Rating:
English Harbour 5 Year rum boasts all the shelf qualities I enjoy – a short, squat bottle with a rustic label, nicely foiled cork, and general appearance that would like right at home in the hands of a pirate.

To the nose, English Harbour is light and fruity – I detected a distinct note of apples (something I’d not experienced since Old Havana Cuban rum.)  To the taste, it retains this fruitiness but also carries some warmth with just a slight tingle. The finish is soothing, relatively gentle, and sweet.

You might notice all the things I haven’t said about this rum – it’s not dark, not heavy, there is no brown sugarry musk or oak kick in the face to let you know your alive. It is in fact a very delicate rum. Meaning it lacks most all the qualities that I personally look for in rum. That said, it’s also rather decent. [read more »]

Rating:
www.innercirclerum.com

I’ve been reviewing rums for some years now, but tonight we’ve hit a first for me – a rum from the land down under. I’ve heard legends that such rums exist – even stories of one with a polar bear on its label, which makes no sense whatsoever. This is not the polar bear rum – this is another rum. One with a spot on its label. A red spot.

Inner Circle Rum is bottled and labeled in an understated, classy manner. Its website boasts that this is a rum not created for the likes of us – the bourgeois, pedestrian sorts – but was rather developed for the upper, snobby crust of society (and yet the website also boasts a skull&crossbones pattern in the background. Go figure.) It also boasts many awards – a factor that means increasingly less to me the more I learn that the folks who bestow such awards have entirely different expectations of rum from myself.

[read more »]

Rating:
Pirate’s Choice Molasses Reef
www.pirateschoicerum.com

Pirate’s Choice is an unusual rum. It bears special consideration in several respects. First, it was first distilled in a makeshift (and very illegal) contraption built on the second story of a scuba shop in Key Largo. This is highly braggable. Now created in a more professional (and legal) distillery, the rum is sold in classy squat bottles, complete with labels featuring a silhouette of a pirate ship at rest as a storm approaches. This is beautiful. And, most noteworthy of all, no rum since the golden age of piracy has gone through such effort to introduce, insert, and endear itself to the pirate community. And this, my friends, is remarkable and admirable. In fact, I first met the president of Pirate’s Choice at PyrateCon 2008 in New Orleans, where he was giving away t-shirts, stickers, temporary tattoos, and countless samples of his product to every rogue, wench, and scalliwagg he could find (and being PyrateCon, he found lots of them.) However, this wasn’t the first I’d tasted Pirate’s Choice – I’d had a sample some months prior – at Pirates in Paradise in Key West. As I write this review, Pirate’s Choice is currently promoting itself at the Hampton Blackbeard Festival, with plans to attend the Port Washington Pirate Festival in turn just one week later. In short – Pirate’s Choice Rum is busting its hump to be noticed by the pirate community, making it the first and only rum to look at modern day pirates and see a viable market worth persuing. I suppose this could be seen as a cold business strategy, but I actually view it as heartening. I mean, when’s the last time Captain Morgan gave a squat about us? And HE’s supposed to be a pirate! [read more »]

Rating:
Havana Club 15yr Rum

Cuban rum – by its very nature – has some serious expectations to meet. Between the mystique of being taboo, the equally high bar set by Cuban cigars, and the general buzz of how incredible Cuban rum is supposed to be, it only stands to reason that finally getting your hands on a Cuban bottle should be a moment to celebrate. And as such, the rum itself is certainly expected to be worthy of such a lofty build-up.

Meh.

My first dissappointment with the Cuban rum was the bottle itself – mainly the screw cap and plastic diffuser. I like corks, and diffusers seem appropriate only with cheap mixers. So why cheapen a dignified rum with one? Well, I have been schooled. It seems that with the diffuser locked in place, it prevents malcontents from drinking a rum, refilling the bottle with some other rum, and then reselling the thing. It makes sense. I still don’t like it, but I recognize the logic, and will try to be less critical of plastic diffusers from here on. (This said, it bears note that to date I’ve only discovered this forgery-defence utilized on highly praised yet over-rated rums, and never on those I would genuinely deem worthy such concerns. In my experience, the best of the best rums remain humbly – and honorably – corked.) [read more »]

Rating:
Rogue Spirits Dark Rum
www.roguespirits.com

Click to buy!
from Internet Wines and Spirits

It’s a pet peeve of mine when people compare good rum to fine cognac. This is because it seems like everyone wants to somehow apologize for rum, or justify their enjoyment of it. “It’s not like rum, it’s more like a fine cognac” and so forth. These people can take a long walk off a short plank, for all I care. I love rum, and I don’t need to compare it to cognac to feel better about my enjoyment of a beverage that’s essentially born of industrial waste.

