There are notes that I recognise but only just. This rum is a savage, incredibly raw and aggressive, especially for a rum of this age. The nose didn’t seem the most complex to me and it certainly didn’t signal what I was about to taste. There is an awful lot going on with this one and it all seems to happen at once, all that is left after is a bit of a perfumey aftertaste. I am really interested to see how this is after a while in an opened bottle. Even in the time it has sat in the glass it has slowed down a bit with a more prolonged medicinal note which is more in line with the warmth from the nose.

I don’t anticipate this being one of my longer posts but I have been doing quite well lately at actually putting stuff up on here instead of just keeping notes and images in drafts so I wanted to keep the momentum going. I won’t spend too much time elaborating on what the Foursquare distillery is and what they do as I’m going to work on the presumption that if you have found your way to this rag tag rum blog then you’ll already know. As part of their ECS offering Foursquare release a vintage each year which has been tropically aged for 12 years. Last year’s 2010 release was one of my favourite ever ECS bottlings, I even ended up buying a second bottle to put behind the bar for my daughter’s christening party. Let’s see how they managed to follow up on that…..

Purchasing this bottle was refreshingly easy. At the time of writing it has been released for two weeks and there are still plenty of bottles available to purchase at RRP. After years of seeing Foursquare ECS releases sell out in minutes, I have a few theories why this might be the case. One is the cost of living causing people to purchase less rum or cheaper bottles, I know this is the case with a few of my friends. Another reason could be that maybe the bottom has fallen out of the resale craze, this is possibly related to the first factor, and something I hope to be true. Yet another reason would be the number of bottles released, I believe that there was 30,000 bottles of the 2010 ECS released, I haven’t seen an official number for this one but I presume it will be a similar amount. Maybe there is also some snobbery around the vintage ECS releases being less exciting than the named ones which are generally aged for longer and/or involve a mix of different types of casks. As well as finding this bottle easy to buy I also pulled off a masterstroke of pre loading my Whisky Exchange basked with enough miniatures to be eligible for free shipping. As well as this bottle I also had delivered miniature bottles of El Dorado 12 years old, Rivers Royale and French Antilles 2020 Port Cask Grand Arome. I intend to return to my recent El Dorado high ester post and use the 12 year old as a point of reference. The Rivers bottle is to appease my friend and his family who have been insisting that I try it although not so much that they have ever brought me a bottle back with them!

Now it’s time to drink the stuff. In the bottle this looks much darker than a 12 year old rum might, maybe it covered a particularly warm few years in Barbados. The nose is obviously Foursquare but seems a bit of a departure from recent bottlings, it is sharp, light and fruity. I cant quite fully place it but it’s something like a packet of midget gems or boiled sweets.

2011 was the year I met my wife and much like she was, this bottling is overwhelmingly instantly likeable. It is quite evident that there has been no experiment here with different casks, this is just pure Foursquare. All of the notable flavours are there and this is still a very complex drink but it feels really light and fresh. Despite the lightness the finish is almost buttery. I really like this and if anything I think they might have managed to improve on the 2010 release. Luckily I still have some of my 2010 left so I will have a go at comparing them sometime soon.

Every time my birthday or Christmas comes around I send my wife a selection links to websites to buy bottles of rum and second hand books and ask her to pick whichever ones catch her eye. She messaged me a few days later saying that she needed to spend another £30.00 to get free shipping from Royal Mile Whiskies (it turns out she was in the process of buying me a second bottle of the incredible Thomson Bros JMWP Stout Cask) and did I have any bottles I’d want to buy to make up the deficit. I quickly sent her a link to this bottle which made sure she was well over the free shipping amount.

I have been wanting to try this bottling for a long time. I really like Chairman’s Reserve and St Lucia rum in general. St Lucia is the place where I really fell in love with rum and where it solidified as my spirit of choice. One of these days I will get around to publishing my posts about the absolute bargain that is Chairman’s Reserve legacy and the local’s favourite Bounty rum which I’m sure will include more anecdotes from that trip. I am also a big fan of the UK Rum Club Facebook group which has been a massive tool in helping me expand my knowledge as well as picking up bottles that I otherwise would have missed (both this and the JMWP Stout Cask are great examples). I was also very curious about trying a rum which is 100% from their Vendome still, rather than a blend, there was a lot of built up anticipation!

