Category Archives: Jamaican

Black Tot Master Blender’s Reserve 2021

Posted on by rumtastic

wp-1634633785380What is it? As with the Black Tot 50th Anniversary Rum from 2020, this is again a molasses based blend of rums from various countries, still type and ages. I’m not going to go over old ground with the Black Tot line-up, you can read about that in the link to the 50th Anniversary, but the Black Tot Master Blender’s Reserve is the next rum along and continues where the 50th left off. This rum was to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the ceasing of rum rations to the Australian Navy (the nod to the Aussies will become clear later) and uses the Black Tot 50th Anniversary Rum blend as the base, it was re-casked it into ex-sherry butts in 2020 and is blended with rums aged between 9 and 24 years, from Guyana, Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica and Australia, as well as incorporating some of the original British Royal Navy rum blend itself – this is not just simply an further aged version of the 50th Anniversary rum but a different blend altogether, although there is going to be quite a lot of comparing to each other in this review as naturally many people will consider them as part of the same run and will want to know how they face off.

 

 

 

As with the 50th Anniversary there is a really good transparent back label on the bottle that lists the blend components, as you can see some Australian rum from Beenleigh has been added this time to provide the ode to Australia:

MBR-2021-Back-Label-2

 

Bottled at 54.5% abv, unchillfiltered and of an outrun of 6000 bottles.

Sugar? No.

Nose: Really quite fruity at first with lots of pineapple, mango, apricot and over ripe banana. Little touches of caramel or butterscotch here and there as well as some lovely sweet raisin…..and then things get dirty, really dirty; diesel, liquorice, black olives, brine, tar, treacle and some meaty note tucked away that’s not quite heavy enough to be Jerky, but something similar, maybe touching on very crispy/almost burnt smoked bacon. Really deep and heavy near the end, lovely.

Palate: Good weight and mouth feel. Fairly restrained at first but then it gets quite hot and peppery. We’re not as fruity here, pineapples, sure, but it’s mainly phenolic and herbal as if following straight on from the end of the nose. We’ve got loads of diesel, oil and tar. Lifts of aniseed, liquorice and then some solventy black boot polish (if you’ve ever accidentally inhaled the stuff you can taste it and you’ll know what I mean). There’s a really nice meaty mushroom note in here too, touches of raisin and some wet leaves or forest floor notes, all of which seem to be coming from the sherry casks.

Finish: Long. Less phenolic here, much more on the traditional sweeter sensed notes with banana, dark chocolate, black coffee, treacle toffee and some bitter nutty notes like raw walnut. It’s much richer at this point, coating and heavy but still carries some phenols with salty black olives sneaking in to keep it interesting and a zing of tropical fruit at the end which stops it getting bogged down.

Thoughts? Really good. The addition of the Aussie from Beenleigh definitely livens things up and gives it some real zip, it really does taste like a different rum to the 50th Anniversary but you can still pick out the lineage here. So is it as good as the 50th Anniversary? Well, yes, and that says a lot as I ranked the 50th Anniversary in my top 5 rums of 2020 (specifically my 4th best), so we’ve got no slouch here. I don’t score rums but if I were to do so I’d score both this Master Blender’s Reserve and the 50th Anniversary the same, however, my personal preference would be to the 50th Anniversary just because if I’m drinking a Naval style blend I like a rich a dirty rum and this is much more fruit driven.

So what’s the damage? £120. Ok, yes I guess so as it’s only increased a little year on year and we know what happens to the cost of things…..so I think that’s fine.

 

If you fancy this you can pick this up from The Whisky Exchange here:

Black Tot Master Blender’s Reserve

Worthy Park Cask Selection Series 8 – Quatre Vins – 2013

Posted on by rumtastic

20210128_161457What is it? Pure Single Rum (100% pot still, molasses based, single distillery) from the Worthy Park distillery in Jamaica. This bottling has been done as part of the “Cask Selection Series” and is number 8 in that line-up. It was distilled in 2013 and matured tropically in first fill ex-bourbon casks for 4 years before being moved over into a variety of casks for further maturation, in this case ex-Monbazillac, ex-Sauternes, ex-Moscatel and ex-Jurancon casks (all sweet or desert wines), for a further 2 years – I believe this was done in Europe – making it around 6 years old. I don’t know how the blending was done for this but most likely the rum was split into 4 and each one matured for the extra 2 years and then blended back together again. It’s possible that the entire batch was moved from 1 cask to another in turn but I find that unlikely.

