First of all I want to point out that I buy rum to drink as a sipper. I don’t drink cocktails and don’t plan to mix my rum. This wasn’t a rum I bought, but given, with the intention of getting me to drink Woo Woo’s or Cosmo’s or something….anyway, I’ve tried it neat (gotta be done with anything really) so I thought I may as well post a review.

What is it? It’s white rum from Mauritius. Bottle states “Rhum Blanc Traditionnel” so it’s a molasses based white rum, rather than a cane juice rum (which Saint Aubin also produce). The molasses is derived from Saint Aubins oldest sugar canes (which I assume have a red colour to them) and the bottle says that this produces a distinctive flavour. Distilled in a copper column still and I assume not aged at all.

It was bottled in June 2011 and covered in a thick layer of dust so I guess that it’s been in a cupboard for some time and as the chap who gave this to me is Mauritian (and there is no UK duty sticker on the bottle) it probably came directly from Mauritius – I’m not able to find very much information on it via the tinterweb.

750ml bottle, chill-filtered and bottled at 37.5% abv.

Sugar: No idea, I’ll guess not.

Nose: Here goes, young white mixing rum! Oh. This is really, really nice, what a surprise! Fresh and fruity, loads of apples and pears (young spirit), mango, sweet flowers, cut grass and sugar cane. Amongst the fruity smells there is a meatiness to it that’s a bit hard to describe; light coffee, peanut, almost phenolic peaty smells like you’d get from a young Islay whisky, but very distant, some brine, a little bit of pickled cucumber and some mint. All really very pleasant and quite a delight to smell.

Palate: Really easy going, almost no heat (it’s only a baby at 37.5% abv). Semi sweet delivery and a fair mouth-feel given the low abv. Buckets of fresh cut conference pears, pear drop sweets, green apple skin, sugar cane and some other fruit that I’m not too sure about, maybe lychee. After a while there are some cardboard notes and the slight taste of the smell of wet dog. Hey, it’s young, so that’s tough. All in all not bad really and very laid back, easy sipping stuff.

Finish: Well, er, it does. Very quickly. Short, you swallow and it was there for a second and gone the next. Not unpleasant though, same tastes as the palate but finishes mainly on the pears. No burn or alcohol at all, nor any off notes.

Thoughts: I’m not sure if my palate is having a bad day or not, but I like this neat – I can taste loads of stuff in it so I guess my palate is working alright…..

You know, if I was going to mix this (and I’m not a bartender so I have no idea about mixing) I’d only really put this with something light, such as lemonade, a tonic, pineapple juice or lighter fruit. Putting this with coke, or ginger ale etc would kill the rum, it’s so light.

I’m a little bit stuck now. I’ll be honest; my intention was to review this, slag it off, call it rough and ragged and share plans I had about turning it into blackberry rum (I need a base for making blackberry or damson rum for winter). I’m not sure what I’m going to do now as it’s got too much flavour to turn into a winter boozer, I need a more neural spirit for that. As it’s a 750ml bottle I think I’ll make half of it up and we’ll see how it turns out, after all apple/pears and blackberry goes really well. Watch this space, in about 3 months I’ll have some home made blackberry rum to review   🙂

Cheers again Viz!