I won’t go too much into the history of this particular bottling as it has already been covered better than I ever could here. That is also a great place to find more detailed tasting notes as this is not something which I really go in for. The first impression is that the cork is a very snug fit and it takes quite some time to get it out which is also quite a noisy affair. I first opened this bottle at night outside my friends lodge in Center Parcs and we joked that the sound of the cork being removed might attract some of the local geese as a kind of mating call. At least the snug cork should stave off some oxidisation.

In the glass the rum is a nice dark amber colour and is pretty much what you would want to see from a 9 year old rum that has been aged properly with nothing funny added. The nose seems quite savoury to me with roasted almonds, cigar tobacco and hints of citrus fruits being the stand out notes. It also has a kind of antique smell to it, like you had uncovered a “forgotten cask”. Flavour wise there is a lot going on, it certainly has lived up to my hopes. It is simultaneously a very smooth drink but also contains a great breadth of complex flavours. Everything the nose hinted at is there and it also has a kind of medicinal finish which from my memory is not too dissimilar to the UKRC J Gow bottling, although I would say that this is a much more accessible rum. A couple of the people who I initially shared this bottle with aren’t seasoned rum drinkers and they both commented on how it is easy to drink for a 59.5% rum. I definitely agree with this, it is a very drinkable rum. At the time of writing there are still bottles available at RMW but surely they must be down to the last few now, I am certainly glad that I finally made this purchase and would encourage anyone who has had it on their list to do the same.

El Dorado was a gateway rum for me in my early days of trying different the ‘premium’ and spiced options offered in local bars and off licences and helped to play a part in me finding what I really wanted from a rum. As I moved on to other unadulterated rums I have to say that I have kept track of El Dorado reducing/ removing the dosing from their standard offerings and also releasing new limited bottlings but I have kept track of it from a distance. The only rum I have drank from this distillery in the last decade is the Master Of Malt port mourant bottling. I plan to reacquaint myself with their more standard offerings and return to this post with a bit more perspective.

I became aware of El Dorado’s high ester release through a Rumcast bonus episode. I would recommend giving this a listen if it is of interest and I don’t intend on repeating much of what was covered by them. The rum is made up of two marques, one of which is created through a fermentation process covering several months. The inclusion of the words high ester on the label could be seen as a tad controversial as there are people of the belief that this description should only be applied to Jamaican rums. A lot has been written about esters in rum but a short version is that they are chemical compounds which are created during fermentation which add aromas and flavours to rum. Certain methods and durations of fermentation lead to higher levels of esters in the rum.

My main point of intrigue about this rum is who it is marketed to. As someone who has paid good money to buy a bottle then this might seem like a silly question to ask but I am aware that I am very much in the minority of rum drinkers. Dead Man’s Fingers is stocked behind pretty much every UK bar and pub for a reason, it’s a popular drink. Without any inside information on the sales volume of any of these brands El Dorado is also a brand that appears to have remained continually popular. It’s what the DMF drinkers bring out on special occasions. In recent years El Dorado has removed/ reduced the dosing across their rums and is now producing special releases such as this. As a fan of unsweetened rums and distillers trying out new things then this is great news for me, it has lead to me purchasing this bottle. But surely my £100 is a small drop in a very big ocean. I haven’t really spent much time or energy looking for the answer to this question but I’ll have a look and update this post along with the comparison from their standard ranges.

I opened this bottle and poured it to drink straight away. I then left it for 30 minutes as a writer with more discipline would. The nose is one of sweet gummies and candied pears, I feel like there are other notes there but they’re overpowered by these ones. It doesn’t smell synthetic just a little one dimensional. The alcohol comes through (the rum is 57% ABV). I’m not getting much to say that it is high ester. Drinking the rum it has a very thin mouth feel, which was unexpected from my memories of this brand and the age of the rum. It has almost no front and then a hits like a bus in the mid, almost too much to pick out any flavours.

