It’s not often that a rum aged just a few years that remains in development is as good or better than its own unaged white predecessor, but somehow, Retribution from the UK has done a fair dinkum job of it. Their white rum was unpretentious, eager to please and a decent drink that did not try to rearrange your innards (as so many feral whites try to do), and I quite liked it.  Its slightly aged cousin is just a smidgen better, and it still isn’t finished or in open release yet. Retribution is a small distillery in Frome (a town in Somerset county, in the south west of the  UK) that w ..read more

Outlier Distiller’s overproofed “Hurricane” is a jolt of adrenaline to the heart, an amazing rum of remarkable qualities which took me so by surprise that I kept it on the go for the best part of a day in a glass I refused to put away (or rinse out, much to the horror of Mrs. Caner). The previous rums in the company’s oeuvre – Hoolie and Punk Croc – were pretty good for their place and time and the producers’ experience, but the Hurricane took it to another level entirely. Most who tasted it at the 2023 TWE Rumshow that day could be seen walking off with a slightly addled expression on their ..read more

Unlike the completely unaged white “Hoolie” we looked at before, Outlier Distilling Co.’s Punk Croc is in fact aged, just a bit, in spite of its appearance that would suggest none at all.  Perhaps Rick and Ian, the insouciant distillers from that milkshed-based distillery on the Isle of Man, felt that the screaming vibes of the colourful label and the crazy title didn’t need any competition from some dark colouring. It is, on the other hand, just a bit stronger at 43%, but in most respects the hilariously named (and drawn) Punk Croc – these guys have a great sense of humour – is very muc ..read more

You can bet your bottom dollar that every review or writeup about the cannily named Outlier Distilling Company will find some way to mention that it’s not in the Caribbean (see?) but somewhere strange off the beaten track – the Isle of Man in this case – and has a name that is completely appropriate to what it is. And without doubt, most will also note that the founders, Rick Dacey and Ian Warborn-Jones, set up shop in a small milking shed in a farm there, because, y’know, stuff like this just writes itself and it would be criminal to leave it out. Outlier is another recently-established (and ..read more

Few even within the rum world and almost nobody outside it, will remember the small UK indie bottler El Destilado about which I and a couple of others wrote in our reviews of the fascinating, off-the-reservation Aguardiente de Panela, a rum from a tiny back-country distillery in Mexico. The three British guys who run El Destilado are unabashed agave lovers and dabble with rums only as a kind of sideshow; yet so enormous was the impact that that single limited edition artisanal rum made, that not only did I immediately try to buy all available rums which the little indie had released, but adde ..read more

If I enjoyed the naming J. Gow’s growling salvo across the rum world’s bows, the “Revenge,” then as a lover of language and an avid amateur photographer, I must confess to liking and appreciating the quiet romanticism the “Fading Light” title even more.1 And since that wasn’t enough for VS Distillers (the company behind the brand), it was also a more distinctive, even better rum than the “Revenge”…which as you may recall from last week’s review, was no slouch itself. I won’t rehash the background of this new Scottish distillery ensconced on a tiny island in the Orkneys, so far up north that i ..read more

More and more we are ceasing to regard rum as being the province of just the great geographical areas which have long stratified the spirit into styles which promoted – and are limited by – the regional perceptions of old colonial empires. British (Jamaican, Barbadian, Guyanese), Spanish/Latin and French are the best known of course, and Matt Petrek has long argued (correctly, in my view) that they are best seen as production classifiers than true regional markers — but ultimately the one thing that that particular series of classification did was that it centred our minds in the western hemi ..read more

As soon as the review for the Sugar House unaged white went up, a flurry of comments resulted: “It’s not too shabby” admitted one FB denizen, “But I prefer the OP.” This was immediately seconded by another who said “Love the OP” and followed it up with a flaming icon; and right on the heels of those two remarks, another chipped in over at the NZ Rum Club, and said that yep, the OP was the sh*t there too. I completely get that, because I have a thing for really strong rums. It’s a mixed bag, as any reader of this list can attest, but when not created with indifference to merely round out a por ..read more

Sugar House, along with Ninefold, J. Gow, Islay Rum Co and other distilleries now opening in the UK, may represent the Brit’s answer to the diminution of the merchant bottling trade, or perhaps the growing expense of getting the best casks out of the brokerages by an ever-increasing number of independents. It speaks to the desire of a new crop of aggressive young Turks to not be beholden to third parties for barrels of rum or blending skills, but to let loose and harness their own creative impulses to the max, and go out there and break some sh*t, to see what comes out the other end, frothing ..read more

Rumaniacs Review #140 | 0952 Captain Morgan, of course, requires no introduction, yet its history presented us with some interestingly convoluted pathways (R-139); it showed that although in its modern 2020s iteration it’s a throwaway piece of cheap spiced dreck, made with indifference and sold wholesale with what I can only conclude is contempt for its core audience, the fact is that once, not too far back, it had aspirations to being something quite a bit more interesting.  More genuine. Almost a real rum. We can date this one more accurately because the 70º on the label had been repla ..read more