All that said – and I apologize for the irony – Rogue Spirit’s Dark Rum is more like a fine cognac. [read more »]

Rating:
Coyopa Rum
www.coyoparum.com

Click to buy!
from Internet Wines and Spirits

The packaging of Coyopa Rum is a classy mix of old and new. The square bottle and large, wood-handled cork reminiscent of rum’s fine heritage, as does paper seal, complete with handwritten batch numbers and distiller’s initials. But on closer inspection, the busy background of the colorful label is actually various images of a dancing couple, which gives a slight hint of modernism and trendiness. Personally, I enjoy the old-style found in many rum bottles, but in this case the blend seems to work rather well.

The rum inside is a rich, clear amber, and to the nose it smells cool and uncomplicated. Brown sugar is dominant beneath the chill, and little else makes itself immediately known. [read more »]

Rating:
Cartavio 12 Year Rum

It’s always a pleasant surprise to see something new sitting on the store shelves – and even moreso when it boasts being aged 12 years. Cartavio 1929 was a new face in these parts, and being relatively affordable as well, I couldn’t wait to give it a try. Cartavio 1929 comes in a classy cardboard tube. The bottle inside is relatively understated, but quite presentable with a wood capped cork and a classic brown-toned label. The rum inside is a rich, inviting amber.

To the nose, Cartavio 1929 smells of cinnamon, oak, musk, and ripe fruit. The familiar smell of alcohol is of course present as well, but this is a rum that smells complex and enticing, with none of the astringence present in some rums. [read more »]

Rating:
Sea Wynde
www.castlebrandsinc.com

Click to buy!
from Internet Wines and Spirits

If for nothing else, Sea Wynde rum distinguishes itself with one of the cleverest ways of making a boring, basic wine-type bottle interesting. The metal label is just awsome – like a piece of medieval armor for some sort of dark-ages pirate. But happily, this is hardly the only thing distinctive about this rum.

Sea Wynde is actually quite deceptive – it’s soft amber color give the appearance of a gentle spirit (hey, a double meaning!), but one pop of the cork and a quick sniff later clearly conveys this rum to be anything but. It smells of a stark contrast to itself, almost like a dual personality. On the one hand, the overt sweetness of liquour-like rums is present (such as is common amongst east indian rums, or Ron Zacapa), while there is also a strong sense of pepper. Pepperiness and Sweetness are both common amongst rums, but I generally consider them to be opposite ends of the spectrum, and rarely have I encountered them so overtly present in the same bottle. [read more »]

Rating:
Santero Ron 21 Años

Since starting these rum reviews some three or so years ago, my love of rum has certainly evolved. I like to think that my skill at reviewing rum has evolved as well. Of late, I’ve taken great pride in digging into the rum experience and identifying subtleties and nuances that may not be immediately obvious. In my non-rum reviews, I’ve long struggled to avoid simply labeling any product as “good” or “bad”, instead seeking ways to identify the qualities of said product, and thereby letting the reader determine if it is suited to their own interests and tastes, and I hope to finally be doing the same in my rum reviews.

As such, it’s with some level of defeat that I hereby identify Santero 21 rum as being – simply put – very, very good. I explored this rum to the best of my ability, trying a glass here, a glass there – always seeking those unique characteristics that I might share with my readers to explain what sets this rum apart. And always I’ve failed. But don’t mistake my failure to identify this rum’s qualities as being a failure on the part of this rum’s creators – this is an awsome, noteworthy rum. [read more »]

Rating:
Old Monk XXX

Click to buy!
from Internet Wines and Spirits

What is it with eastern Indians and pornographic rum? Really, I have only two rums in my collection from India, and both are labeled as being XXX. Old Monk rum, I notice, is aged seven years, which is admirable. But seven years is hardly “old”, and certainly not old enough to participate in XXX endeavours. But I digress…

Old Monk Rum comes in a squat, rotund, uniquely textured bottle that makes it stand out from many of its contemporaries on the liquor shelves. The label features a smiling, rather european looking monk, and in big red letters features the aforementioned XXX. In the glass, Old Monk is a rich amber. To the nose it smells of the distant, candy sweetness common amongst sugarcane-juice frenchy rums, rather than the embracing, robust sweetness of molasses real rums. It lightly burns the back of the nasal cavity, and also carries hints of charred leather and cherry cordial (seriously.) [read more »]