Day 16 of my fascinating rum advent calendar. This one's Martiniquan, from Martinique. Not the first rum location I've never heard of. I'm sure there's a lot to learn here, so let's get to it.
Rum time! Another one where I don't have much time so it's going to be rushed. Expect typos sparse research, guessing, and vagueness. I'm not going to rush the tasting itself, that would be absurd. On we go...
Rum time again. Indonesian today. I don't have a huge amount of time so this might be a bit rushed. I have to do some Christmas shopping online and iron a shirt, but hopefully this review will be of an acceptable standard. Read on at your own risk.
Hello again. 6th of December. Christmas is coming ever closer and I have another rum to sample. This time it's another rum I've never heard of and it comes from Mexico. Mexico make some very pleasant spirits and I've tried some very pleasing mezcals and I'm keen to explore good tequila a bit more. Good luck with this rum offering, Mexico. I hereby open the adjudication...
It's day 5 of my delightful rum advent calendar and today it's Santos Dumont XO from Brazil. I've never heard of it, like almost all of the rums in the box, so with any luck we can all enjoy a pleasant learning experience.
Day 4 of my mostly delicious so far advent calendar and I'm looking forward to it. I hope you're enjoying it as much as me. I'm quite enjoying these. It's nice to have so many different things to taste. Today's is Chamarel Single Estate VSOP rum and I've never heard of it before. I'm going to get straight on with it, so it's yo ho ho and a rum review...
Bit of an intro
This looks French. I've had a look at the website and it's got French writing on. In fact the name of the distillery is The Rhumerie de Chamarel, which is well French. This suggests it'll be a French style rum. Logic. The distillery's in Mauritius, so it's the first rum I've ever had that's not from the Americas. Mauritius is a former British colony, but the British only took it over in 1810 and before that it was a French colony. They had it from 1715 before which it was Dutch. From what I've been learning about rum it seems to have mostly developed as a part of culture in the 1700s so I think the idea of what a Mauritius rum ought to be would have developed during the French colonization and is therefore likely to be a French style. Also, British Navy rums are traditionally from Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad, so I'm not expecting a British style even though it was a British colony.
What do I mean by a French style? From what I've been reading it seems that French style rums tend to be quite light and fruity. British style tend to be heavier and darker, and Spanish styles tend to vary between light to fuller bodied and more oily. French styles rums are made by fermenting and then distilling sugar cane juice, rather than by fermenting molasses. Molasses is a byproduct from refining the sugar cane juice to produce sugar. You end up with a dark, black syrup with a bitter-sweet taste, which gives a fuller bodied rum. Have at look at yesterday's tasting notes here for an example of a rum with a lot of molasses type flavours. French I'm guessing a bit here, but I think sugar cane juice has a greater sugar to other tasty stuff ratio, than the stuff they ferment when making British styles, so I'm thinking a lighter spirit with lighter flavours. I've read French styles have aromatic fruity, floral and vegetal type flavours, which are the kind of things I mean by lighter flavours. I think it's allowed to add extra sugar or molasses or whatever after distilling with rum so it gets a little confusing at to exactly what you're drinking. French styles are more often aged in ex brandy or cognac barrels, which a French colony would obviously have easier access to than a British one. British styles would use oak barrels for aging, but not usually ones that had been formerly used for French spirits.
Interestingly enough the distillery grows its own sugar cane and so they're able to pick the strain of plant and farming technique that best suits their purposes. A little like a scotch distillery producing their own malt or even growing their own barley like Daftmmill that started out as a barley farm. I'm not sure what that really means for the rum. Possibly just that the distillery's profit margins are a little better than most. Should be decent though.
Chamarel produce several aged rums with a VS, VSOP, XO and a 2009 bottling that I assume is considered an "excellent vintage". It's not obvious which one is in my little sample since it doesn't say on the label, but each of the expressions is bottle at a different strength so I could work it out. VSOP is the only one bottled at 41% ABV, my sample is 41% ABV and therefore my sample is VSOP. I've mentioned in other rum reviews that VSOP stands for "Very Superior Old Pale" and is a bit of a silly thing to call it when it means it's been aged for four to six years. I think the word "superior" suggests it's better quality and I'm not convinced that's necessarily the case. A little research is always worth it.
A couple more interesting points: This rum is distilled partly on column stills and partly on pot stills, with 90% being from the column still and 10% from the pot still. The two rums are aged separately in the distillery's own cellars in American oak and French oak. I'm expecting some vanilla flavours from the American oak and some complex, Christmassy spice flavours from the French oak. They've given some tasting notes on the website too, which I'm resisting looking at before I make my own so that I can compare, so I'll put that in the extra comments. I'm not sure of the price point for this rum because almost nobody seems to sell it. Looks to be somewhere in the region of £40-£50, so a bit more than the last two rums and a little less than day one. If price is an indicator of quality then this should be a pretty good rum, but price isn't always an indicator of quality and of course there's no accounting for taste. This could be very good quality but too sweet for my palate, which would be the thing that makes me not like it if anything does.
Packaging
The packaging for this sample is rather nicer than the full bottle in my opinion. A fairly simple label, not too flashy, not too fancy. Have a look...
This tiny wee sample label suggests that they might be letting the quality of the spirit speak for itself, although it could just be the practicality of making a label no bigger than a brick layer's thumb nail. A bit more information would have been good, but where would they put it? I think having VSOP on it would have been helpful and I think it would have fitted quite easily, but I'm not a Mauritian rum sample label designer so what do I know?
I had a look around the internet and found pictures of a full 70cl bottle. I prefer the label on the tiny one, the big one looks a little bit like a posh perfume bottle which I think reflects the French bit of their history. I associate the French with perfume and I'm not entirely sire why. Probably because perfume words like "au de toilette" are clearly French.
Day three of my rum advent calendar and mixed results so far. I saw this one was on the list an was quite excited. It was recommended to me once so I bought a bottle to try and haven't got round to opening it yet. I'll try to keep this short and to the point, but I never manage to do that and it's more likely to be just as long and rambling as all my other reviews. We'd better crack on.
It's the second of December and that means rum sample number two from my thus far delicious advent calendar. This one' from Peru of all places. Who knew they made rum in Peru? Not me. I'll try to keep this brief. There are still 23 to go after this and I don't want to burn out. Here we go...
Hello! It's the first day of December which means the countdown to Christmas has begun. The countdown to Christmas did not begin in November no matter how much you wanted it to, sorry. I decided to buy an advent calendar this year and ended up with one made of decent rum. I just got done investigating the first one, so here are my thoughts.