After being left for 30 minutes it has calmed down a lot. The rum still feels fairly thin but is a much more balanced drink flavour wise. I really like this. I feel like there’s quite a lot going on. Very nuanced. It isn’t comparable to Jamaican high esters, again, I’m not sure if it is meant to be. Rather than up front funk it is more of a tangy after taste. Before that taste hits there are more of the kind of flavours that I would expect from Demerara distillers, a more rounded smooth drink with musky notes. I will be interested to see what it is like after a few weeks of the bottle being open.

I actually had two opportunities to buy this rum, a smarter man would have bought two bottles and sold one on auction to cover the price of both, but I am a stickler for drinking the rum I buy and I will open and drink this one both straight and in a mai tai. In stark contrast to Kevin Kelly’s sixth piece of additional advice I will also wait for a special occasion to do this, I’m not sure yet what that occasion will be but I’m sure I’ll know it when I see it. More to follow.

Purchased on 22nd November 2022 from Spiritly

By the time I gained any real awareness of the Caroni distillery, the chance to buy a bottle at what a yorkshireman would consider a reasonable price had well and truly passed. I had tried Caroni rum as part of a blend in rums such as Black Tot’s 50th Anniversary bottling but never as a straight drink. I became determined to buy a bottle of this section of rum history and after listening to Steffen Mayer’s appearance on The Rumcast I decided on this bottling as one which was suggested to be good value for money (all things being relative). I also found this site which had a 10% offer for new customers although I have since found that I may have got a better deal on Rum Auctioneer.

There is a lot written about the Caroni distillery and if you’re reading this then you probably already have a fair understanding of it’s history. If not then I would definitely recommend the above mentioned podcast, Mayer has also written a book on the subject. My thoughts on Caroni is that it is Juice WRLD of distilleries in the way that it wasn’t really revered for it’s work until after it’s death. It strikes me as a distillery which was pretty badly run, the unique oily/petrol taste is rumoured to come from the distillery refusing to stop production while cleaning it’s equipment. The bonus of their lack of organisation is that after the distillery had closed it was found to have a massive amount of stock in rum barrels some which had been laying there aging for an incredible amount of time. These barrels have since been bought up by a variety of different bottlers, the most prominent being Velier.

Prior to trying this drink I was a little sceptical on how great Caroni rum actually was and how much of the furore was down to a great marketing campaign by Velier and the scarcity of rum from a distillery which is now closed. My scepticism even lead towards wondering how scarce this rum actually is at this moment in time and whether it was more of a manufactured scarcity in the mould of De Beers diamonds. I understand that one day all of it will be gone but new bottlings are still being released every year and apparently there was an awful lot of barrels in that warehouse.

All of this aside, let’s get to the actual drink. The presentation of the bottle and box are quirky and while they are not one of my favourite Velier design ideas, it is fitting for the 100th Anniversary theme. In the glass it has a beautiful dark hue and almost has the look of a navy rum all on it’s own. It looks every day of the 18 years of aging and it already a fair step on the way to convincing me that I am about to drink something about special and not just an overhyped money spinner. The nose on the rum is distinctive and can be related back to what I have been able to pick out from certain blended rums. For want of a better way to phrase it, it smells a bit dirty, but in a good way. After all of this the neck pour was a little underwhelming, I had given it time to breathe and it’s not that I wasn’t getting anything from it but I wasn’t getting much. I poured 100ml into a bottle for my retirement stash, 30ml into a bottle for my friend’s housewarming gift and put it back on the shelf for a week. A week later I got much more from it, there is undeniably a distinctive note which people have described as akin to fossil fuels but I would categorise more as medicinal. By this I mean relating to a badly mixed folk cure elixir, definitely not Calpol. I feel like I have picked up some similarities to Angostura in there which I presume may be down to terroir or location of aging or maybe my mind just fabricated this connection. This is a really interesting drink and one which is quite moreish. I feel like I will get more from it each time I decide to pour some so this may be added to in the future. Although for now I am resisting the temptation and have re-gassed and sealed the bottle in the hope of keeping it available for many years to come.

