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...
Plain
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.
Smell in the bottle
On opening
Fruity.
Pear.
Superglue.
I poured one small glass and it was gone, so no sniffing it later to see what some oxygenation did.
Appearance
Golden. Not unlike golden syrup. Not yellow or brown but proper gold. Feast your hungry little eyeballs:
Golden.
I'm no expert, but I assume they produce rum this colour to attract more pirates. Most pirates are in the Caribbean of course, and rarely sale all the way to the Indian Ocean to visit Mauritius. The rum therefore needs to be very appealing to them in order to draw in more piratical customers. Making the rum the same colour as treasure may be a ploy to catch their attention on their never ending quest for riches. Just in case it wasn't obvious this paragraph is complete twaddle.
Neat
Nose
Light.
Pears, like tinned pears in syrup.
Just a touch of brown sugar.
Heavy floral note.
Apple.
Pear drops.
Arrival
Clementine orange.
Pear drops.
Development
Alcohol sting.
Bit fruity.
Finish
Dry.
Bit of dark chocolate.
Water - Just a few drops
Nose
Champeign. Very unexpected.
Dry white wine.
Light.
Floraly.
Fragrant pear.
Sheddies. Wheat cereal.
Arrival
Not a lot at first.
Very light.
Development
Not much there. Very light.
Touch vegetal.
Bit of warming spice, not quite black pepper, but not very far off it.
Subtle.
Pear drops again.
I think a little vanilla.
Bit of creaminess.
Finish
Slightly bitter vegetal note.
Black current after a while.
Faintest hint of European oak type spice.
A few extra notes
This little observation is very subjective so take it with a pinch of salt, a dash of pepper and a nice dollop of whipped cream. If you're in Norway you can sprinkle some piffi on it. I'm finding the form of rums to be different to the form of whiskies. With whiskies I usually find there's an arrival when I first sip the whisky and a bunch of flavours are there immediately or within a second or two. Once he whisky has coated my mouth the different taste receptors and other sensitive nerve thingies in my mouth start responding to it in various ways and the vapours begin to float up the back of my throat into my nasal passages and wafting gently over my olfactory bulb and the experience begins to develop. Then We're into he development. Sometimes flavours were there just for the first couple of seconds and then disappear, or they'll linger and change, like a chocolate sensation becoming more distinctly milk or dark chocolate or whatever. Soon the flavour sensations begin to diminish and we're into the finish. As things begin to fade out. Sometimes the flavours disappear quickly, sometimes they hang around for half an hour and it all gives clues about the quality and character of the whisky. What I'm finding with rums is that the arrival doesn't really reveal lot compared to a single malt. It hasn't seemed so distinct to me so far as it usually is with whiskies. The line between arrival and development isn't obvious and i'm not sure if I want to say the arrival is very short and the development is most of the experience, or if the arrival and development just blend into each other. Of course where arrival becomes development and development becomes finish are entirely subjective and there's no correct answers on this, but I find it much easier to place them with whiskies when I'm trying to describe the tasting experience.
The distillery's website gives some tasting notes. They say "Starts with a complex harmony of spices and ried fruits, then notes of vanilla, smooth oak, orange, pepper and clove." I can't say I got a lot of spice from it. There were very subtle hints of an oaky spiciness, but I wouldn't say it started with it. I didn't get much by way of dried fruits either more like a general fruitiness. I got a faint hint of vanilla, although to me sometimes I experience vanilla as a general sweetness before I notice it as vanilla and I did get a general sweetness. Smooth oak is possibibly stretching it, but I did get oak. I did get orange, and a kind of pepperiness. Clove would be included in the European oak spiciness to me. I'm not sure if they're better at tasting rum or just putting a bit of a polish on their tasting notes for marketing puposes. I suspect the latter.
Conclusion
Interesting. I was right that this would be a lighter, fruitier, more floral type whisky than the heavy British navy style Pusser's Gunpowder Proof. To be honest I wasn't blown away by this rum. It was nice and I wouldn't be upset to be given it for free, but I wouldn't buy it with my own money. If I was buying a bottle of rum I'd choose a different one, and if I was trying to buy a glass of rum in a bar and it was the only rum then I'd go for a beer or a whisky. Having said that the quality oft his rum is clearly pretty reasonable. It's smooth and mellow and kind of interesting. It's also not too sweet which I'm sure I've mentioned will be the thing that puts me off a rum is anything does. Very drinkable, but just not such a lot of flavour an not as much complexity and length of experience as the Pusser's. On the standard one to ten scale I'm glad I tried it, but probably won't bother again. I feel like I'm being mean to them now. I'mm mention that the drastic change when adding a few drops of water was quite fascinating. The distinctly champagne note developing to more of a dry white wine was very unexpected. Also interesting to experience such a different rum from the previous three.
I know I posted this a day late. I was nearly done when I fell asleep. Hopefully the next will be done on time. I don't know what it is yet because if you look in the advent calendar door before the day you opening then Santa Will reject the mince pie you leave for him and kick your biggest present. It could be alright if it's something sturdy like a bock of wood or a roast hog, but if it's a bottle of something pleasant his big clomping hobnail boots could cause significant and potentially expensive damage, and that's not a risk I'm willing to take. Bye.
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