Havana Club Anejo 3 Anos (Aged 3 years) is a white rum from the Cuban rum producers. With news of a possible embargo on Cuban products in the US I felt it a good time to review this staple of the UK and Europe’s style bars.
Distributed in the UK by Pernod-Ricard, Havana Club’s main competition comes from the Puerto Rican powerhoubse Bacardi. Which is distributed by Bacardi-Brown-Forman. Oddly I cannot think of many White Rums which have any kind of meaningful presence in the UK other than Havana Club and Bacardi. To be honest Bacardi has become such a byword for white rum that I doubt many people who drink Bacardi even realise it is rum!
There’s probably not a lot to be said about Bacardi that hasn’t been said before. Probably, on this blog and one of my other Bacardi reviews amongst other places. It was on completing a review of Lemon Hart White Rum that I realised I hadn’t actually reviewed Bacardi Superior. I’d had the pictures taken and reviewed a few other of Bacardi products but somehow I’d totally forgotten to review their flagship offering.
Lemon Hart is a rum brand which as intrigued me for some time. Talked about regularly on websites devoted to rum, yet strangely absent from the country where it is blended and bottled. I’ve never come across a bottle of Lemon Hart rum in any store in the UK – ever. Only very recently I notice that The Whisky Exchange have recently begun stocking their Dark rum and the 151 proof. These rum’s seem very popular over the pond.
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.
The infamous Wray and Nephew White Overproof rum has been available in the UK via Tesco for some years now. I imagine this is due to its huge popularity in Jamaica where it counts for 90% of all rum sales.