Rum Olympics - Rounds two and three

A double session on Sunday saw a marathon between La Petite Mort and Bennets Bar taking in rounds 2 & 3 of the Rum Olympics.  A group of us, fulled by an excellent brunch started with the selection at La Petite Mort.

Read about other rounds:
Round 1
Rounds 4 & 5

La Petite Mort 

Rum five

La Petite Mort selection

Aroma - Some alcohol burn, with woody notes but overall quite subtle (7)

Taste - Some light toffee notes and a bit of bite and a definitely drying (6)

Finish - Quite smooth, long and dry (5)

Quite enjoyable and complex, I think it's a Ron Abuelo (Panama) (18)

Rum six

Aroma - Really very little here, some grassy notes but mainly just alcohol (2)

Taste - Lot of burn with some citrus (2)

Finish - Harsh and quite a lot of burn (1)

Not great, I think it's a cachaca so I'll go with Abelha Cachaca (Brazil) (5)

Rum seven

Aroma - This is what despair smells like (1)

Taste - Weird, industrial, burnt rubber(1)

Finish - Long, genuinely unpleasant (1)

This has to be Stroh, which is by a distance the worst rum I've ever tasted. Stroh (Austria) (3).

Rum eight

Aroma - Quite light but sweet, plenty of butterscotch (7)

Taste - Quite sweet but not overpowering, pretty well balanced (8)

Finish - Long, sweet but with a little burnt edge to it (7)

Enjoyable and very sippable, my candidate is Plantation Barbados 5yo (Barbados) (22)

Bennets Bar

Bennets rums

 Rum nine 

Aroma - Really not much here, some alcohol notes and maybe some coconut (4)

Taste - A bit of aniseed and coconut (4)

Finish - Nothing really, it's just gone (2)

An underwhelming low ABV white rum, I say Bacardi (Puerto Rico) (10)

Rum ten

Aroma - Dark toffee notes and some alcohol warmth (8)

Taste - Sweet toffee with a hot edge to it, a kind of hot buttered toast flavour to it (8)

Finish - Long, warm and very smooth, no burn worth mentioning (7)

Really stuck for what this is so I'll say it's a Flor de Cana (Nicaragua) (23)

Rum eleven

Aroma - the burnt sugar on top of a creme brulee (8)

Taste - Punchy, aggressive in a good way and praline notes (8)

Finish - Long, very long with nutty warmth (8)

I'm fairly sure this is Pussers (Navy) (24)

Rum twelve

Aroma - A little funky and sweet, a bit confusing (4)

Taste - Toffee, sweetness, almost cloying but not quite (4)

Finish - A lingering sweetness (4)

A bit one note this, it's sweet, very sweet but that's about it. Crying out for some citrus to cut through it. I'm saying Diplomatico Blanco Reserva (Venezuela) (12)

Some very, very sippable rums in these two selections. Yes rum 7 is awful, but that serves the purpose of showing that every other rum you will ever taste is better than this.  Watch this space for rounds 4 and 5 in the weeks to come

Pusser's Navy Rum - an unapologetic bruiser

A slightly different take on this review because this particular rum is a little bit of history so some context before we get to the booze itself.

What shall we do with the drunken sailor? - serve him a Caipirinha

From 1655 until 1970 the British Royal Navy served sailors a daily ration of rum, prior to that beer was served but that often spoiled on long voyages. Once Britain had colonised the Caribbean rum was served and each sailor was given a pint a day. Funnily enough this resulted in a lot of accidents and drunkenness and Admiral Vernon issued an order stating that:

“unanimous opinion of both Captains and Surgeons that the pernicious custom of the seaman drinking their allowance of rum in drams, and often at once, is attended with many fatal effects to their morals as well as their health … besides the ill consequences of stupifying [sic] their rational qualities … You are hereby required and directed … that the respective daily allowance … be every day mixed with the proportion of a quart of water to a half pint of rum, to be mixed in a scuttled butt kept for that purpose, and to be done upon the deck, and in the presence of the Lieutenant of the Watch who is to take particular care to see that the men are not defrauded in having their full allowance of rum… and let those that are good husbanders receive extra lime juice and sugar that it be made more palatable to them.”

The drink was nicknamed grog and gave us the word "groggy" as you'd expect to feel after a pint of rum.
Over time the amount of rum served was reduced until it was finally halted on July 31st 1970, Black Tot Day when the Royal Navy finally conceded that drinking high % rum and operating warships was a pretty bad idea.
A few years later a Canadian entrepreneur persuaded the Admiralty to sell him the recipe for navy rum and this is what Pusser's is today, more than 50% of the profits go to various naval charities including the Royal Naval Sailors fund and the US Navy Memorial Foundation amongst others.
So, to the booze:

• 54.5% ABV (in UK, believe it’s around 42 - 43% in US)
• Around £30 a bottle
• A blend of rums from stills in Guyana and Trinidad
• Aged a minimum of 3 years
• No added sugars or other flavourings
• Initially on the nose you get a huge alcohol hit, as you’d expect at that ABV but as it warms in the glass spicy orange, ginger, pepper, oak and a little bit of vanilla come through
• Taste wise there’s a peppery, burnt caramel warmth with a smokiness once the alcohol hit melts away, a lot smoother going down than you’d necessarily expect it to be
• The finish is long and lingering with an overall smokey note being the last to go

This “behaves” a lot more like a good whisky than most rums, and that comes down to the stills. The wooden pot stills in Guyana that are used are the only commercial ones still in use and are over 250 years old. This makes things a lot heavier and more full-bodied than most other distilleries can manage, rum from these stills also goes into the El Dorado, XM and OVD ranges.

As with cask strength whiskies you can sip this neat and it’s good, but a drop of water really does open it up and mellow off some of the rougher edges. A bottle of this will last you a long time, a glass or two of an evening will take the edge off nicely or after a good meal but it’s definitely not a session rum.

That being said some things should be savoured, enjoyed over time and this is certainly one of them.