Rum Tasting

Rum Tasting: ORIGINS OF STYLE

Rum, more so than any other spirit, comes in the widest variety of flavours and styles determined by the almost infinite variables in the methods of production. The well-established rum styles of today have been born out of the subtle differences in the approach to distillation by the early colonial powers that set the rum wheels in motion. In this edition of the Tasting Panel we look at outstanding examples of the English, French and Spanish styles of rum, to tease out and identify some of the key flavours that are reinforced by the these traditional methods of production that help to define the style. To assist us with this we assembled an impressive panel of rum lovers to shed some light on why this is so. Hosted by our good friends at Burrow Bar in Sydney’s CBD, we tasted an outstanding line-up of some of the great rums of the world.

THE PANEL

• BEN DAVIDSON: Drinks Curator, Drinks

World Magazine • TOM BULMER: Rum Ambassador, The

Rum Club Australia • MARY WHITE: Venue Manager, Lobo

Plantation • JOEY TAI: Brand Ambassador,

Diplomático • MITCH WILSON: Brand Ambassador,

Plantation • JENNA HEMSWORTH: Bartender,

Restaurant Hubert and The Baxter Inn • KAREL ‘PAPI’ REYES: Cuban Rum

Expert, Brand Ambassador, MONIN • BRYCE MCDONOUGH: Co-Owner,

Burrow Bar • LUKAS RASCHILLA: Editor, Drinks

World Magazine

APPLETON ESTATE RARE BLEND 12 YEAR OLD 43% ABV

A classic English style rum, it’s Jamaica’s most well known and highly regarded rum made by one of the finest Master Distillers, Joy Spence. The Appleton Estate Rare Blend 12 Year Old was awarded Gold at the 2017 San Francisco Spirits Awards. Appleton Estate is produced in the English style and has been aged in one select American oak barrel. This expression reflects Joy’s craft and passion. The rums used in this blend have been hand selected and all aged for a minimum of 12 years. The age gives a wood character with a smooth robust flavour.

PANEL:

Papi Reyes: You can tell it’s a classic English style of distillation, it’s bold, strong and pungent. Tom Bulmer: For me it’s about the place. With this rum you think about sitting on a beach in Jamaica and just sipping on some daiquiris or some rum old fashioneds, bit of reggae in the background. It’s still got that strong punchy flavour 12 years on and that’s coming from the barrel. Reggae is a more apt description of Appleton for me. Ben Davidson: It’s definitely got a nice back beat to it but it allows you to kind of have these moments of finding new things, like a good reggae song. Lukas Raschilla: It has pungent aromas and esters that come through with a long finish that’s strong in the back palate. Jenna Hemsworth: I can taste like a wild yeast note. It’s fiery and rough around the edges. A little tannic, and pairs really well with fruit. Bryce McDonough: Flavours of burnt sugar move to a sweet-savoury balance. Mary White: Banana, fruit preserve and ethanol aromas. I taste pungent apricots, with mild esters compare to other Jamaican rums. Rum meant for a tropical island.

RHUM J.M. V.S.O.P. 42% ABV

Rhum J.M. V.S.O.P. is from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, and is crafted by aging rum for three years in re-charred bourbon barrels and finished for an additional year in toasted new American oak barrels. This is an agricole style of rum, which means it is distilled from sugar cane juice.

PANEL:

Mitch Wilson: Burnt butter and vanilla notes. This aged agricole takes on an almost Cognac like profile. Not nearly as raw or vegetal as typical unaged argicole. Mary White: What I like about this is that it’s actually lacking those grassy, earthy kind of notes that you usually get on the nose from a lot of agricoles. In the back palate you do get an earthiness that is reminiscent of unaged agricoles. Spice and oak upfront, mild grassy notes towards the back of the palate. Jenna Hemsworth: Super approachable agricole for beginners and brandy lovers. Refined yet ballsy. Refined take on a classically unrefined style. Papi Reyes: Usually after 40% ABV agricole usually have a punchy presence on the nose but this is very pleasant. Tom Bulmer: It has a beautiful cooked orange and flinty grass note that is significantly lighter than the other rums, for an agricole style the aggression of the palate is tamed by a soft oak richness.