This bottle is one of 1318 produced.

Bottled at 52% abv without any colouring added. I don’t believe this has been chill-filtered either.

Sugar? No.

Nose: You get the Worthy Park banana immediately, butterscotch, sultana and coconut. We’ve got cask spices in here too with ginger. nutmeg and mace, a few peppercorns and a sweet chilli/pimento note. Part way through there’s a bouillon or vegetable stock note and some Bovril (bear with me here, it’s quite nice) – there’s a definite meaty note sitting midway on the nose that reminds me of Mortlach Scotch Single Malt. Oh no, whiffs of spent matches are starting to appear and some heavy sulphur notes arrive at the end. Bollocks.

Palate: Full mouth. Quite sweet at first, I’m very much getting the desert wines and sweet dried raisins, they are quite overbearing initially. We then get our Worthy Park banana, some drier brewed black tea, candied pineapple, papaya and black grape. There’s some heat in here too with ginger root, clove, red chillies and peppercorns again, but it’s a sweet type of spice. A little sulphur again but not as bad as the nose and it gives a nice smoked ham, like Brunswick, note which is really nice.

Finish: Medium. Spicy and sweet again, milk chocolate covered chilli and ginger mix, salt & pepper roasted cashews and a pineapple glazed smoked ham. It finishes quite sweet with intense dried grapes.

Thoughts? This is an odd one this. I’ve gone back to it quite a bit as initially the sulphur was pretty bad; I’m very susceptible to sulphur, it’s a genetic thing, some people get it badly and some don’t. I must admit that I found it very strong and it took a good month to settle down and blow off. What’s left gives a savoury, meaty undertone to the fruity rum which is very interesting. It drinks a lot older than the 6 years it has seen, but the problem is the sweetness from some of those casks really dominates and over sweetens the rum. It sits on top of the rum blend and doesn’t every really integrate well at all with the Worthy Park style here.

This is £70ish and as interesting as this has been as an experiment it’s not one I’d buy again, go for one of the other Cask Selection bottles, probably the sherry ones, if I were you.

New Yarmouth 2005 (The River Mumma) – Vidya

Posted on by rumtastic

What is it? Pure Single Rum (pot still, molasses based, single distillery) from the New Yarmouth distillery in Jamaica. Not a lot of people outside rum “enthusiast” groups will have heard of New Yarmouth; it is part of Appleton Estate and based in Clarendon, Jamaica. It produces rum mainly for Wray and Nephew and particularly white rum for the Overproof. They have both pot and column stills at the distillery and it has quite a large output, but most of this ends up in blended rums or other brands – there is very little out there labelled as New Yarmouth and where you do find it it’s almost exclusively in Independent bottles.

So that’s the distillery, what about this brand? Well Vidya is a new brand owned by Skylark Spirits who are a UK based distributor and importer of rum – they own Rumcask and do a lot of (nowadays) online tasting events. I’ve got to know them over the last year or so and they’re a really good bunch of lads, so I was very excited when they told me about this project, especially once I found out what it was. The word “Vidya” comes from ancient Sanskrit and means “clarity, knowledge and learning” – well chosen, if you ask me, to represent a (hopefully range of!) rum that is unaltered, fully transparent and about a pure as you can get it.

So where does the River Mumma fit in? Well this name was chosen because legends of the River Mumma goddess have been whispered throughout Jamaica for centuries. She is said to have guarded rivers such as the Rio Minho, which runs alongside the New Yarmouth distillery, acting as the protector of the fish and wildlife inhabitants.

