The Chase Sapphire lounge in LaGuardia and the Plaza Premium lounge in Orlando is like a tale of two lounges. In the Chase Sapphire lounge, you get complimentary restaurant-quality food, a buffet with fancy hors d’oeuvres and desserts, and a full bar with complimentary cocktails and several excellent rums. In the Plaza Premium lounge, well, you get complimentary cold pasta and a sad salad bar. They have a bar as well, but almost everything comes at a cost. Of course, they do have one well rum that is free. And on this day, I learn that sometimes, I won’t drink a rum, even if it’s literally free.

Review

Smell

It smells like pure rubbing alcohol. There’s not a hint of vanilla or coconut or any sort of “rummy” aroma that I get from Bacardi or Cruzan, which I was hoping this rum would try to emulate. It smells like I just got a cup of hand sanitizer.

Taste

I remember, when I was a child, I had trashy ice cream tastes. My parents liked chocolate and coffee, but I liked birthday cake ice cream. You know the kind. It’s dyed to look like a unicorn’s turds, and has a taste that does not taste like birthday cake, or like anything real— it just has that distinct “birthday cake ice cream” flavor. This rum tastes exactly like that. It’s like, whatever flavoring agent they add to dyed ice cream to make it taste like birthday cake, they added to my hand sanitizer to make it taste like birthday cake. Surprisingly, it doesn’t burn as much as the smell would suggest. It still burns quite a bit, but it’s pretty much in line with what I would expect from a cheap spirit.

I tried making a daiquiri. Again, it costs money to order a cocktail, so I just asked for a cup of lime slices, and I mashed them with a sugar packet. Look, this rum doesn’t exactly deserve effort. I didn’t like it anyway. The limes and sugar were fine, absolutely nothing wrong with them, the rum just sucks.

I dumped the rest of my rum into a cola. At least a cheap rum should go down easy with a cola. Not this one. Even vodka doesn’t make cola disgusting— what even is this!? This rum is entirely irredeemable. Even a shitty spiced rum that tastes like straight vanilla at least goes well with cola.

Verdict 1/10

(Edited from 2/10 on 1/4/26)

I have given out a 3/10 before once or twice. I only remember kirkland spiced rum, which tasted like vanilla extract that’s had an old rubber band soaked in it, and you know what? I dumped it in coke, and it was alright. It wasn’t great, but it was alright. This rum… I don’t even know what you could do with it. If someone gifted me a bottle, what would I do? Maybe make a birthday cake martini? Realistically, I’d pour it out. This is my first 2/10, and hopefully I never try something this low again. Can a rum even be worse than this?

January 4, 2026 Update:

Not much more to add, I am just amending the score down to a 5 to reflect my new scoring system.