DIPLOMÁTICO RESERVA EXCLUSIVA 40% ABV

We were lucky to be joined by Diplomaático Brand Ambassador, Joey Tai who told us about the Diplomático Reserva Exclusiva expression. “This rum is aged up to 12 years in ex-bourbon barrels. There’s no age statement on any of the Diplomático rums because at the end of the day we want to stay true to the product, but most of the rums are aged 12 Years. While it is called a Spanish style, the makers prefer to call it a Venezuelan style, being proud of their heritage. They use everything from Venezuela in making the rum. Diplomático is only allowed to be made using Venezuelan sugarcane and the minimum age it must be in oak casks is two years and it must be bottled at no less than 40% ABV. Once the barrel is filled; the master blender needs to ask permission to open the barrel to taste the rum, every single time. The majority of the flavour of Diplomático comes from the type of yeast and the stills used. There’s two different types of molasses that are used to make the rum; sugarcane honey and sugarcane molasses. They’re both molasses but the difference is the concentration level of sugar. For the distillation of the rum, 90% comes from traditional copper pot still, from Speyside Scotland. 10% is from the Barbet column still, which is used in a lot of French agricole rum making as well as in brandy and Cognac making. The molasses is used in the column distillation and the sugarcane honey is used in the copper pot distillation. After the individual distillation and individual maturation, the rums are blended together before bottling. As you can see it’s quite a complicated process to make the rum.

PANEL:

Mitch Wilson: Ah Venezuela! I can taste dark chocolate and raisins, Jaffa oranges on the back. Deliciously easy drinking, excessively rich. The perfect dessert rum! Ben Davidson: Sweet, aromatic and full bodied, with lovely richness and fullness in the mouth. Lukas Raschilla: Cocoa, honey and dark chocolate notes. It’s full-bodied with sweet honey in the finish. Mary White: Caramel and butter aromas. Tastes of clove, Christmas cake, and icing sugar. That classic Spanish sweetness. Good rum for newbies, yum! Tom Bulmer: It’s very approachable and it’s a rum that you could get people to start loving rum on. Bryce McDonough: A wonderful gateway rum for those wanting to explore the category.

Joey Tai

EL DORADO 12-YEAR-OLD 40% ABV

Produced in Guyana, the El Dorado 12 Year Old is an English style of rum, which typifies the smooth mellow sweetness of Demerara rums. This is made from a blend of specially selected aged rums, with the youngest rum in the blend being no less than 12 years old. It is made using a combination of Enmore and Diamond Coffey stills and the Port Mourant double wooden pot still, blended and aged in old bourbon oak casks.

PANEL:

Bryce McDonough: Opens light and sweet but deepens with length. Hints of sherry and a soft peppercorn finish. Jenna Hemsworth: Taste of burnt butter, sugary, crisp goodness. A refined dessert rum. Tom Bulmer: It truly is a rum for those that love a pleasant sweet style, with clove and vanilla notes, making it a great nightcap or dessert rum. The beautiful part of this rum is the use of two of the only wooden stills left it the world. Ben Davidson: For me it lacks that English style pungency on the nose, it’s more of a background note, but wow it delivers big time with luscious sweet notes of brown sugar, tobacco spice and tropical fruit notes of dried mango. Mary White: It smells much drier than it actually tastes as well, you think it will be dry and it’s much sweeter. Joey Tai: I pick up some citrus, like orange zest in this.

PUSSER’S BRITISH NAVY RUM ABV 40%

Made in the classic English style, this Navy rum has classic demerara sugar, molasses, fried fruits and spices with English toffee and caramel. Complex flavours result is classic bold note. Pusser’s rum is blended in exact accordant with the Admirality specification, meaning it is a blend of five rums from The British West Indies. It is the same original blend of Pusser’s original 54.5% but taken back to 40% ABV.

PANEL:

Tom Bulmer: There’s last night! It’s a rum almost made for a whisky palate. Ester driven flavour with different intensity of oak. Mitch Wilson: I get almost like a banana bread note. Bitter caramel and tannins, dried apricots and burnt sugar. Mary White: Scent of burn rubber, and punchy. Flavours of pepper and banana bread, it’s the classic, robust Navy style rum. Bryce McDonough: Aroma of Christmas cake and liquorice. Tastes have notes of peppery molasses, and woody dryness with lots of burnt sugar. Papi Reyes: Very strong on the nose. Classic Navy style, punchy caramel notes and a bit of oak and honey. Dry notes on the back palate. Joey Tai: I’m getting tropical and citrus notes. Ben Davidson: It’s really big on the British naval rum aromatics, pungent, rubbery, estery with burnt banana and bitter toffee notes. Like a punch in the chops.

ABOVE: Mary White LEFT: Mitch Wilson

PLANTATION RUM O.F.T.D. ABV 69%

Plantation Rum Brand Ambassador, Mitch Wilson was on hand to share some insight into the Plantation O.F.T.D. Overproof rum. “The idea for this rum was to try to recreate an overproof rum that hasn’t existed for quite a while. A lot of the overproofs that you see nowadays are not like the classic overproof rums from back in the 1930s and 1940s when Don the Beachcomber was first making his Zombies and when Trader Vic was using Wray & Nephew 17 year in his Mai Tais. It then became Wray & Nephew 15, and when both of them ran out he switched it to a Jamaican and Martinique blend. Then you had Lemon Hart being used in the Zombies back in the day, and again the Lemon Hart recipe got chopped and changed. The Lemon Hart 151 you can get today is not the same as back in the day.

