Rum Reviews

The Mount Gay Estate is one of the oldest estates in the Caribbean, and definitely the oldest on Barbados. Many believe rum has been produced on the estate as early as 1663, which is the year William Sandiford bought the estate.

The estate included a still that was capable of producing rum, but the only legal and the oldest written evidence of rum production in the estate is from 1703, making Mount Gay the oldest rum producer in the world.

The estate lies in the northernmost parish of Barbados, St. Lucy and was originally called Mount Gilboa but renamed to Mount Gay in 1801 to honour Sir John Gay Alleyne, who had been appointed manager of the distillery in 1747 when the owner John Sober purchased the 280 acre plantation from William Sandiford.

Since the early 1900s, the Mount Gay estate has belonged to the Ward family who introduced new methods in increasing rum production while maintaining the old traditions of rum making.

Today the Ward family are still involved with Mount Gay Distillers, and you can find the signature of Aubrey Ward adorning every bottle of the old style of Mount Gay Rum. Why it was not included in the new design of Mount Gay is a mystery yet to be revealed.

Maui Reserve Gold Rum is the last of the four Maui rums and it has been aged for over a year in American Oak Casks (Jim Beam) as it says on the black label in gold lettering.

There is also a smaller label near the bottom of the bottle that has hand written cask and bottle numbers and the signature of the Master Distiller and this is something I always appreciate to see in any spirits bottles.

Furthermore, I have been fortunate enough to have a bottle of rum drawn from Cask Number One, which makes it quite a collectors item indeed.

I first tried Maui Dark rum at the UK RumFest 2008 at a tasting seminar by Paul Artrip and as I recall it had a plethora of rich aromas and flavours that I immediately wanted to experience again.

I even managed to grab a bottle of the stuff for later tasting, cheers Paul!

This particular bottle spent a lot of time on the shelf before I decided to crack it open for this review.

Needless to say I was eager to re-experience my initial impressions of the rum but often the second experience will not be quite the same, especially after such a long time having not tasted it.

All Maui Rums, as explained in the previous Maui rum review, begin with the same fermented molasses base distilled into high proof spirit, used in all Haleakala Distillers rum products and aged in Jim Beam barrels for less than a year with the exception of the Maui Gold Reserve rum.

Exactly how long each individual rum spends in the barrel is not revealed, nor are any other techniques that might have been used to create a slightly different kind of rum.

Caramel colouring is used only to keep the colour consistent from batch to batch.

Maui Gold Rum, like Maui Platinum Rum, comes in a simple bottle with a colourful lei around its neck, the only exception between the two being a shiny gold coloured labelling.

Maui, the second largest island in Hawaii measuring 1883.5 square kilometres, has a variety of landscapes ranging from the arid volcanic terrain to lush jungles and has equally diverse climatic conditions.

Maui also happens to be the largest sugarcane producer in Hawaii, and of course we all know what that means – RUM!

Maui Rum is handcrafted by the master distiller Jim Sargent or Braddah Kimo at Haleakala Distillers from locally grown long maturity sugarcane that takes up to two years to grow to a height of sometimes over 3.6 meters.

The family owned distillery, where Maui Rum is produced is located on the Haleakala Ranch, which is a 30,000 acre cattle ranch established in 1888. The distillery itself opened in 2003 producing rums from Maui molasses and is a joint venture with the ranch.

Diplomático Rum Blanco is the latest addition to the Diplomático rum range, first introduced at the UK RumFest in 2008. It is a white rum, distilled 4 times in copper pot stills and aged for 6 years in white oak barrels before going through a five time carbon filtration to remove any trace of colour from the spirit.

Diplomático Rum Blanco comes in a simple yet refined, tall, thick bottomed bottle with pumpkin coloured labelling and text that advertise the rum as ”Ultra Premium Imported Rum" and "Ultra smooth and Slow Aged Rare Rums of the Caribbean."

The synthetic cork is protected by a copper coloured metal seal and in the centre of the bottle can be found a familiar stamp, seen on all Diplomático bottles, depicting Juancho Nieto Melendez.

The third and the oldest of the three rums, Ron Los Valientes 20 Años Añejo Reserva Especial carries the signature of the Cellar Master to indicate his devotion and pride of the product he has nurtured for so long in the cellars of Veracruz.