I've grown tired of whiskey, so I'm switching to Rum. These are my first bottles based on a quick search here and limited availability at the liquor store.

Greetings, Rum Freaks!

Today we’re cracking into a collaboration I’ve been fantasizing about for a long time. Hampden Estate x Laphroaig. Yes, you read that correctly. Hampden’s C<>H marque, aged entirely in a Laphroaig cask. High ester funk meets Islay peat. Two distilleries with absolutely zero interest in being subtle, getting together to make what I can only assume is a war crime against the olfactory senses. Here are a bunch of specs because I know you Hampden Estate people need them!

• Mark / Marque: C<>H
• Ester Level: 1300-1400g/hlap
• Distillation Year: 2023
• Bottling Year: 2024
• Age: 1 Year (Fully matured at Hampden)
• Cask Type: Single Ex-Laphroaig Whisky Cask
• ABV / Strength: 64.1% ABV
• Outturn: Ultra-limited 285 bottles worldwide
• Production Style: 100% Heavy Pot Still, Molasses, wild fermentation with dunder!

Nose: Butterscotch, surprisingly friendly esters (nose hairs still intact), bread pudding, and custard.

Top: Jk, those esters are spicy as fuck shawty. Butterscotch concentrate and tongue numbing heat.

Mid: Like the 2010 BP oil spill, this one’s all seawater and oil baby! Sorry… 😬 Anyways, iodine, brine, and thick, heavy tannins are setting up camp for the long haul.

Finish: The Islay peat is subtle but present. Little smokiness on the inhale, but a healthy dose of Laphroaig on the exhale. Intermittent bursts of that Islay mesquite-iness make an appearance, but ultimately, the esters are the most formidable opponent in here.

Conclusion: A true rum lover’s (or alcoholic’s) rum! Massive personality: boozy, funky, and occasionally peaty. The Islay influence is subtle, but the tango between these two worlds is absolutely bumbaclot sublime!!

Score: 91.5/100

I got promoted at work and that’s the perfect excuse to buy more rum. Alambique Serrano is now my favorite producer of rums. Everything I’ve had so far has been worth the price.

Got a few new bottles in today (Holmes Cay 2015 Fiji, Scarlet Ibis, WP Overproof) and realized that now after collecting since May of this year I now have 25 unique bottles and though it was a cool milestone I could share!

Here's to many more buys!

already have appleton estate at home. just picked up planteray 3 star.

I kinda like those bottles, but sometimes I see people criticizing them very harshly and I honestly wonder why

Hello again friends,

Welcome back to another Alambique Serrano review, today we have another bottle I thought I missed out on, Single Cask #31: S¡! Mon. Fermented in stainless steel tanks before William & Axel Krassel distilled this rum by their 8-plate column still in October 2021, it was then aged for 27 months in a wet bourbon barrel in a humind climate. It was then bottled at 58.8% ABV for 245 bottles that made their way to the Los Angeles based bar Si¡ Mon.

Nose: An acetone ladened orange is the first thing to hit your nose with the orange being replaced with olives over time.

Taste: Orange, leather, a ton of an astringent oak, a minor amount of baking spices, and licorice.

Finish: More licorice, a bit of wheat, astringent oak, cane sugar with a light diesel, some orange and olive. Very light in flavor but the heat grows and hits mostly your lips. It has a very oily mouth feel.

Overall: 5/10, the astringent oak was a major detractor.

Disclaimer: I did receive some help from folks in the industry to acquire this bottle but paid the full retail cost for it.

TDL 12 year 2009 Swell de Spirits Wonders of the World (64.5%)
N: minty amaro sweetness with saffron and orange, apricot, mint chocolate, tea, a wisp of smoke (dirty, like a fire built from cow patties)
P: apricot jam with hints of mint and clove, toasted marshmallow
86

TDL 16 year 2010 RumClub Edition No. 65 (68%)
N: darker and woodier, with more spice and less stick floral character, but still plenty of stone fruit and tea and herb
P: well-integrated woody tannins and woody spice, a bit of varnish, jammy stone fruit, and a lingering spicy and herbal sweetness on the finish. Pretty hot, neat, and takes a fair bit of water to calm the alcohol
84