Purchased 21st February 2023 from Rum Auctioneer for £70.00 (excluding fees and postage)

I am very much in the business of adding on sample sized bottles to my orders with the larger spirits retailers in order to reach the free shipping fresh hold. Many of these prove to be underwhelming and vindicate my original decision not the buy the whole bottle. This is with two notable exceptions; the SBS Jamaica 2019 PX Cask and Monymusk MBS 2010 9 Year Old. Ever since trying this sample I have been on the look out for a full sized bottle and finally managed to snag one on Rum Auctioneer for a price which I believe was a little under the RRP back when it was readily available.

A great and all encompassing explanation of the distillery can be found here but in short, Monymusk is the original name for the Clarendon distillery who sells the majority of it’s rum under the Clarendon name to bulk buyers to add sugar and spice and everything Captain Morgan to then resell under their brand. Around 10% of the rum they produce is sold as Monymusk but I believe the majority is brought to market through the Plantation brand and they own a share in National Jamaica Distillers. Velier bought up the rum for this particular bottling so this was my chance to buy a bottle which had paid less out to Ferrand and co.

This is a column still rum which has been categorised into the MBS marque which is the lighter, lower ester of the two marques offered by this distillery. My general experience and enjoyment of Jamaican rums has been of medium to high ester pot still rums so this is of interest to me. As I have mentioned before, I am not a big fan of rums being packaged in boxes and this box is particularly uninspiring. The bottle also follows a similar aesthetic but in the case of the bottle I think it works, looking classy and understated.

The nose and colour of this rum both follow along the understated theme set by the packaging. It is quite obviously a lower ester column still rum. The taste again is very subtle but in a way that leans more towards the classy bottle instead of the uninspiring box. Nothing jumps out at you but it has a refined taste and is very enjoyable to drink. It seems like the rum equivalent of a well aged single malt, the kind you’d pay over the odds for to wash down a meal at a fancy restaurant and really feel like you’re living the high life.

Speaking of paying over the odds, I did think that the rrp was maybe a little expensive for a 4660 bottle 9 year old but the taste definitely justifies the price, which is ultimately what counts. There is also the fact that these bottles have sold out (in the UK at least) so I guess the market has decided that it was priced well. Maybe I’ve just been spoilt by the Foursquare ECS pricing which is a poor yardstick to use for comparison. I feel like this isn’t a rum that you’d start a collection with but it does feel like a marker that I’ve reached, especially after waiting all that time since trying the sample bottle. I have also just acquired a bottle of the Cambridge 2010 STCE, hopefully next up will be a bottle of the Vale Royal to complete the set, reviews on these to follow.

Purchased 27/08/22 from Tyndrum Whisky. Total cost £82.00 (free shipping).

Out with the younger, in with the cru. Following on from Hampden’s LROK The Younger and 2010 releases is their first rum which has been aged exclusively in sherry casks. Pagos is a Spanish word which describes an area of vineyards which share similar characteristics such as soil and climate. Essentially a very similar meaning to the word terrior (a French word which has become a bit of a buzz word in the unaged rum world).

In a recent interview Luca Gargano expressed that Pagos is the start of a new direction for Hampden and a step towards a higher prestige which is currently afforded to whisky brands like Macallan. Even to the extent of a slight rebrand to ‘The’ Hampden on their Great House releases, the addition of a determiner making it more of a statement than a brand name.

It is not unusual for spirits to be aged in ex sherry casks, there was a time when sherry casks were left discarded in British docks by departing Spanish ships who were looking to lighten the load for the journey home. These were then picked up by Scottish whisky distilleries and put to good use. What is slightly unusual about the casks used for the Pagos bottling is that they are actual ex sherry casks as opposed to casks made by sherry companies specifically for the purpose of distilleries using them to age spirits, which is what the vast majority of sherry aged spirits are housed in.

