Iceberg is a rum which hails from Canada.  Well the brand does anyway, unsurprisingly the actual rum in the bottle is not Canadian.

It is in fact a Demerara rum which is blended with “12,000 year old Iceberg water”.  Yeah okay anything you say!  It is bottled by the Canadian Iceberg Vodka Company.  It has made its way into my home here in the UK via Vikingstad in Norway where AST import it from Canada.

Which is about as much information as I have been able to find about this rum.  The label denotes this is Rum/Rhum but do not be deceived it is only given the Agricole spelling because of Canada’s bi-lingual community.  It is in no way an Agricole rum.

The bottle is between a full size and stubby bottle.  It has an interesting Iceberg kind of design and a pretty cheap screw cap with “Canadian Iceberg Rum” written on the top.  I picked it up for £20.  I would imagine in Canada, it will be a fairly low price rum which is likely quite freely available.  It is bottled at 40% ABV.

The first thing that strikes me about this Demerara rum is the colour.  It is almost straw like in colour and unusually for a Demerara it doesn’t appear to have had any caramel colouring added.

This is just one of the surprises with this rum.  The nose is equally at odds with the Demerara profile.  It is clearly a young blend (I’d estimate a couple of years at the most) and beyond the sweet alcohol notes, the most prominent note is that of Vanilla.  Similar in many ways to a lighter Bajan rum.  The sweet alcohol notes however give very little in the way of complexity – its a very thin smelling rum with little to really get excited about.  Similar in many ways to young column distilled Cuban style “ron”.

When sipped Iceberg is much the same as the nose – it just tastes of young alcohol.  The concerning thing is that it doesn’t actually burn much.  I would say that not only has this rum been “blended” with Iceberg water it has also been diluted and filtered to remove anything remotely Demeraran. Did I mention this company makes vodka?

Which is pretty much what this rum has ended up being.  It has little flavour sweet alcohol mostly, a tiny hint of oak and traces of vanilla.  As a sipper its as insipid and forgettable as an Ed Sheeren record.

It’s clearly been released as a mixer by a company that believes in creating smooth, easy going drinks.  It has a similar mouthfeel to Flor de Cana 7 Year Old in terms of smoothness – which is about the only re-deeming feature of this rum.

It’s so unflavourful and unremarkable that it offers next to nothing in terms of taste or any “rummyness”.

I had hoped that the straw colour would mean this would be a interesting unaltered young Demerara.  Sadly although they haven’t added any sugar or additives I kind of wish they had!

I’d never heard of this brand before and to be honest tasting the rum that is no surprise.  Bordering on vodka, this rum is pretty poor to be honest.