Rum of the Month has been a feature which we ran on the site from January to October. Rum of the Year 2015 its logical conclusion.

Rum of the Month gave a solid selection of 10 very good rums, which I hope people took the time to seek out if they hadn’t already tried them.

Which led me to one of the sticking points I had about producing a list of Rums of the Year.  As the site has only been live since early 2014 and only really getting a noticeable amount of hits since the December 2014 re-vamp, it seemed a little daft for me to recommend a list of rums.  A lot of you have probably been buying these rums for years and years.

In 2015 I tried likely in excess of 150 new rums.  When I say new, I mean new to me.  Many of these rums had been available for a long time.

So as 2015 drew to an end I thought the best way to a Rum of the Year and to keep the series going over a number of years, would be to give the award to a rum which had not been available until 2015.

Which obviously cuts the field down quite a bit but at the same time, I hope gives you all the option of trying something new.  Rather than being told to try something you have been drinking for years……..

2015 was quite an interesting year for rum.  Diageo and Bacardi Global seemed to go after each others slice of the pie – Captain Morgan White rum was introduced as a direct competitior for Bacardi Superior and Bacardi responded by trying to pinch some of the Captain’s Spiced Gold clientele with their Red Spiced Rum Carta Fuego

Bacardi also bought out the “premium” rum brand Banks (Joseph Banks not the Guyanan, Banks DIH) and the Bacardi story continued with the news that US and Cuban relations were cooling and finally the US might get the real Havana Club rum in the US rather than Bacardi’s frankly rather petty “rip-off”.

Moving away from the global giants the US rum scene continued to thrive with more and more new brands popping up all the time.  To be fair few of these have reached our shores so I can’t really comment.  However brands such as Richland Rum and Brinley’s seemed to go from strength to strength.

In Europe the independent bottlers continued to become more noticeable and influential.  Velier diverted from their aged Demeraras to introduce some unaged white Clarin’s from Haiti.  Compagnie des Indes arrived on the scene from France and immediately got a lot of acclaim and attention for their particularly excellent 16 Year Old Barbados bottling, amongst others.

Moving closer to home the UK Spiced Rum market took a very strange turn with English Spirit Distillery, who are responsible for Old Salt Rum working with a number of producers to make some very interesting pot still spiced rums.  Brands such as Matugga, Bushtea and Old Amazon all benefitted from the Copper Pot Still based in Cambridgeshire.

Remaining in the UK the first rum distillery was opened in Scotland.  Dark Matter Spiced Rum was the first result from this micro distiller with more due to come in 2016!

So as you can see 2015 was a busy year and I’ve only really scratched the surface.  After careful consideration we decided to opt for a rum which you may only be able to get for a very short period in 2016.

A limited edition bottling from an iconic Caribbean distillery with a price tag which didn’t mean it was available only for a select few.

Step forward Richard Seale of Foursquare Distillery as thefatrumpirate.com Rum of 2015 is the excellent Foursquare Port Cask Finish.

A rum which should not be missed!  Limited Edition and a briiliant example of how to impart flavour to a rum with skilful blending, good cask management and inventive finishing.