One thing which I’m sure will be a recurring theme in this blog is my admiration of Velier’s labelling and general bottle presentation. I feel like Gargano’s influence can be seen all over this bottle and it looks all the better for it. I’m generally not a fan of bottles coming in boxes, I always think they’re rather unnecessary but this is certainly an exception. Having an exact image of the bottle inside the box, printed on the outside of the box is pure genius. There is also quite a lot of information on there to satisfy our ever greater desire to know exactly what is in the bottle we are drinking from. Some information which isn’t included on the label is the amount of bottles which were produced. I believe this number is 1200 plus the small bottles if you are lucky enough to be on the mailing list for those, I am still waiting to be added and I expect I might be for the rest of my life. Those numbers make this bottling fairly rare but I do believe that this is going to be a recurring release from Hampden albeit with a slight change to the brand of casks used in the future. Another piece of information which is omitted is the marque. I’m not sure if it fits into a marque perfectly but it seems to be closest to LROK, albeit at the top end.

In the glass this is a beautiful looking rum. It has a lovely ruby tint to it and looks much darker than your average three year old but this is to be expected due to both the type of cask and having been tropically aged. It certainly has the look of a premium spirit and it has achieved this the hard way with no added colourings.

The nose is up there with the best I have experienced. There is so much going on. It is unmistakably a Hampden rum and the familiar overripe fruit hits you straight away but this leads you on to a much warmer mustier place which is like somebody had baked a dark fruit crumble on an open fire in an old library.

This is all very much mirrored in the taste. It’s Hampden but not as we know it. It’s like Hampden has retired on a good pension and put on its slippers and has decided to enjoy the finer things in life.

Another really enjoyable rum from this distiller. LROK the younger was one of my favourite rum releases of 2022 and this is another to add to the list. I’m not sure if there are still any bottles of this going at retail prices but a number seem to be popping up on Rum Auctioneer and don’t seem to be going for crazy prices. I am pacing myself with this one as I’d like to be able to compare it to the next release and see how the ongoing line of sherried rums from Hampden compare to this prototype.

Bought 10th December 2022 from Royal Mile Whiskies for £71.95

It’s St Patrick’s Day and Irish eyes are smiling! I bought this bottle a few months back and have been very gradually working my way through it.

I’d say that my rum journey started in St Lucia. I went there on holiday as a young man with my brother and his then girlfriend (now wife) and my then girlfriend (now ex girlfriend). Before going to the Caribbean I knew of rum but this trip really threw me in at the deep end. Rum punch was being served everywhere you looked and I bought my first bottle of rum there, a bottle of Bounty which I still own to this day.

The box and the bottle are beautifully presented. With the box including a fair amount of information about the rum’s namesake, Admiral Rodney and also some information about the rum. The rum has been aged in the valley for 11 tropical years before being moved to ex Irish whiskey casks for another 9 months.

In the glass it is a colour which is something between ruby and bronze. It really is a beautiful looking rum. I have no reason to believe that anything has been added to this rum to make it look like this, it just looks very well aged.

The nose straight after the pour is quite spicy and you get a lot of the alcohol coming through, especially considering it isn’t the highest abv. After it has been left a while in the glass it mellows out quite a lot and the whisky notes start to come through.

This tastes like a very well developed and flavourful column still rum. It doesn’t feel like any corners have been cut in it’s production. Similar to the nose you get a lot more after leaving it to sit for a while. My first impression was that it has a number of similarities to a Foursquare ECS but I poured a glass of Foursquare 2010 for comparison and it wasn’t as close as I’d first thought. Admittedly it may have been another ECS bottling that had stuck in my memory or maybe just the general result of an established distiller experimenting with different vintages and casks.

I haven’t seen this particular rum reviewed anywhere else but if you’re looking for an overview of the current state of St Lucian rum then I would definitely recommend this episode of Rumcast, I found it to be a really enjoyable listen and it certainly filled me of enthusiasm for future releases from this distillery.