The Plantation Overproof started off as a collaboration between David Wondrich and Alexander Gabriel, who blends all of the Plantation rums and they teamed up with Tiki bars around the world to recreate this old style. So between them they had a bottle of the Wray & Nephew 17 and the old Lemon Hart and they tried these overproof rums and went ‘Right, that’s our benchmark for what we should be working towards. It shouldn’t just be an undiluted version of the base spirit, it should be something that’s actually designed to be a proper overproof’.

The original concept was to blend a bit of Jamaican and Guyanese rums together, a kind of nod to the Wray & Nephew and Lemon Hart of yesteryear, and if you taste some of the Plantation vintages, the Jamaican and Guyanese, those are the rums going in there at cask strength, and Alexander put a bit of the Barbados in. When David Wondrich tasted it, he went “Oh F*#k That’s Delicious” and hence the name was O.F.T.D but changed to ‘Old Fashioned Traditional Dark’”

PANEL:

Joey Tai: Dark chocolate, maple, vanilla deliciousness. Mary White: Pineapple for days! Smoky and sweet, like gunpowder mixed with fruit salad. Your lips will tingle but your tastebuds will fly. Bryce McDonough: Fiery alcohol, dark fruit and fortified wine. Gunpowder and happiness. Papi Reyes: Strong and prominent Cognac profile. It’s strong, powerful but well balanced with toasted caramel notes. Ben Davidson: A powerfully built rum that delights (and numbs) the taste buds. First sip reveals the Jamaican back bone with its molasses pungency, softened by the subtle sweetness of cinnamon, raisins and toffee from the Guyanese influence. This is a rum for serious rum lovers.

DOORLY’S XO 40% ABV

Doorly’s XO is a six year old blend of rums from Barbados, finished in Oloroso sherry casks. The Rum Club Ambassador, Tom Bulmer shared a little more insight, “Many of the rums from Barbados carry the signature light orange note and citrus notes leading to a sweet honeysuckle and orange blossom note. This style is subtly evident in the Doorly’s XO, because of the extra ageing giving it a deeper, spicier finish.”

PANEL:

Lukas Raschilla: Honey and golden syrup notes. This is sweet but well balanced with an easy finish on the back palate. Joey Tai: Tropical, pineapple and red apple skin aroma. I find it citrusy. Nutty finish, gentle spice and stone fruit. Mary White: I find that a lot of Bajan rums incorporate different casks, this one is aged in oloroso sherry cask, and you don’t really find a lot of Jamaican rums adopting different casks. So you do get variety in Barbados rums. Mitch Wilson: A lot of people consider Barbados to be one of the great rum producers. For me this is a rum you could sit on the beach with. It isn’t overly dry, or harsh, it’s just really well made.

HAVANA CLUB 15 YO 40% ABV

The Havana Club 15 YO is an example of the Spanish style made with column stills and shows that it’s not only pot-still rums can be rich and powerful. This Cuban rum is complex and full-bodied, with notes of dried tropical fruit, prunes, raisins and dried coconut. Panel member Karel ‘Papi’ Reyes was able to tell us a little more about the Havana Club 15 Year Old expression. “It’s a sweet and natural Spanish style rum, all flavours from the natural process of blending. The youngest blend is 15 years, with the oldest being around 22 years. It’s not as dry as normal Cuban or Spanish style rum. It’s silkier with more dried fruit notes coming through. Smooth lingering of citrus coming in the back palate, dates. It’s the rum I grew up with, don’t change it! It also opened the door for a lot wof other Cuban rums to evolve and create their own blends.”

PANEL:

Joey Tai: Citrus, vanilla and floral notes on the aroma. Tastes like brown sugar, syrup, dried fruit, coconut and light honey. Mary White: Toasted coconut aroma with taste of oranges and prunes. Tastes like tradition. Mitch Wilson: Dried coconut aroma. Flavours of cocoa butter and pineapples. It’s nice to see such a rich expression on something that is traditionally a light style of rum. Tom Bulmer: I taste the expression of the barrel. I love the oak and balance. It’s great to taste a Spanish style of rum that is that old that doesn’t have an overly sweet taste. Lukas Raschilla: Subtle and subdued. Honey, slight caramel, oak and coconut on the nose. Tastes bright and slightly punchy at first, with dried fruits. Dry, light and balanced. Ben Davidson: Quite subdued on the nose, but reveals dried toasted coconut notes, tobacco spice and robust oak pointing to its advanced age. Palate is complex, with rancio like oxidative notes and the signature dryness on the finish. Bryce McDonough: Fruity and light sweetness, lots of wood on the back palate. Papi Reyes: Sweet and oaky. Sophisticated. I can taste flavours of dry fig, oak, silky velvet spirit with dried fruit notes and remarkable balance.