Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva doesn’t it just roll of the tongue……. Well maybe the name might not but rum enthusiasts seem quite unanimous that the flavour of this rum is certainly something that your tongue will indeed savour. With such praise it was only a matter of time (or a bargain price) before I tried some. I eventually ordered a Gift Pack version from the Whisky Exchange which included a large decorative box and two very nice Diplomatico labelled glencairn style glasses (one is in picture). This came in at just under £50 which I felt was reasonable enough. Good glasses aren’t cheap!
Tag Archives: rum reviews
A Spiced Rum from the Foursquare distillery in Barbados. This isn’t a rum that was introduced by the distillery to compete with Sailor Jerry or Kraken, its been around a while.
Highly regarded as a spiced rum, the rum comes in a slightly unusual tall bottle with a dripped wax sealing which covers a metallic screw top. The label is simple and understated. Unusual packaging is quite the distillery’s trademark (you would struggle to tell at a glance that any bottle is from the distillery, they do not have a formulaic appearance like Appleton for example).
At the time of buying this I hadn’t tried much in the way of Demerara Rum other than the supermarket “Navy” style rum’s. So I thought I would give this a try. It was very highly regarded on The Whisky Exchange (I get a lot of rum online due to the lack of variety and specialist shops up here in the North East).
The first rum I tried which wasn’t from a supermarket was a bottle of Chairman’s Reserve. Chairman’s Reserve is from St Lucia Distillers, as is this rum. The rum is “ACR” (Authentic Caribbean Rum) which is a accreditation system drawn up to identify a]Authentic Caribbean Rum. There is also a petition ongoing to save Authentic Caribbean Rum. Historically, Admiral Rodney is much the same as Captain Morgan (no not the actual rum). Admiral Rodney was the military governor of St Lucia after the British seized the island back from France in 1762.
Cockspur 12 (also Cockspur VSOR in some markets) is the premium rum of the Cockspur range (admittedly they only have 6 lines in total and at least one of those isn’t available outside of Barbados!).
It’s funny but despite Cockspur being my favourite sub £15 rum I didn’t actually have high hopes for this. I’m not sure why but I just thought that I would be left a disappointed by an “expensive” version of something I enjoyed so much in its cheapest form.
Ahhh the French you could almost hate the entire nation for Michel Platini and his Anglophilic tendencies alone. So the French being the French they couldn’t make r(h)um the English way they had to do it their way.
And so was born Rhum Agricole (Agricultural Rum) a more expensive way of making rum. Agricole rum is made from fresh pressed sugar cane juice rather than molasses. Due to the price of the various rhum agricole’s on offer I was expecting something quite spectacular. However, from looking online it seemed quite overlooked and not a lot if it seemed to be getting on any notable award lists.
This is without the doubt the most difficult rum review I have done so far. When I first got into rum this was the first rum I bought online.
Confused by all the information available on the Internet and still with little understanding of dark, golden, demerara, pot still, column still, agricole (god help us) etc I decided to try a bottle of Chairman’s Reserve. I’m still at a loss as to exactly why I decided to try this particular rum. Was it the unusual dumpy bottle? The mostly positive reviews? The price? The awards? Was I drunk? Who knows I really cannot remember……