Ron Viejo de Caldas 3 Anos. The rum hails from Colombia.  It is produced at Industria Licocera de Caldas.  As a result of this quite a lot of the information available online is in Spanish.  I’ve tried translating things but the free translation tools are pretty naff.  So I’ve cobbled together what I could find in English.

They seem to have updated their range recently.  However the photo’s show the design of the dusty bottle I found in Mallorca earlier this year.  I paid €10.  When I’ve seen this available it has been around £30.  Ron Viejo de Caldas 3 Anos is bottled at a miserly 37.5% ABV (the lower limit of what call be called rum in the EU).  Although I have been unable to confirm it I am pretty sure that the rum is produced on an Industrial continuous column still and is molasses based. Industria Licorera de Caldas produce a range of other rums and spirits.  Which is often a bad sign for a “Rum Distillery”.

The companies Facebook page is pretty popular with 75,000 followers.  It is from this page where I’ve established that they have updated their presentation.  On the site I can see rums aged up to 15 years in their line up.

It’s likely that the old style bottles will be around Europe for some time to come.  Although they are fairly common in Spain they don’t seem overly popular.

I think this rum is pretty much their entry level effort.  The presentation is different I quite like the old fashioned/antique effect and I quite like the stubby bottle.  It’s pretty cool.  The new presentation is more sleek and modern but a little plain for my liking.

The rum has been aged a minimum of 3 years and has been aged in Ex-Bourbon oak.

In the glass Viejo De Caldas is a straw coloured rum. The nose is very light.  There is thin faint alcohol smell which is competing with an equally weak almost insiped hint of cake mix.  The alcohol is winning the battle though – just.  There isn’t really a great deal else – no oak, no spice and no fruitiness.

Taste wise it is equally underwhelming.  Even the alcohol notes don’t stick around.  Quickly disappearing along with any other possible hint of flavour.  There may be a hint of sugar sweetness o n entry but its so short and faint it may as well not be there.

This has been bottled at 37.5% ABV and boy can you tell.  It’s an anemic rum which even writing this review is boring me to death much like this “rum”.  A complete waste of everyone’s time.

Ron Viejo de Caldas could easily be substiuted for vodka in most drinks.  I drank my bottle long with coke and half the time I didn’t even realise I had any “rum” in the drink.

It’s not unpleasant because it just doesn’t have any character or flavour to make it unpleasant. If I had paid the retail price here in the UK (around £30) I’d have been pretty furious to be honest.

Apologies for being brief but there are only so many ways I can say something is shit.