Travellers’ 5 Barrel Rum is produced in Belize, made from locally grown Belize sugar cane. According to the Travellers website, this cane is cut and crushed in a manner which retains its natural flavors, and the all of the rum is aged in Kentucky oak barrels for a full 5 years. It is blended to be a full-bodied rum with the well-rounded taste which results from oak barrel aging.
A few years ago (in 2013) Travellers changed the name of their 5 Barrel Rum, to Travellers’ One Barrel 5 Year Rum. (Apparently the name was changed due to trademark issues which arose as the brand began to penetrate new markets.) I would suggest that if you manage to get your hands on the older bottles of the rum (Travellers’ 5 Barrel Rum), you should. This is because, the older version which I sampled and reviewed in 2012 seemed to have more depth and complexity than the newer version (Travellers’ One Barrel 5 Year Rum) which I sampled and reviewed only one year later after the name change.
This is a listing of the best spirits I have ever tasted, and for that reason it is older version of the Traveller’s Rum, the 5 Barrel that I recognize as the #81 spirit in my Rum Howler Top 100 Spirits Countdown.
#81 – Travellers’ 5 Barrel Rum
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You may follow my Countdown list of the 100 Best Spirits here: The Rum Howler 2015 – Top 100 Spirits
Glenglassaugh 26 Year Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky is one of the iconic vintage bottlings which was produced from spirit which had been distilled in 1984, and then had sat silently in a mixture of various oak barrels including both American Oak and ex sherry barrels. This whisky was bottled at 46% alcohol by volume (abv) sometime in 2010 and limited to a small production of 1002 bottles.
A unique feature of the Dictador Solera System is that in addition to the younger rums being married with older rums, the barrels of similarly aged rums along one level of the solera are periodically consolidated to keep the barrels as full as possible to maintain fuller contact with the wood, and to inhibit the acceleration of the evaporation within the barrels. The Dictador 12 Year Old Rum, is a solera aged rum which is taken from the solera at the point where the average of the rum within that solera row is at least 12 years of age.
What happened was that every person at my tasting chose the same Vodka as their favourite, and every person at that same tasting said it wasn’t even close. That favourite, the clear head and shoulders winner without reservation in everybody’s opinion, was of course the Pristina Vodka from Highwood Distillers. Pristina is a gem of a Vodka which deserves far more attention from Vodka lovers than what it receives.
anCnoc whisky is produced on the distillery’s original style copper pot stills, and it has been produced that way for over 100 years. The resulting whisky is aged in American oak and Spanish oak barrels (which were previously used to age either bourbon or sherry). These casks are stored in dunnage warehouses where the thick granite walls ensure a stable ambient temperature which results in a consistent (or predictable) aging regimen.
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