So that’s the background covered off, now the nitty gritty, what’s in the bottle:

This rum, as mentioned, comes from a pot still and has been matured entirely in ex-bourbon casks. It was distilled in 2005 and the first 7 years of maturation were spent in Jamaica. On 16th May 2012 it was filled into a once used bourbon cask and shipped to the UK. In 2017 it was then sent off to Denmark until it was bottled in 2020. This gives us a tropical age of 7 years, a European age of 8 years with a total age of 15 years. Obviously the 7 years in Jamaica will amount for more, usually 3:1 so those initial 7 years will be around 21 years equivalent of European aging.

The cask marque is SFJW, but this is not a New Yarmouth marque, it’s likely to be one used by a shipper. The actual marque is NYE/WM which comes in a whopping 1300-1400 gr/hlaa of esters – which makes this an absolute monster.

Bottled at cask strength of 61.5% abv and one of 255 bottles released.

So just to summarise; well aged, insane ester, cask strength pot still Jamaican rum. Drink this sat down.

Note: For the purpose of my own survival and that of both my nose hairs and taste buds, I’ve taken this down to about 57% abv for the review. This is the strength I’ve been drinking it at for pleasure too.

Sugar? No way

Nose: Holy shit, this thing is mental. The smell from the bottle hits you right in the face as soon as you pull the cork. The nose is a total onslaught with huge amounts of fermenting pineapple, black bananas, banana foam sweets, pineapple cube candy, overripe mango and pears. Describing funk in a rum is quite a hard thing to do but one sniff of this explains it all, this is seriously, seriously funky rum. Then things get all savoury, and very interesting; beeswax, nail varnish remover, grease, petrol, Kalamata olives by the bucket, tar and a combination of Nam Pla (fish sauce) and wasabi. There’s a musty note of cardboard, hessian sacks and coconut husks. Sitting under all this is a little vanilla, coconut, almond, light caramel and some nutmeg. What. A. Nose.

Palate: Good body, full mouth feel but not oily, just nicely coating. We’re a step or two back from the nose here, not as big or brash, which is a good thing as I stand a chance of actually being able to pick out some flavours. Still big funk with lots of banana, pineapple, mango, passion fruit and cantaloupe melon but it’s easier to find the more subtle notes; vanilla, clove, honey and coconut. We’ve got a tobacco smoke, leather and old wooden furniture. There’s that Umami note of Nam Pla and wasabi again, white pepper and stamp glue. Plenty of salty olives and grease then back to bananas, some brown sugar and pineapple cube sweets as it goes to the finish.

Finish: Very long. Fruity here still with Fruit Salad chews, concentrated banana essence or oil and a little bit of strawberry of all things. There’s a flash of savoury with Black Jack sweets (liquorice candy), brine, Pear Drops and tarry ropes, but on the whole it’s the remnants of the massive tropical fruits that stays here.

Thoughts? Wow. This is a big, big rum. The nose is one of the best I’ve ever smelt and you get it as soon as you pour a glass. It drops a few points on the palate but that’s not really the palates fault, it’s pretty hard to come after that nose and be able to stand up for yourself, the smell is so good.

What I love here though is that it’s not just all about the funk, there’s loads of layers and huge complexity; you really do go down a rabbit hole with this rum.

So this is one of my top rums of 2020 and one of the best I’ve ever had; I ranked it 2nd and it was only piped to the post by Foursquare Nobiliary, so not a bad showing at all given what it was up against. Now, this is not cheap at £130 but let me tell you how good this is: I pre-ordered a bottle after a sample without even asking what the price was, I really didn’t care. Yes, it’s worth every penny.

If you fancy this you can pick this up from The Whisky Exchange here:

New Yarmouth 2005 (The River Mumma) – Vidya

Rumtastic rum of the year 2020

Posted on by rumtastic

Well 2020 is nearly over (thank God), although 2021 doesn’t look like it’s about to start the right way – thanks COVID –  so it’s time for any bloggers obligatory “top rums blah blah blah”. As I don’t score my rums this process is actually fairly easy for me as I don’t have to go through my scoring and try to pick out rums with a slither of a mark between them, all I have to do is engage my memory. Basically my selection is pretty straight forward here, I chose my favourite rums; do I remember the rum blowing my mind? Ultimately, if a rum sticks in my mind then it’s a contender and there have been quite a few of these this year. Now I must caveat that I’ve not tried every rum that has been released 2020, let’s face it I’ve got a limited budget and a limited amount of time, naturally I can only rank what I’ve actually tried – so in the scheme of things this list is pretty much meaningless, but it’s getting done anyway. The other thing to note is that I may well have drunk and reviewed rums in 2020 that were released earlier, again because I don’t have an unlimited amount of time and money, and due to the volume of releases it’s quite easy to get behind with stuff.

