A Premium Sipping Rum isn’t really a big deal anymore. You could probably spend most of your life trying every premium sipper and never get close to trying them all. However, what hasn’t really been done before is a white sipping rum. Whilst the casual rum drinker may consider Bacardi Superior to be a premium white rum, in terms of sipping it doesn’t even come close to the kind of smoothness and complexity that befits a true sipping rum.
Tag Archives: 2 star
Captain Morgan Black Spiced Premium Spirit Drink with Caribbean rum, select spices and natural flavouring – to give it its full name. The spirit drink is aged in Double Charred Blackened Oak Barrels. It is Blackstrap rum (very thick molasses), Rich Clove Spice and Premium Cassia bark.
Unlike the Spiced Gold this is not readily available in the United Kingdom as yet. I find this a little strange as even the presentation suggests this is the Captain’s answer to The Kraken (see my review). It also uses a predominantly black and white colour scheme and the bottle shape is very similar. It omits the two rings on the neck and gains an upper hand by having a synthetic cork enclosure (pictured below). The rum/spirit drink is 40% abv. I have seen this available in the United States at 47% abv. I’m not totally sure why such regional difference apply, whether it is down to taste or politics, I really don’t know. Often rums are stronger in the UK than their US counterparts so its a bit of a conundrum.
Produced in Mexico by Licores Veracruz. The rum is bottled in small quantities and aged in white oak barrels (ex bourbon). There is more information on the bottle. Unfortunately other than the attached label it is all in Spanish!
Licores Veracruz have been trading as a going concern for 55 years but have only been exporting their products for 11 of those years. The Mocambo brand is imported into the United Kingdom by WSI LTD (Wine and Spirit International http://www.wineandspirit.com) who seem to import a number of unique products. The Mocambo 15 years is marketed as a premium rum.
Ron Espero – which roughly translates to “Rum of Hope” hails from the Dominican Republic and is bottled in Panama. They have a fairly uninspiring English language website and the rum is imported into Europe by Haromex Development GmbH.
The website has only been going since 2013. I’ve no doubt they’ve been producing rum for longer than that. I think that this may well be the first English language review of any of their rums. Online the rum seems to be getting widely ignored.
I don’t know what the sales of this rum are like worldwide. However, I’ve seen it stocked in a few high end hotels over here in the UK and a good few wine merchants carry it.
However, it hasn’t quite hit Aldi over here yet and I suspect it never will!
If Patron did indeed “add” the infamous orange flavour to this rum then as a marketing strategy it would seem to have worked wonders! Notwithstanding Bacardi this rum brand has to the be one of the most talked about rum brands in the world (not bad going consider they only do two rums!).
“The best rum in this world” proclaims the 30′s style label. Finest Old Demerara from Guyana. This is a blend of 7 dark rums aged in Guyana for at least 3 years. According to the bottle this is a naval style rum. This rum (and seemingly the bottle) has been produced since 1930.
I bought this rum on a trip to Sainsburys. It had couple of quid off so was £18 rather than £20. To be honest the bottle is a little uninspiring, which is why I had previously overlooked it. It’s a standard entry-level metallic screw top bar bottle. The labelling is a little kitsch but I don’t really think it will be doing its sales much good.
A premium rum from Angostura (of Angostura Bitters fame) from the home Dwight Yorke. 1919 is the year this blend of rum was first casked. The rum is aged 8 years in (what else) ex Bourbon barrels. The bottle states that they believe it “will be the smoothest rum you have ever tasted with notes of oak, cocoa and vanilla”.