TDL 18 year 2003 Kill Devil (63.7%)
N: as if the woody spice were stripped back from the RumClub bottle and the fruity, herbal tea dialed up to replace it. Peach, apricot, orange, tarragons, oregano, sandalwood
P: follows pretty closely: juicy peach, fresh brewed tea leaves, tarragon. Relatively soft and approachable for the proof. The tannins are more like tea than wood here. Funkier and drier than the RumClub, even while being less aggressive. With water: mentholated
88

TDL 19 year 2005 Adelphi (58%)
N: back to sweet spice, even more of it here. Mint, cinnamon, maple, pencil wood, apricot
P: sweet maple, wood shavings, cinnamon and a bit of darker spice, less fruit than the others but there’s still apricot
87

Got these recently and excited to play around with them a little bit. Each of them are delicious in very different ways, and boy is that Hamilton hottttttt.

Available at Terry’s in the West Village NYC if anyone is interested. Not sure if they ship.

There have been several times I find a site that just drops some bit of info and then just doesn't talk about rum again for months. Other drop labels upcoming but nothing the next month. Is there a one website I can just keep watch of? Or do I need to just sift through everything to find rum related news?

Hello everyone, I'm the guy that posted earlier about all the Foursquare Rum I found at a local bottle shop. One of you requested that I do a review of the Foursquare 2011 and the Equidem, and I'm happy to oblige! Let me just tell you, upon cracking these bad boys open, I could tell just from the smell that they were going to be 1) potent and 2) flavorful. I was thinking: "what should I make with these to highlight the quality of the rum underneath". I have been enjoying banana old fashioned's lately, and it occurred to me that this might be the perfect drink to highlight the good good rum underneath while cutting down some of the alcohol burn and letting everything sweeten up a bit. So I grabbed my bottle of Tempus Fugit Creme de Banane (highly recommend by the way), and my bottle of black walnut bitters and here we go. I'll stick to what appears to be the common review format here.

Foursquare 2011 Banana Old Fashioned

Nose: Classic banana bread with delicious walnuts, sweet, reminds me of home growing up when my mom would bake banana bread, mmm, somehow some sort of dust(?), age, depth

Palate: Oh yeah, there's that banana bread, nice and sweet, really smooth, no alcohol bite, again lots of depth, rummy and old. Really tasty. I like this one and will definitely come back.

Finish: Sweet, kinda fades quickly, syrupy in a good way

Rating: 6/7

Impressions: This is definitely a quality rum - you can tell for sure. But I just don't know that the price is worth it. I could tell that the underlying rum is a lot more quality than others I've used in the past for this, but I don't know that the difference (in this drink in particular) justifies the extra price. Definitely going to enjoy this bottle, just don't know if I'll splurge so much again.

Foursquare Equidem Banana Old Fashioned

Nose: Now, there's a lot more going on here. It's definitely sweeter than the last one. Definite banana bread, and ... something else ... raisins? Not that dust smell again, but the age and depth from last time

Palate: Sweet sweet. Maybe too sweet. Again with the banana, but it's kinda muddled by that raisin-y vibe. Age, and something reminiscent of the last one, but hard to tell.

Finish: Just cloyingly sweet - kinda makes my teeth hurt. I had to wash it out after with water. Not great.

Rating: 4/7?

Impressions: I just didn't prefer this one as much. It was pretty heavy with the sweetness and that delicious banana bread was muddled by some raisiny thing that didn't work well with it. Honestly, I'm open to suggestions on this one - what do you all mix it with? I don't want to feel like I have to chase it down with something and its too strong to just drink on its own (60%, whew). I'm wondering what you all do.

Overall Impressions and Thoughts for the Future: I liked these, but at the price I might not buy again. I love the overall vibe - I felt fancy drinking them. And I like the image of stuffy guys in suits drinking hundred dollar drams. And if you've made it this far, congrats, you've discovered that I'm just trolling (hope you had a laugh and not a heart attack). No I didn't dilute these beautiful rums with Creme de Banane, as good as it is (it really is, that wasn't trolling). I'm savoring the drams tonight as we speak (neat), and I'll have the actual reviews to post soon. Thanks for reading.

