The Ruminator

Latest Reviews

#143 Black Tot Finest Caribbean Rum

Rum has long been tied to the high seas. In fact, moreso with the British Navy, which issued its sailors a daily rum ration, than to pirates, despite the popular association. That tradition ended in 1970, and the remaining stocks were bottled by Black Tot as the "Last Consignment". However, these bottles are very rare and expensive, so Black Tot also began sourcing rum to blend into something that they claim closely resembles the navy rum of old. According to bitters and bottles, the blend consists of: 40%: Guyana, aged 3-5 years, pot and column blend 20%: Guyana, unaged, pot and column blend 35%: Barbados, aged 5 years, pot and column blend 5%: Jamaica, aged 3 years, pot still only I see this exact blend cited a lot, and the bottle featuring a black label, though my bottle, despite having the exact same name, has an orange label and lists a Trinidad component. That's pretty historically fitting, since the navy's rum recipe changed many times depending on what is available. Black Tot actually gave me their new recipe, which is what is in the bottle with the orange label: 40%: Barbados, aged 5 years, pot and column blend, molasses 20%: Guyana, 0-5 years, pot and column blend, molasses 35%: Trinidad, aged 2-4 years, column still only, molasses 5%: Jamaica, aged 3 years, pot still only, molasses Review Since this a Guyana-heavy navy-style rum, I will be comparing it to Hamilton 86 and Pusser's (blue label). It's also noticeably more light than the other two. It's golden while the other two are a deep brown. Smell Black Tot is fairly light on the nose. I get oak, a touch of alcohol harshness, and maybe a faint hint of what I think is brine? Hamilton 86 is also light on the nose, but I mostly get molasses. Pusser's has the strongest aroma of the three, and I get a lot of prunes, molasses, and raisins. Taste With Black Tot, I definitely get a lot of demerara character. Earthy, charred oak, a light funk, and good body. There's a slight burn as you'd expect from a 46%. Pusser's comes very strong with charred oak and raisins, and while flavorful, it's maybe a bit less rounded. Hamilton 86 has a lot more of a jamaican black rum vibe, like Myers's, and much less of what I identify as demerara flavor. All 3 make great daiquiris, though all three are very different. Pusser's comes strong with the sweet, molasses, caramel, raisin notes. Hamilton makes more of a funky dark rum daiquiri. Black Tot is the most like a traditional daiquiri out of the three: lighter, a bit of Jamaica, a bit of Demerara, and I taste a bit of Barbados coming through as well. Verdict {rating}/10 Despite their differences, I do think that they are all quite good and quite similar, but Black Tot has just a bit more richness, a bit more kick, that edges it ahead. So, I went ahead and pulled out Pusser's Gunpowder Proof, which is the same blend as the blue label, but at 54.5%, which is way more than Black Tot, hence why I didn't include it in the initial tests. But it has that extra bit of richness and kick that I was feeling in Black Tot. I rated it 7/10 before, and as such, I also give Black Tot Finest Caribbean Rum a 7/10.

#141 Ron Abuelo Añejo 12 Años

I've wondered for a while what actually separates Ron Abuelo 12 from Ron Abuelo XII Two Oaks, and whether "Añejo XII Años" even qualifies as a real age statement. You can see my review for that at the bottom. Review Smell Tasting alongside both Ron Abuelo 7 Year and XII Two Oaks, it really is like a step ladder in terms of aroma. The 7 year does have notes of oak and vanilla, but also a slight citrusy, floral note. The 12 year is richer than the 7, with bolder oak and vanilla but less floral citrus notes. By XII, it is very oaky, very vanilla, and the citrus floral aroma is gone entirely. Taste Next to the 7, the 12 is bolder in vanilla, a little more sour, and has less young character. The 7 would still work fine in a mojito, while 12 is richer and less bright and definitely intended for sipping. XII is even more bold. It is a bit more sour and it's significantly more dry and tannic than the 12. Verdict {rating}/10 Overall, Ron Abuelo makes some of my favorite rums in the Central American category, though it's significantly sweeter than some competitors, like Flor de Caña. I would say that the 12 year is a bit worse as a mixer than the 7, but improved as a sipping rum from the greater oak and vanilla flavor, though all are quite sweet. I would put them about equal in score for that reason, just suited for different purposes. 6/10

Latest Articles

Finding the Sugar Content of Rum (part 1)

