With the recent release of the new Foursquare Exceptional Casks, specifically the 2005 Cask Strength, I thought I’d check my notes on the 2004. Imagine my surprise when I released I’ve not actually posted a review for the 2004 Cask Strength yet! What the hell happened there then?! Too much rum, too many pieces of paper and a brain that has been turned to jelly by having kids, that’s what. So better late (2 years) than never as they say:

What is it? The Third bottling in the Foursquare Exception Cask series. It’s molasses based rum produced on both Pot stills and twin column stills at the same distillery, Foursquare in St. Philip, Barbados – so a Bajan Single Blended Rum. The distillate from both still types is blended when it’s raw spirit and then put into ex-bourbon casks to age tropically, in this case for 11 years. The rum was distilled in 2004 (hence the name) and bottled in September 2015.

As far as I’m aware the rum does have some colouring in it. There are no details about chill-filtration but the rum does go slightly cloudy with water so any filtering has been minimal. Bottled at full cask strength of 59% abv.

Sugar? Not a cat in Hell’s chance.

For the purpose of this review I’ve taken the rum down to around 55% abv.

Nose: Ok, this is pretty damn awesome……pretty oaky as you’d expect, a lot of bourbon influence with vanilla, warm wood, smoked coconut, gingerbread, light rolling tobacco and pecans. There’s a lovely biscuit’y note that reminds me a lot of Digestive biscuits and brown sugar that has been melted with butter in a pan as if you were making a cheesecake base or something. There are some fresh cane notes too, that I wasn’t expecting, hay, and the odd green banana. Under all this there are some meaty savoury notes of fresh liquorice root, tar, engine oil, sea water, dusty dry soil blowing about in the wind and very good olive oil.

Palate: Surprisingly not as hot as you’d expect, good full mouthfeel and very dry. Really quite savoury at the start with salty green olives, salted and smoked lemons, tar, creosote and wasabi. The savoury dies off a little leaving dark chocolate, roasted pecans in a salted caramel, donuts but without the sugar (just the batter) and ginger biscuits. There are some lovely lifting grassy cane notes again part way through that keep it fresh as the sweeter side starts to settle in.

Finish: Long, very long. Oaky and bitter dark chocolate, vanilla, coconut – we’re back to the nose again – a little touch of orange maybe or marmalade that creeps in and whilst it’s certainly not sweet the sweeter notes dominate over the savoury side here, but it’s dry and puckering at the same time.

Thoughts? Fabulous stuff. Really. What a beautiful rum; it’s got everything you could want in it and it takes water like a fish. I dropped it down to 40% abv for a trial and all the flavours were still great. What’s worrying about this is that even at 59% it’s dangerously drinkable, but I’ve found the sweet spot is at about 55% (which is why I’ve reviewed it at that), and there it really allows that perfect Foursquare balance to show off.

So I bought this so long ago I don’t even remember how much I paid for it, I think it was about £45!! Absolute no brainer, and what’s even better is that it’s still available to buy (at the time of publish). So if you’re thinking about picking up a 2005 Cask Strength I urge you to pick up this 2004 also and compare the two. You will not be disappointed.