First I’d like to point out that the creator of The Lash has been especially vocal in regards to the product. It’s been a pleasure reading his words over at the Ministry of Rum forum and the comments left on the Drinkhacker post.

Moving on…

The Lash is made in the Netherlands with the rum coming from Trinidad & Tobago. It’s a 4-year aged rum with no additives or added caramel color. It’s named after that wonderful Churchill quotation:

Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.

The name amuses me… though others, with more uptight sensibilities, might not appreciate it. Fuck ‘em. And, while the lash is only 35% abv, it shouldn’t be dismissed.

It has a pretty good bottle, The Lash. The weight is nice. It feels solid in the hand. The label is easy on the eyes. A simple design that’s straightforward and clean, while looking slightly aged and ragged. The cork is synthetic, which doesn’t turn me off, but may well dissuade those same folks who don’t like the name. My only real complaint about the bottle is that it’s prone to too much spillage during pouring.

Inside the bottle the rum is a dark, reddish, caramel color with small bits of sediment floating around (or settled on the bottom, depending on how carefully you jostle it). The creator addressed the sediment in the discussion of the Lash over at the Ministry of Rum:

You will see two types of sediments on the bottom of the bottle. (a) real spices and (b) some fatty acids (flocculation) from the aging of the Rum as we do not chill filter the product.

Most of the sediment I’ve noticed is smallish flakes… for some reason, when I think “sediment” I always think along the lines of fine silt. Anyway… I’m almost at the end of my bottle and haven’t noticed any reach my glass yet. Not that I’m worried about it… just an observation. I’ve tried to include a photo of the sediment in my bottle as proof of it. You probably need to view the larger version to appreciate it. There are some specks that are probably tiny bubbles from excessive jostling (ok I shook it up, kill me), but you should get the picture. Sediment = present.

Opening the bottle I was struck with a feeling of Holiday Season nostalgia. My first thoughts are of mulled cider. Lots of spice and no punch in the face from the alcohol. It’s got a lot of cinnamon in the nose  although this, like the flavor, changes as my tasting continues.

In the glass the rum is a bit more golden in color and slowly forms drops on the sides of the glass that fall into some nice legs. I’m not enough of a rum snob to know if the legs affect the flavor in one way or another, but it’s interesting to look at.

The flavor reinforces my association with mulled cider. It reminds me of ciders that I make with rum in the winter. Cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, maybe some cloves. And, to me anyway, it actually tastes faintly of apple along with a citrusy-orange hint. It’s not overly sweet, but at the same time there’s no real burn to it, though there’s definitely a bite. As my drinking progressed over the days the flavors I picked up would shift. One day it would seem like much more cinnamon, the next more cloves. The other day it actually reminded me of cherries.

I’ve tried drinking this a number of different ways other than neat. With chilled water I noticed a subtle vanilla flavor which is otherwise almost non-present in this rum. With ice I lost the flavor. I drank The Lash with cola, and it took a great deal of cola to overpower the spice. I took the bottle down to my local bar where the bartender made up some drinks. The Lash made a tasty Ron Collins, Cable Car (no Gin vs. Rum debate, please), Suffering Bastard, and a very girly drink I can’t remember the name of.

The bartender said:

Wow, this is the first spiced rum I didn’t want a back for… comparing this to the Captain is like comparing Pellegrino to toilet water.

Overall it went over well.

With the exception of the spillage issue, the only gripes I have are that occasionally the rum flavor got lost in the spice and sometimes the cinnamon-y aspect was a bit overwhelming. Sometimes it felt like I stepped away from vanilla-flavored spiced rums only to walk towards a cinnamon flavored spiced rum. but the intention was to make a SPICED rum and that’s exactly what this is. A rum that actually tastes like spices.

So, well done.

The Rating – based on the New Rating System

Package: 9
Appearance: 9
Nose: 9
Taste: 9

Overall: 4.6 out of 5

A welcome excursion from the Meyers’seses or Black Straps, Gosling’s Black Seal is a dark rum treat to the senses that is reasonably priced, pretty widely available, and, most importantly, consistently delicious. And, while the label may seem a bit lighthearted with it’s black seal balancing a rum keg, the bottle can be an asskicker if you mistreat it. There have been evenings where hours of tender love and affection suddenly changed into the Seal turning on me, leaving me sobbing on cold tiles, wondering where I’d gone wrong.