Right, bullshit out of the way, what are Rumtastic’s 5 most rumtastic rums of 2020?

Coming in at number 5:

Chairman’s Reserve Master’s Selection 13 year old (2006) – The Whisky Exchange Exclusive

This was a bottle of Chairman’s Reserve that was done for The Whisky Exchange and a 50/50 mix of Vendome and John Dore pot still rum. It was the first time I’d really ventured into rums from Saint Lucia Distillers and made me have to sit down. It was incredibly complex, hugely phenolic and carried a very divisive profile so not everyone will get on with this. The result of drinking this rum was that I went out and bought a load of other stuff from Saint Lucia Distillers without even thinking about it.

 

 

 

Next at number 4:

The Black Tot 50th Anniversary

This rum was released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Black Tot Day and is an incredible blend. A “Navy” blend rum that hits all the right notes but also tips it’s hat to a modern, fresher style of rum. No sugary sweet bollocks or cloying stickiness going on here, just really good rum blended together. Some of the original Naval rum in here too! Big props for full disclosure of the blend, right down to the percentages and the aging split of everything that went in to the bottle.

 

 

 

Rocking in at number 3:

Foursquare Detente

A list of top 5 rums of the year wouldn’t be complete without something from Foursquare and 2020 is no exception. Detente was probably the rum I was most looking forward to in 2020 because of the nostalgia attatched to the very first Port Cask in the Exceptional Cask line-up and it really didn’t disappoint. Beautiful rum, dangerously easy to drink and a showcase in the journey Foursquare have made with their rums and presentation over the last 5 years.

 

 

 

 

Runner up this year at number 2:

New Yarmouth 2005 (The River Mumma) – Vidya

This bottle was released right at the end of the year and has managed to sneak into second spot at the very last minute. This was my Christmas present to myself so it’s only just been opened and at the time of writing there I’ve not reviewed it. This is the inaugural bottling by the lads at Skylark Spirits and is a 15 year old single cask New Yarmouth rum, bottled at full strength and from the NYE/EM marque which comes in at a whopping 1300-1400 gr/hlaa on the ester level. I was kindly sent a sample of this ahead of release and immediately pre-ordered a bottle…..I don’t even think I asked them the price, it was that good. I recall spending literally an hour just nosing this.

 

 

Top spot and my number 1 rum of the year goes to:

Foursquare Nobiliary

What is there to say about this one? Not only my favourite rums of 2020 but one of my favourite rums so far since I’ve been blogging. When I first saw the label I did a little eye-roll thinking it was going to be yet another 100% ex-bourbon cask Foursquare rum, which we get every year under the vintage releases, then I opened it. Boy how wrong I was. Utterly fabulous rum and a no-brainer to make my top spot.

 

 

 

 

So there we have it. My favourite rums of 2020. The takeaways from there are 2 things; firstly there’s a good range that’s fallen into my top 5 – that’s not deliberate, if my favourite rums were all Jamaican then that’s what my list would be – but we’ve got a scatter across Jamaica, a blend, a couple of Barbadians and rum from a country I’d never tried before. This is a good thing and shows that incredible stuff is coming from many different taste profiles and not limited to 1 style, country or region. The second is that these are all limited releases. I’m sorry about that, and if you’ve not been able to get your hands on any of them then that is a shame. This isn’t as good as the first takeaway. The rum is there, clearly, but no continuous release has made it. I’d really like to see 2021 lifting up bottles from core ranges and continuous releases and at least one getting into my top 5 next year – this would help everyone from the distilleries right down to the consumers. Let’s drink the best rum we can.

