Kill Devil and Worthy Park have already been covered on the website. I was very keen to try out this 10 Year Old Jamaican Rum.

Kill Devil are part of Hunter Laing (an Independent Whisky bottler). This archaic slang term for Rum is used to brand their run of Single Cask rums.

It’s encouraging to see more and more Independent bottlers coming to the fore.  Kill Devil offer very limited “one off” cask bottlings.  These initial releases are not at Cask Strength, so far all releases have been capped at 46% ABV. This may upset some purists.  I understand their next release of rums will be at Cask Strength.

The pricing of the various Kill Devil’s ranges from around £45 for an 8 Year Old Guatemalan, upto around the £150 for a 25 Year Old Enmore from DDL.  This rum is priced at £53.99 from Master of Malt or for our European cousins you can find the Kill Devil Range at 4FineSpirits. As well as a few other online retailers.

The presentation of the Kill Devil series is very good.  A nice sturdy cylinder to store your rum. With a lovely opaque 3/4 style bottle.  The branding is consistent through the range and you get a fair bit of information about the bottling.

This is a 10 Year Old rum from the rejuvenated Worthy Park Estate.  It boasts a distillate from the first year of rum production at the re-vamped distillery  -2005. No rum had been produced since the 1960’s.  It was bottled at 10 years old in 2015.  It is believed that it spent roughly half its time aged in Jamaica and half in Europe (Scotland to be more exact).  It has been aged in an American White Oak and from what I can gather is not a blend of rums. Just a Single Cask Pot Still rum.  It was then diluted down to 46% ABV giving a total of 310 bottles.  There has been no caramel colouring added, though I suspect it may have been lightly filtered.

In the glass the rum is a light golden brown/straw colour.  The nose is quite pungent – a grassy almost agricole like note. Wafts of rich toffee, almost treacle like.  After a little time in the glass it becomes slightly lighter and less aggressive.  More richer milk chocolate like notes.  It’s quite high in esters on the nose. Reminiscent of a Hampden or Monymusk.  It has its own unique layer of richness making it slightly less “in your face” than those heavy Jamaican rums.

Sipping the rum – and it is best sipped very carefully at first, the flavour is huge.  It has a very Scotch Whisky like spiciness, to it especially in the finish.  The initial sweetness is taken over quickly by some oak and then the very savoury spicy whisky like middle and finish which is long and pretty fiery.

It is a rum which you would perhaps need to be in the mood for.  It is quite malty and earthy and much less rich and sweet than Worthy Park’s Rum Bar Gold.  There are still the familiar sweeter notes, found in the Rum Bar Gold but they are less prevalent in the overall mix.  You do get that rich chocolate and toffee its just a lot more subtle.

This won’t be to everyone’s tastes.  Jamaican Pot Still rum is not for everyone.  More often than not you’ll taste it unaged or as part of a blend.  I often use Jamaican rum as a mixer. It makes amongst the very best if not the best rum and cokes.  I’ve tried quite a lot of Jamaican rums but not so many Single Cask Pot Still  Jamaicans

With that in mind I will give this a score I think is fair.  If I taste better in future it could move.  Part of my scoring system is to recognise certain standards in rum styles so to be a 5 star Jamaican Rum you have to be better than nearly all the rest and so on…….

This is very good and well worth the asking price.