But don’t let that fool you into thinking I don’t like this rum…The Seal is imposing. It’s dark. On a shelf it may as well be black. But held up in the light it takes on a ruddy color similar to blood. Not the fake, ketchup red blood you imagine. But the real, thick, oozing brownish-red blood that comes out of your body after a bar fight. It’s a visual primer. It’s an immediate signal that this is going to be a beast.

The nose leans towards acrid rather than sweet. The overwhelming molasses scent you get with something like Black Strap is missing. Instead you’re presented with what is best described as burnt sugar. When caramelization has just started to become carbonation. Wrapped up in that is clean, but savory fruitiness that makes it easily bearable and an unplaceable herbal aroma – like poached pears for desert.

On sipping, the taste is a definite dark, caramelized sugar flavor. Bitter as it moves across the tongue, but leaving a slight citrus trail with it. Oranges? Cinnamon and cloves… there’s an unexpected spiciness and a numbing of the tongue. Larger draughts reduce the bitterness to the back of the throat, but wash the mouth with crisp, cool, rum. The flavor is almost what I would expect rum to be if I had never known rum. If I had been spared the assault of crap booze and never known the joy of a deliciously aged rum… this might be what I expect rum to be.

Tonight, I’m stopping early. Respect the Seal.

Rating: I give it 9 cannonballs out of 10. Because it makes me happy. And because it scares me.

So here is Oronoco.

Oronoco is a white rum from Brazil, produced by the respected cachaca makers Vicente and Roberto Bastos Ribeiro. It’s made from fresh, mountain cane, blended with aged rums, and finished in brazilian wood casks. The result is a premium white rum. Yeah, I said it. Premium white rum.

On The Outside

In the bottle the rum is almost lost beside (behind?) the faux-handwritten label and the stamped leather map of Brazil wrapping around the bottle’s middle like the well-tooled bodice of a bondage-pirate’s fantasy. But, if you do glimpse the rum, it’s definitely a white rum.

In the glass the rum is pale yellow, almost green… like a golden delicious apple or water mixed with honey. The legs are strong and thick on the wall of the glass. I was going to make a comparison involving samba dancers, but I’ll refrain.

When initially poured the nose is smooth without too much of an attack on the senses. The aroma is like vanilla and sweated fennel with an undercurrent of caramel. Sweet with slightly musk and vegetable touches. As it warms up and breaths the vanilla is much more pronounced with a slightly more woody scent. The nose actually reminds me slightly of rum pralines without being too heavy on the caramel aspect.

On The Inside

The taste is sweet though never approaches the point of being cloyingly so. Initially it seems to that the fennel or anise scent carries fairly strongly across into the flavor, slightly reminiscent of a licorice flavored aperitif. But, as I sip more and more, the vanilla tones begin to take over. There is perhaps a trace of the barrel, though that may play a larger part in the smokey aspect of the vanilla and caramel flavors.

In regards to the burn… You know the burn. You expect the burn. But Oronoco lets you down gently. One can easily hold a mouthful of Oronoco with only a slight tingle towards the back of the tongue and there’s no real burn to speak of until it reaches the back of the throat and is already well on its way down. The only word needed to describe it is “smooth”.

With an ice cube, the burn is all but eliminated. Sadly, however, so is the nose. The ice seems to take away much of the pleasant aromas and vanilla creaminess that was present. The flavor also becomes more subdued with the exception of the sweetness which really starts to pop. A small amount of lime remedies the sudden burst of sweetness and turns this into my new favorite white rum sipper for summer weather. Fantastic!

The Afterglow

Having already made my apologies to white rum allow me to pour myself another glass. This was an enjoyable experience from start to finish. I recommend this to anyone who dislikes white rums. It’s a head turner and an opinion changer. A delicious way to prove oneself wrong.

