If tasted blind, this whisky might leave your palate reeling; it’s like American rye, Highland Scotch and Irish whiskey had a endearingly awkward, oddly alluring but ultimately underdeveloped love child. A reserved nose of fruit, grain and spicy oak leads to a compact palate of sweet vanilla and wood sprinkled with brine. Not bad, but it skirts the complexities it almost delivers.
Aged in first-fill American oak, this unpeated Islay Scotch exudes a thousand characteristics without flirting with fragmentation. Smells like green bananas, ground almonds, honey-smothered toast, greens and grains. In the mouth it’s delicate, honeyed and spicy with just enough salinity to encourage serial sipping. Lofty but of the earth: a lovely conundrum.
This gorgeously peculiar rum hails from Mauritius, a small volcanic island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Aged in a winning combination of Limousin oak casks and port pipes, this complex and aromatic rum tastes like an oaken fruit bowl peppered with exotic spices in the proximity of a gas station. A perfect rum to lavish tiki cocktails with a little something extra.
This Guatemalan rum is aged for a minimum of 4 years in ex-bourbon barrels before crossing the Atlantic to France, where it finishes maturing in cognac casks courtesy of father company Pierre Ferrand. Whisky-esque with whiffs of charred pineapple upside-down cake, chocolate and overripe banana. A fruit-forward, nutty and faintly earthy rum for sweet-toothed sippers.
This extremely limited rum is crafted by local legends RL Seale & Co Ltd, the last Bajan-owned rum producer on the island. Aged 3 years in former bourbon casks before mellowing in port wood for an additional 6, this aromatic spirit expresses dark cherries, tobacco, hay and an alluring funk (for those that dig a romp in the barnyard). Leather, vanilla pastry cream, cassis and oak lead the unctuous palate.
Produced in a style similar to rhum agricole (now a strictly observed AOC), Barbancourt is distilled from fresh-pressed Haitian sugarcane rather than molasses. Originally blended solely for the family and friends, this exclusive expression represents a tiny sliver of Barbancourt’s sales. Caramelized cane, candied orange peel and scorched earth on the nose. Apricots, honey and caramel are spiced up with hot edges.
A premium expression from the top-selling rum brand in the Caribbean, Brugal 1888 advances the house style: “clean, dry and woody,” according to 5th-generation Maestro Ronero, Gustavo Ortega Zeller Brugal. Distilled from pure Dominican molasses and double-aged in both bourbon and sherry casks, Brugal’s richest offering noses banana bread, tobacco, saddle, candied orange and holiday spices. It’s rich but playful on the palate, flitting back and forth between tropical fruit, vanilla and caramel and a defining woody dryness.