Nose
As ridiculous as it sounds, a fresh opened bag of sour cream and onion chips. There’s a hit of sour lactic notes followed some plastic.

Palate
None of the funkiness from the nose. The palate turns into classic Jamaica rum with Fresh pineapple up front, settles into more pleasant citrusy fruit salad.

Finish
Pleasant tropical fruit. Some assortment of pineapple, mango, papaya, with a hint of fresh citrus. Esters sorta tingle through the finish.

Overall Impressions
This was overall a very solid pour. Obviously, the nose set me off down a weird path but things came around on the palate and finish. This pour delivers some great tropical fruit notes that you would think of when having a Jamaican rum without any of the sting. However, I was expecting more of a physical punch from the ABV that accompanies this pour - though I may be alone in looking for this reaction

Score: 6/10 - Very good, a cut above

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I started a blog: https://stubbydrams.wordpress.com

I'm a boutique distributor in SoCal and will be in Anaheim this Friday. Hoping to stop by a few stores/bars to see if they're interested in bringing in some additive free rums. Not too familiar with the city so if you have a favorite spot that leans toward more quality bottles (in any category) let me know and I'll try to swing through.

FYI Strong Water is already on the list 👍

Salut la commu 😊

Il y a un destockage de rhum mais pas que chez cavavin Belval ( pas de site rdv sur place ou sur Facebook) .

Promotions de 20 25% 🤩 faites le.plein de rhum ou craquez pour les pépites de chez Nobilis rumartesanal Samaroli Nectar etc etc

I may have mentioned this before, but I organize tastings with friends. It originally started in 2021 as invite-only tastings for chosen people, but along the line we just opened up to everyone else, and these 'chosen' people eventually brought in their friends, and friends of friends, and people contacted us through Instagram, and TikTok, and Facebook, and so on. At the moment, there are around 70+ people who come to the tastings and most of them are already friends, as we more or less get together to get drunk once or twice per month.

This tasting was our 100th so we decided to do it somewhere else, which was a cigar bar, and just negotiated with them and their inventory about which bottles to include. It was mostly their slow sellers.

• Plantation Fiji Islands 9 Year Old Single Cask: This bar had a hard-on for Plantation Fiji rums; they have around five different ones, and it came to a point where they didn't even know which ones they had. This is the one with the finish in Linie aquavit casks. I reviewed it here.
• Grander Barrel Series Rye Finished Rum: One part (65%) is 12-year-old rum, and another part (35%) is 15-year-old rum, both from Panama; both are aged in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. They are then placed in ex-rye whiskey casks from Heaven Hill distillery. The finishing lasts for 8 months and it's finally bottled at 50% ABV. I reviewed it here.
• Brugal 1888: Probably the least sweetened Dominican rum not from an IB. It has 8 years in ex-bourbon + 6 years in ex-sherry and doesn't taste close to a 14 year old rum, but it's pretty decent for around $30. It's often found at much higher prices, though. I reviewed it here.

So yeah, this wasn't a tasting that followed a distinct line of overproof, or different countries, or different notes. It was just what the bar had that didn't rotate much. So we just got together and proceeded.

Renaissance connected me with this chocolate shop in Taipei that has a huge selection, about ~$20 a pour. pairs phenomenally wjth the chocolate which is great - they had a mean Cold Chocolate.

Rated in this order:

1. ⁠Limousin 18067
   
2. White Alligator 18259
   
3. ⁠Deuxieme Cru Classe 18330 (similar to RG Clouded Leopard i believe)
   
4. ⁠PX Cask Finish 18033
   
5. ⁠Grand Assemblage #1
   
6. ⁠Single Cask 18085

all very good. would love to see more of this in the states.

I live in Norwalk California, any good liquor stores near me that have a good rum selection?

My wife gets Spindrift seltzer by the large case from Costco so it’s readily available. What’s a good rum that would mix well with it. Flavors are lemon, lime and blood orange if that helps

Wednesday 10/21 6-8pm at Le Dû Wines.
Looks like ticket link yet to go live but figured people would want to know.

For rum heads outside of NYC, Le Dû ships to 42 states!