Just a little story behind this rum. You can’t even really get it anymore. However, I like to visit the small liquor stores here in NYC. You have to physically go to them, because not a single one of them has a website. For the most part, it’s overpriced crap, but occasionally, you find something really weird, like 50mL bottles of rum you never knew came in that size, or some kind of treasure. In this case, I found 7 bottles of this rum, caked in dust, still listed at the $35 price tag, and I knew I had to get them all.

I sometimes wonder if these stores are mafia fronts, because all of their bottles are so dusty. Maybe they just turn over enough Jack Daniels and Barefoot Wine at 1.5x MSRP to survive. So, of course, they marked the Stolen Rum up to $35 and sat on it for seven years. I tried to haggle it down to its original $24 MSRP, but no dice. Maybe they called my bluff because their entire stock was already in my shopping bag, or maybe, judging by the dust cover on the bottles, they were happy to have them sit for many more years to come. Regardless, I still bought them all, of course.

Review

Smell

Holy smokes! There is such a complex nose! Fruity with Jamaican funk, with banana and pineapple like the LROK 1Y, but also, bold notes of vanilla and caramel, and just overall a heavier nose.

Taste

The flavor is intense. The pineapple is very strong, but overall the profile is so smooth and caramelly, which is something that I love about Smith & Cross, and why it punches above its price point against other Jamaicans. In fact I tried them side by side, and Stolen is basically everything in S&C but way more. More fruity flavors, more complexity, more intensity, everything.

In a daiquiri, it made possibly the best daiquiri I ever had. Supremely rich, complex, fruity, bright, full of bananas, pineapple, and berries, as well as caramelly wooden notes.

Verdict 9/10

I am going to cap it off at a 9/10 for now. There’s a lot more Hampdens to come and a lot more very good ones that I think will be in the running for something above a 9/10. Potentially even a 10/10. I will revisit this at the end of the month along with some of my other top of the top favorites, and I’ll see if I think they should be promoted even higher.