The Last Straw Distillery is Ontario’s smallest production micro-distillery located at 40 Pippin Rd. in Vaughan, Ontario (a wee bit north of Toronto) just off Highway 400 and around the corner from Vaughan Mills Shopping Centre. According to Mike Hook, the team at Last Straw come to the craft of distilling from a variety of different backgrounds, and surprisingly none have had prior experience in the beverage or alcohol business. They are self-taught, and developed their recipes in house, through research, and trial and error, without the use of outside consultants.
Last Straw Distillery Blackstrap Rum is produced using blackstrap molasses. Blackstrap is harder to work with than sweet molasses as the sugar content is lower, and the sugars are harder for the yeast to access. The tradeoff is that blackstrap molasses gives a richer, more robust flavour when it is distilled.
The final rum was aged in oak for four years, and I have been told that the spirit contains no additives, flavours or colouring. The bottled rum is sold at 45 % alcohol by volume.
Here is a link to my full review:
Review: Last Straw Distillery Blackstrap Rum
Please enjoy my review which concludes with a couple of nice serving suggestions.
Chimo!
The Liberator brand is an authentic small batch craft brand produced by Highwood Distillers to honor the WWII RCAF base that was located in their home town of High River as well as to honor the brave men and women who fought in WWII. This is a small volume craft offering created such that Highwood Distillers would have a 100% Alberta made craft spirits line produced for the local market.
For each of the past four years Canadian Club has been releasing Canada’s oldest age stated Whisky. And each year, that release has been getting one year older. It started in 2017 with the Canadian Club 40 Year Old. According to my sources, that 40 year old Whisky was produced from a selection of American Oak barrels which contained 100% corn whisky.
Santa Theresa 1796 Antiguo de Solera is a self described Super Premium Venezuelan rum which traces its ancestry back to the year of 1796 when the Santa Theresa Hacienda was created. It was in 1996 (200 years later) that the Hacienda created this rum to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of the Hacienda.
Espolon is a tequila brand created by Master Distiller Cirilo Oropeza made in a small batch process from ‘hand-selected’ 100% Blue Weber agave, grown in the rich red clay and cool climate of the Jalisco, Mexico. At that facility piñas of the hand selected agave are cooked for 18 to 20 hours prior to their fermentation. They apparently use a slower distillation technique than is in use at most other facilities, and when the spirit is finished, their Espolon Blanco tequila is rested for at least 11 months in ex-Wild Turkey Bourbon Barrels, and then bottled at 40 % alcohol by volume.
The Rum Howler Blog 