Oronoco is my favorite thing to come out of Brazil since…

The Rating

4 salty pirates out of 5.

Happy drinking.

But my neighbor is practicing Chopin, so I’m in a good mood and I’m gonna give it another go.

Rogue Spirits is the distilling offspring of Rogue Ales. They produce two gins, a whiskey, and three rums. I’ve heard good things about their dark rum, but not much about the white. The bottle is clear and square; similar to a bottle of 10 Cane, except the sides are even, not wide and thin like the 10 Cane; and decorated with the likeness of Jean Lafitte, which gave it an extra positive mark in my book because it meets fills my need for pirates and my need for things related to New Orleans. The color of the rum inside is… well… pretty damn clear. I read a review that called it “straw” colored, but to say that is to admit you’ve never seen straw.

So, having said that. This clear liquor presents a redeeming quality once the bottle is cracked. It actually has a nose that isn’t like sniffing rubbing alcohol. Actually it reminds me a little of tequila. I actually asked my wife (the tequila drinker) to give it a smell and she agreed. There’s a faint sweetness and a quality I can’t think of a way to describe outside of herbal. Not like… Chartreuse. It’s a very fleshed out, but cool, plant aroma. Like I said, it reminds me of tequila. No hints of oak or molasses. Perhaps it’s the smell of sugar cane…

The taste is, honestly, not too bad considering it’s a white rum. The alcohol is obviously there, but it’s not overwhelming. There’s no terrible burn when it’s going down and the flavor is mellow. Still like a tequila with some phantom sweetness, but an interesting change to the usual hum-drum white rum.

Looking this over I’m feeling bad about how short it is, but it’s a white rum. What am I supposed to say?

Overall, for a white rum.. I give this rum seven peg-legs out of ten. So, yeah, it’s ok. Not a daily drinker, but it’s a white rum.

I’ll definitely take this over a Bacardi any day, and I’ve got half the bottle steeping into grog… so we’ll see how that goes.

Now, Seattle being part of the great state of Washington, has government run liquor stores. And the selection is… mediocre, at best. One of the few things I miss about living in California is the rum selection. But I stray from the topic…

I picked up three bottles, one of which is the Rhum Barbancourt 8 year Réserve Spéciale. I wasn’t certain if this had ever been reviewed by myself or any of the old crew… but it’s a fresh start, aye? So here it is.

Barbancourt is a product of Haiti, and I’m not entirely certain that makes any difference whatsoever with the exception of the fact that most of the label is printed in both English and French (good to know, really, because wenches love a man who speaks a little frog). Barbancourt’s label proudly touts their founding in 1862, while their website calls their product “The Rum of Connoisseurs, the Cognac of Rums…”

Yeah, ok. Sure. This rum is a bit like drinking a glass of Hennessy I suppose… and I’m not entirely certain what my original reason for the comparison was. Perhaps it’s because Hennessy isn’t a great Cognac, although it’s the only one that many bars would carry? But that can’t be right… because that would imply that it’s sort of the well-Cognac. And the Barbacnourt 8 isn’t so much a well-rum as it is just… underwhelming.

I wanted to love it, I did. And, to be perfectly frank, I thought I had in the past. But now my feelings are sort of… meh.

If you pass your nose over the mouth of the bottle there’s a lovely maple scent, but as soon as it’s in the glass I find it’s lost in the alcohol, with only the occasional hint of sweetness, and the aroma turns surprisingly metallic. Although I must admit I’m drinking from a metal 1/2 gill cup so allow me to pour myself another small drink into a glass… ok, slightly less metallic, but still, more alcohol than rum I’m afraid.

The mouth feel is borderline unpleasant with no savory notes and a fair amount of burn at the back of the tongue.

Perhaps its lack of flavor is related to the fact that it’s stilled from 100% pure cane sugar. I’m not certain. All I know is I’m disappointed.

Will I finish it? Of course. Would I buy it as a gift for a friend? No, probably not.

It’s a five star rum supposedly, but I’m giving it two stars. Take that opinion as you like.