Two years ago when Campari purchased J Wray & Nephew, they terminated the Appleton Estate Rum sales team in here in Canada. Then early last year they also terminated the long-term contract of Michael Delevante, aka the Rum Doctor. This meant that after 50 years of service as Rum Master and Rum Blender for Appleton Estate Rum, the Rum Doctor was able to team up with some of his old collaborators, and together they are bringing to the market an aged Florida Rum.
The Noxx and Dunn 2-4-5 Rum they created is made from a blend of 100% Florida sugar cane molasses pot and column distilled spirit. These rums were aged for 2, 4 and 5 years in the sub tropics (in Florida of course) in once used bourbon barrels. Importantly, no flavouring and no colour were added. The colour and flavour of the rum in the bottle is completely natural and derived from the ageing process.
Here is a link to the Number 4 Mixing Rum in my 2016 Mixing Rum Countdown:
#4: Noxx & Dunn Florida Rum 2-4-5
“… The rum is a natural for a rum and cola bar drink. I would go heavy on the rum and light on the cola to give the libation a delicious kick of oaky rum flavour. But I sense more versatility than that and a Rum Old Fashioned is certainly not out of the question. This Noxx and Dunn Rum even has the strength and character to stand up to a sweetened liqueur …”
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Stay tuned for more mixing rum revelations as I will be adding to this list each day until Christmas Eve.
And you can follow the rankings by bookmarking this page:
The Rum Howler 2016 Top 50 Mixing Rums Countdown
In the past, Wiser’s 18 Year Old advertised itself as a Limited Release bottling totaling only 3500 bottles for each batch produced. Last year I noticed that the whisky had undergone a subtle brand change as well, and it is now listed as J.P. Wiser’s 18 Year Old Canadian Whisky. As part of the brand re-identification the bottle no longer contains any information on the label with respect to the batch size.
Whether any real substantive change in the whisky inside the bottle has occurred is unknown to me; but since we know that we can expect the whisky to change from batch to batch at a minimum, I usually look at this brand each year and write a new review if I notice any substantive change. (It turns out, there was very little change from last year to this year.)
Just about every friend of mine who has visited this the Dominican Republic has a vivid tale to tell of their amazing bus ride to the distillery, and another tale to tell of how much fun it was to sample the Brugal Rum. Brugal Titanium Rum is a triple distilled premium white rum produced primarily for the domestic market (and in parts of Europe) as a high-end cocktail spirit meant to compete with ultra premium Vodka.
However the tipping point for the category seems to have been the year 2010, and the brand which (in my opinion) which helped the most to bring about a this change was Wiser’s Legacy.
It was during this time that Lemon Hart 151 Demerara Rum became a relatively famous cocktail rum. In fact, the rum is called for by name in many of Trader Vic’s and Don the Beachcomber’s tiki recipes. The rum is a 100 % Guyanese rum blend with rum distilled and aged in Guyana. It is currently bottled in Canada by the Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation (NLC) for the brand owner Mosaiq.
The Rum Howler Blog 