Plantation have become multi award winners in recent times and this entry level rum has been one of the companies success stories.  The Original Dark is a blend of rums from Trinidad given the unmistakable Plantation treatment.  Double ageing and “dosage”.

This rum has recently been re-formulated and re-packaged.  It also forms the basis of their much hyped Stiggin’s Fancy which is a Pineapple infused rum which is due for release sometime soon……I haven’t seen anything definite as yet.

The Original Dark comes in Plantation’s standard bar room style bottle.  As usual the bottle is nice with an embossed Plantation logo on the bottle and a nice synthetic cork closure.  This rum retails at around £22-25 in the UK and the rum is bottled at 40% ABV.

I’ve reviewed a few Plantation rums so I won’t bore you all with more about the company.  I’m sure a lot of you have read up on Plantation.

This Dark Rum has won numerous awards in unaged categories at festival such as the Miami Rum Renaissance.  Without wishing to totally pre-empt the review I have to admit I am quite surprised at this.  This review will explain that more as we go.  So without further ado I think we’ll progress to nosing my latest Plantation purchase.

The nose is very sweet.  Its sickly sweet and to be honest quite cloying.  It doesn’t move me to want to try the rum.  It reminds me a lot of cheap Supermarket blends.  There’s nothing complex in the nose just sweet brown sugar.

When sipped the rum is a little edgy.  It is young after all and this is exhibited when you sip the rum.  It is sweet.  Almost sickly so again like the nose.  It’s very sweet but its also extremely short and bitter.  It leaves a strong aftertaste in the mouth.  It doesn’t exhibit a great deal of alcohol burn and there are no oak or aged notes with this one.  Initially sweet, short and bitter with a bit of a nasty cloying aftertaste.  A sipper this is certainly not.

Mixed (there is a recipe for a Planter’s Punch on the reverse label) it should come to life.  My usual 50/50 mix of rum and cola gives me a drink which to be completely honest I don’t enjoy.  The rum is sickly and bitter on the finish.  It really does remind me of supermarket rums such as Morrisons Caribbean Rum and Tesco Dark Rum.  I’d be very confident especially with the Tesco rum that this rum shares some very similar rum in its blend.

I’m baffled at how this has performed so well in blind sipping tasting sessions particularly when I look at some of the names who have participated in those sessions.  I can only guess (as I have not been given access to the information) that the other offerings were very poor.

This hasn’t impressed me at all and there is no way I would choose this over just about anything else I could find even on Supermarket shelves.  I know they have re-blended this (so maybe I do have a point) so I’ll have to try the newer bottling.  By Plantation’s standards this is not one of their better offerings.

Really disappointing