 

 

 

Black Tot 50th Anniversary

Posted on by rumtastic

What is it? Well this is a molasses based blended rum from various stills, from various countries, aged both tropically and continentally, and various ages. Let me elaborate a bit; the Black Tot rum brand was created by The Whisky Exchange (specifically the co-founder, Sukhinder Singh) who blended together some of the final British naval rum to create Black Tot: The Last Consignment – this was old rum and bloody expensive stuff, and was put out in 2010 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Black Tot Day (the day that the British Navy ceased issuing the Rum Ration to it’s sailors). Since then a we’ve had Black Tot 40 Year Old which was distilled in 1975 and a continuous release called Black Tot Finest Caribbean. The line-up has now expended, with a limited release of the Black Tot 50th Anniversary rum to celebrate – you’ve guessed it – the 50th anniversary of Black Tot Day. So what’s in this one then? The full recipe has been published and is below, but to summarise it’s a got rum in it from Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica and Barbados as well as a little splash of original Royal Navy Blend.

You can read more about the creation of the rum over at The Whisky Exchange blog, I’m not going to lift and drop all the blurb because I’m lazy and there’s loads of stuff on there.

It’s worth noting that they had about a third of the blend left over after bottling, so it’s gone back into some sherry casks where it’ll be topped up with other rums and released in 2021 for another limited bottling. I believe that some of that blend will be held back and re-casked too for 2022 where it will repeat so we get a continual release each year of a different blend based on the original. Cool idea.

Bottled at navy strength of 54.5% ABV, no chillfiltering and with a limited run of 5000 bottles.

Sugar? Nope.

Nose: Exactly what I was expecting and hoping for, which is good. Black bananas, big dollops of toffee, molasses, boot polish, camphor, pine sap, liquorice, a big handful of black olives, tar and engine oil. Further in we’ve got fruity raisins, candied pineapple and baked apples with cinnamon and nutmeg (apple crumble I guess). As you’d expect there’s an old musty smell here too with leather, aged coffee beans in hessian sacks and grilled mushrooms. It’s really rich, dark and deep but still carries some light fruitiness.

Palate: Full, rich mouth feel. Oh yes. Rum and raisin dark chocolate, caramel, molasses, treacle toffee, strong black coffee, figs and loads and loads of soft black liquorice. Fruity mid-palate with banana, pineapple and oranges but quickly turns phenolic with brine, tar, diesel, olives, menthol, hot rubber and a touch of stamp glue.

Finish: Long. Smoky. Rolling tobacco, smoked toffees, maple syrup, cinnamon, Demerara sugar, nutmeg and raisins. Seems sweeter here and less phenolic but throws in a little heat with cloves, ginger, chillies and salt & pepper nuts. There’s still plenty of liquorice going on and a little brine note but it mixes sweeter creamier notes and prickling spices on the whole. I’ve found myself nosing the rum as the palate is finishing and the combination adds a really nice burst of fruit into the idea of the finish too – it’s one of those rums that you want to smell and taste at the same time to get the whole image.

Thoughts? A really very good blend. The problem you have with a lot of “Navy” blends is that they often get bogged down or become flabby and fall apart with too much molasses’y liquorice. This one does not. It’s got those real deep, dark and dirty notes you expect but there’s a constant burst of fruit and phenols flickering throughout that pulls you up when it’s getting too heavy.

If you read the link the to The Whisky Exchange blog they were looking to create a balance between a modern rum and traditional old British style rum, and I think they’ve got it spot on with this. I’m not sure I’d change anything in the blend so it’s going to be interesting to see how it goes with the release in 2021, but one thing is for sure; I really look forward to trying it.

So the damage? £110. Yeah, not cheap I know, but really this is fabulous and it does have some very old and rare rum in it. I would, and I have been, recommending this to people. I’d happily buy it again and will be getting the 2021 release when that comes out for the 51th anniversary.

If you fancy this you can pick this up from The Whisky Exchange here:

Black Tot 50th Anniversary