A Solo Reviewer's Take on Rums
Introduction The Neisson Rhum Vieux Agricole “Cyril Kongo” Martinique Rum is a rhum that leaves me deeply conflicted. It is so limited you’d hardly ever see it, it’s extraordinarily tasty, one of the best rhums I’ve tried in ages, has a presentation ethos off the scale – but it’s so damned expensive that one is [Click here for the full review...]
The rum under discussion today is a rum from Japan, which had something of a renaissance in the making of rum since the post WW2 years, when privations and restrictions on the use of rice for alcohol when food was scarce, forced a re-evaluation of which alcohol they should be making. That’s not me being [Click here for the full review...]
Naga’s full proof 62.3% ten year old rum from Thailand, is the one that lies at the core of all the others in the range. For the standard 10YO, they diluted it to 40%. For the “Shani” version, they aged it an additional year in P/X. But for my money, had they simply started out [Click here for the full review...]
The label of the “Shani” requires some explanation. Part of the branded Naga line of rums — a sort of cross between a merchant bottling, a contract rum and an independent bottling — it is made in Thailand by ThaiBev and released by Sebastien Folloppe, a consultant and marketer in the rum world who once [Click here for the full review...]
We’ve run into Naga and its rums before, back in 2019 at the Paris Rhumfest that year, when we tried their Indonesian lineup. There’s a reason those rums and not the ones from Thailand were there, and that backstory is so interesting (and lengthy) I have elected to include it below this review, so let’s [Click here for the full review...]
Introduction Very early on in this gig, I came across an underproofed Colombian rum, the Ron Viejo de Caldas 8YO, bottled at a flaccid 35%. It was a product of Industria Licorera de Caldas (ILC), a distillery located in Manizales, a city in the department of Caldas, about an eight hour drive to the west [Click here for the full review...]
The Danes love their rum. Like, I mean, really love it. For a country as small as they are (just under six million), they drink more than any of the other Scandinavian countries. AH Riise, Skotlander and Hansen are major rum brands, there are an even dozen or small and mid-sized distilleries making rum scattered [Click here for the full review...]
Introduction and background As I’ve noted before, perhaps the best rum shop in Germany is the Rum Depot in Berlin, run by Dirk Becker, the man behind the annual German Rum Festival, itself one of the top rum-focused spirits expos in the world. I’ve been coming to this place regularly since 2012, a practice that [Click here for the full review...]
Introduction If you recall, a few weeks ago Cap’n Colp hove into view, all flags waving and bunting streaming, and rolled a barrel into my house. No, really. Uninvited, unexpected, unannounced (I hesitate to say “unwanted”) he took out his trusty thief, jammed it into the barrel, and poured me a shot of liquid gelignite [Click here for the full review...]
I still remember the hushed rumours that swirled around the rumiverse even before the 2022 TWE Rumshow opened its doors. Richard Seale had something new, something original and something fierce in his leopardskin rock star trousers, and while supposedly it wasn’t officially on the shelves, maybe a sly wink and a significant nod to Pete [Click here for the full review...]