Jung and Wulff Luxury Rums No 1 Trinidad. I’ll be honest with you all, I can’t say I had heard of L.E Jung and Frederick Wulff before coming across this range of “Luxury Rums” from Sazerac.

However, they were responsible for importing the finest spirits into New Orleans and are past owners of The Sazerac House and Peychaud’s Bitters. This range of 3 rums have been released as a reminder of their pioneering work.

The rums are being imported direct from the US and are available at the likes of Hedonism Wines, Harvey Nichols and Master of Malt. The retail price for a 75cl (slightly larger than UK/European 70cl) US bottle is £39.95. I’ll be honest with you despite their being no dedicated age statement on the bottle, purely from a design point of view and the use of the word “luxury”, I was expecting a higher price point for these.

Presentation wise you get a tall thin bottle with a slightly short neck. The label design is bright and very “Caribbean”. Maybe a touch stereotypical I guess, but it would seem a bit pointless to depict a rainy day in Manchester on a rum bottle wouldn’t it?

It’s very much the type of bottle, that will be gifted by well meaning relatives at Christmas and Birthdays. It looks nice and it say luxury. It’s good marketing to be fair. I hope I’m not sounding to cynical! It’s not my intention. The rear label, pictured below gives some tasting notes.

So lets move onto some facts about the liquid in the bottle. Now the bottle doesn’t note this but this is a blend of molasses based rums aged up to15 years. I’ve no idea what the average or weighted age of the blend is. Again although this isn’t noted as this is from Trinidad and upto 15 years old it is assumed that all the rum has been produced at Angostura/Trindidad Distillers Limited. So this is a blend of column distilled rum.

Jung and Wulff Luxury Rums No 1 Trinidad has been bottled at 43% ABV. The current release was bottled in 2019. So the oldest rum in the blend will date from 2003/4. Again this is not noted on the actual bottle but Sazerac have advised that no sugar has been added to this rum. A Hydrometer Test confirms this as well.

The rums used in this blend have been blended together by Sazerac’s Master Blender Drew Mayville. It is also noted that the rums in the blend are all Tropically Aged in Trinidad.

I can’t think of anything else to say about this rum so I might as well dive in….

In the glass, we have a medium golden brown spirit. It’s a natural looking colour – it’s not been coloured with caramel from what I can see. If it has it must be fairly minimal.

The nose is very light – vanilla and some shortbread. There’s some spicy oak but it’s struggling to make its presence felt. What is there on the nose isn’t at all unpleasant but there just isn’t a great deal of it.

Sipped it has a bit more about it – it’s quite spicy and peppery on the initial entry. It’s a bit beefier than the nose suggests with a lot more oak and heat particularly on the mid palate. White pepper, charred bourbon barrels and some notes of green apple and banana.

It’s nicely balanced and is very smooth. Easy going but not overly challenging. It’s the type of rum which could ease someone over from Spiced or Flavoured rum without scaring them off. A lot of people note the likes of Plantation, El Dorado etc as “Gateway Rums” but I would much prefer using something like this – without the “dosage”.

Finish wise, it fades out quite quickly. All that is left behind is just a bit of light spice and a slightly peppery note. It’s not long but to be honest I wasn’t expecting it to be.

All in all, this isn’t a bad rum. It’s not priced. Hasn’t been dosed or fiddled with. The blending process has worked as it’s really nicely balanced and easy going. Noted as being a medium bodied rum on the label, I would however say this is at the lighter end of the spectrum.

I’d certainly buy this over something likes Angostura’s own 1919 but in all honesty, it is not really the type of rum that excites me anymore.

They’ve got another 2 rums in the range from Guyana and Barbados. They should be more to my liking…….