Rum of the Year 2019 – Winner. No doubt the brands/producers shortlisted for this most prestigious award have been waiting with baited breath for this announcement. Winning this award must truly be the pinnacle of any rum producers career. After all you get absolutely nothing other than a pat on the back from me. Not even a fancy awards ceremony to ponce around at.
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Firstly many apologies for taking so long to finally write this piece. Links to the other parts of this article, will appear at the bottom of the screen. It has taken some prodding (thanks Lance) and some real thought, to finally complete this series of articles. Yes, two years is far too long to wait for this and I apologise. I hate leaving things unfinished. So I finally thought f*ck it I’ll just write what I think and see what happens. God knows I have done it plenty of times before. I’ll also apologise in case there is any repetition from previous articles. I do get carried away sometimes. So here goes…..
Both the names of Mark Reynier and Renegade Rum may already be familiar to many of you readers. Undoubtedly more famous in the Whisk(e)y world than in the world of Rum Mark Reynier, has built a reputation for being a bit of a maverick.
Best known for his stint as CEO of Bruichladdich. He resurrected the abandoned distillery and soon Bruichladdich was famous for its exotic (at the time) wine cask finished whiskies. Reynier himself was gaining a reputation as an innovator and spoke of “terroir” in whisky way before such things became trendy. He also succeeded in pissing off the Scotch Whisky Association along the way as well.
In February this year Alexandre Gabriel, owner of Maison Ferrand, the producers of Plantation rum gave an interview to David Driscoll of K&L Wine Merchants. A popular Wine and Spirits retailer based in the US.
Over the past few years, Alexandre and more specifically Plantation rum have been held up by many as the “poster boys” for adulterated rum. This is partly due to the fact that until very recently ALL their rums had what Alexandre refers to as “dosage”. The reality is, that whilst Plantation do add sugar (an aged sugar syrup), they don’t usually add the huge amounts favoured by some other “Premium” rum producers. Nor as far as I am aware, do they add things such as Glycerin or essences.
The Rum Festival are actually a number of Rum Festivals that tour around the country. This is their second year and they have expanded to cover even more towns and cities all around the UK.
Which is one of the things I really like about The Rum Festival events – they are pretty much on your doorstep. This particular event was even more convenient (for me) as there was a Daytime and Night-time session. So I opted for the daytime event which kicked off at 12 and finished at 5pm.
A while back I reviewed a Royal Navy rum from prior to Black Tot Day. I was able to do this by buying a sample from The Old Spirits Company.
The Old Spirits Company is ran by spirits and cocktail enthusiast Edgar Harden. It offers buyers the chance to buy scarce and hard to find bottlings from years gone by. The Old Spirits Company sells aged spirits as in bottled a long time ago rather than distilled a long time ago. Though in some instances both does apply!
The Oxford English Dictionary notes a number of uses and meanings for the word Premium. In the context of this article the meaning is as follows
“Relating to or denoting a commodity of superior quality and therefore a higher price”
Which is pretty simple and easy to understand. So lets take a look at a few Premium rums. In this scenario the word is defined by the fact the rum itself promotes itself as Premium, on its bottle.