My daughter refusing to sleep through the night has had one great silver lining of waking me up at opportune moments to buy the last two Foursquare Exceptional Cask Series releases. At exactly 3:33am I had just got her back to sleep and decided to see if any sites had listed Covenant for sale yet. Someone else who also happened to be up early had helpfully mentioned on the UK Rum Club Facebook group that a wine shop in Nottingham had some in stock. 20 seconds later I had completed the purchase through Apple pay and was just about to get back in bed when I saw that someone else had commented on the Facebook post saying that they had just bought two bottles from the same link. Having a fair expectation of the scarcity of this release as well as a reasonable understanding of how these bottles are generally allocated to different sellers it struck me as add that such a small shop would be able to sell more than one bottle per customer. I went back to the site and added 30 bottles to my basket, sure enough there they were. If I wanted to pay around £2800.00 then apparently I would become the worlds largest stockholder of Foursquare Covenant since the bottles had left the distillery. It was pretty clear that someone at the wine shop had made an error in the listing and I went back to sleep expecting a call from a Nottingham number in the morning. The call never came but I did get an email advising that the shop had 6 bottles in stock and these had been over allocated and as such they were cancelling my order and issuing a refund. I do wonder how many times over they sold those 6 bottles. I also feel sorry for the people who set off to work happy to have bagged a bottle and then got home and realised that they hadn’t when it was too late to look for other sellers. Luckily I found out just in time to snag one from Master Of Malt at the second time of asking, this time the purchase was very much drama free.
Covenant is the 23rd ECS release by Foursquare and the 5th release from the batch of rum which has previously brought us the 2005, Nobiliary, Shibboleth and Isonomy releases. At 18 years old it is the oldest ECS release to date and a rum which is old enough to buy rum! I have been lucky enough to try all of the preceding releases, although it would be great if they released a Hampden Marks Collection style tasting set for us to to try them all side by side. I could have also helped myself in this sense by being less greedy with my Shibboleth and Isonomy bottles and saving some for future comparisons.
With the current number of releases and the age of the rum in this bottle I do find myself wondering if Richard Seale has a plan for how many ECS releases he wants to bring to the world and how old the oldest of them will be. I imagine they will be distilling rums this year that will be released as a 2024 vintage in 2036 so if that assumption is correct then I guess I have answered my own question. I do also wonder just how much of the original rum they distilled in 2005 they can have left, it must have been a hell of a year for distilling! Some ECS releases have been in such small quantities but if you add together all the 2005 releases so far and assuming they have more to come then that must have been a lot of barrels. Maybe the 80th ECS release in 2055 will be just one bottle of 50 year old tropically aged rum that will be awarded to the person who manages to secure a geographical indication for Barbados rum.
Now I’ve got all of that off my chest then let’s have a look at what is in the bottle. The first thing to notice is that the wrapper around the cork seemed to disintegrate in my hands when I went to open it, it seems to be made of a thinner material than previous releases. Maybe they have got a new supplier or maybe I just had bad luck with mine. Along the same lines, the cork doesn’t sit in the bottle properly. There is a decent pop when I pull it out so hopefully it is still doing it’s job. I’m planning on playing it safe and decanting some and drinking the rest relatively quickly.
After pouring, it looks a lot like what you would expect a rum which has been tropically aged for nearly two decades to look like. It is a very dark liquid with lovely orange and ruby hues running through it. The word premium gets thrown around a lot and isn’t everyone’s favourite word at the moment but I do think it applies here. I would like to think that no amount of tinkering and colouring could ever succeed in creating a drink that looks like this.
I never give too much credence to my first taste of an ECS bottle. I feel like especially with the higher ABV and older bottlings they take a little while to open up properly. For example I really wasn’t impressed with the Sovereignty release the first time I tried it and now it might be my favourite ever rum. I am going to add a few initial notes to be taken with a pinch of salt and will return to this post in the coming days and weeks to add some thoughts will which hold more relevance.
The initial pour has a very potent aroma. Even for a 58% ABV drink you can really smell the alcohol. The age of the rum also comes through which is no great surprise. Very musky, leathery, old books in a private library type stuff. It is unmistakably Foursquare but also feels like certain elements of the signature nose have been exaggerated. Quite a lot of oak and spice. To the best of my memory it reminds me a bit of the 2009 release but like it has been dialled up to 11. Again if I had saved some of my 2009 bottle to compare then I wouldn’t be relying on memory.
With the first taste I’m not really sure what to make of it. It seems like there is a lot going on. Is it too much of a good thing or is it just a good thing? It reminded me a bit of an article I read recently about the acceleration of addictiveness. Is this the ECS release made to quench the thirst of the real addicts? It is certainly a rum to take small sips from and maybe even dilute with a bit of water, which isn’t something that I would usually do. I have held off on reading any reviews before I tried this rum (which isn’t always easy with how long it takes for these releases to reach the UK). I am interested to see what other people with more refined palettes than me have made of it as well as to keep trying it myself.
Rum Ramblings 