Quite frankly, Johnny Drejer deserves the credit here. Many have expanded on his works, but if they could see further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of a giant. The underlying methodology is sound. Hydrometers measure density, and if we can know with a high degree of accuracy what the ABV truly is, then if there is a difference between the observed and stated density, something inside the rum must be causing it. Aside from the simplification that sugar density is treated as a convenient average, the method is remarkably useful. Though he makes it abundantly clear that density is not the same as sucrose, in practice, sucrose is often the dominant factor aside from ethanol content, and other contributors, such as glycerin, are usually small enough to ignore for calculations. DuRhum's lab tests, for example, showed that Ron Zacapa contains around 0.3g/L of glycerol(https://durhum.com/here-we-rum/), which would increase its density by less than 0.1%. My hydrometer is only accurate to about 0.5 ABV, which is roughly a 1.25% change in density. But let's do a deep dive into Drejer's methodology. We know how sugar affects the density of water: Curve of density of water based on Brix, from Drejer. For his calculation, Drejer used a rate of 4.00331 ΔBrix&frasl;Δg/cm³ for his calculation, which is the average slope from 0 to 100 g/L of sugar added.^1 That is a broad range, since most rums seem to stay at or below the EU legal maximum of 20 g/L, but the line is fairly flat, so the approximation works well enough. Sugar adds a pretty consistent change in density to water. The same approach is then applied to the effect of alcohol on water: Curve of density of water based on ABV, from Drejer. From those two curves, Drejer derives the final formulation: (observed density - stated density&frasl;4.00331) × 10 The factor of 10 converts Brix to g/L. That gives us this reference table: Table used to convert observed and stated ABV into added sugar, from Drejer. Why it is imperfect 1. As stated earlier, sugar is not the only thing that affects density. Drejer makes that clear from the start. Glycerin is usually minor, but it does have an effect. Other sweeteners or additives may also change density in ways that do not behave exactly like sucrose. Sugar is still probably the biggest factor, but it is not the only one. 2. The method depends on the label ABV being accurate. By law, ABV has to be very close to what is stated on the bottle, and both the EU and the American TTB allow only a maximum deviation of 0.3%. That makes the stated ABV a solid anchor, but not a perfect one. 3. The method combines two separate curves: sugar in water and alcohol in water. It assumes that the same relationship holds in a mixed ethanol-water solution. That is probably close enough for a practical estimate, but alcohol and water behave in non-intuitive ways. For example, mixing 250mL of water, with a density of 1g/mL, and 250mL of ethanol, with a density of 0.79g/mL, results in a solution with a volume of 480mL and a density of 0.93g/mL (not 500mL of 0.895g/mL as we might expect).^2 Once sugar is added too, the system becomes even more complicated, because sugar dissolves differently depending on how much water and alcohol are present. 4. Measurement error can easily dominate the result. If you are using a cheap 0-100 hydrometer with tight lines, you can be off by a few ABV just from reading the instrument by eye or from small calibration differences. A 1-2 ABV error may not sound like much, but at 40% ABV, a reading of 38% instead of 40% would suggest roughly 8 g/L of added sugar. You ideally want the ABV reading to be accurate to within about 1%, which corresponds to roughly 0-5 g/L of added sugar. That is one reason many people treat 5 g/L or less as effectively no added sugar. Why it still works But those issues might not even matter. Despite its errors, it is a solid estimate and has proven itself useful. All things considered, 20g/L is really not a lot of sugar in terms of total volume. As such, it may be possible that the effects of saturating the water with sugar such that it affects the bonds with the ethanol content would be pretty minimal at these ratios. Drejer also tested the method by dissolving 40g/L of sugar in a 37.5% ABV spirit and measured it at 25% ABV, which matched the chart closely. I would still be cautious about extreme cases outside the chart, such as a 15% liqueur or a 151 proof rum. Can it be improved? A little, yes. Problems 1 and 2 cannot really be solved with a hydrometer. A hydrometer measures density, and that is all it measures. If the liquid contains other density-altering substances, or if the bottle is mislabelled, that is simply outside of the method's control. Problem 3 is the one area where a better model is possible. To improve it properly, I would need highly accurate measurements across many data points, with carefully controlled sugar amounts and ABV levels, so that I could determine whether the change in density for sugar in an ethanol-water mixture really matches the change shown in the pure-water charts. That would give a more defensible model, but it is more work than I want to take on right now. What I can do instead is use a more specific formula. Drejer's formula is as follows: sugar (g/L) = (ρobserved − ρstated&frasl;4.00331)×10^1 This uses one fixed constant, 4.00331, regardless of the ABV. That is a linear approximation, combining the whole typical ABV range into an average. It's a simplification, which makes it easier to use, at the cost of assuming that every unit of density change corresponds to the same amount of added sugar regardless of ABV. We know that isn't true. Adding 40 g/L of sugar to a 37.5% ABV spirit drops the apparent reading by about 12.5 percentage points, but adding the same 40 g/L to a 60% ABV spirit only drops it by about 8 points. A more granular formula would be: sugar (g/L) = 1000 × (ρobserved − ρstated&frasl;1 − ρstated × v) I added 4g of sugar to 37.5% ABV rum, to a final volume of 100mL. This equals 40g/L, and my hydrometer reads 25% ABV. Here, v is the apparent specific volume of sucrose in the spirit blend, which is approximately 0.625cm³/g. The amount of volume occupied by a gram of sucrose actually changes based on how much sucrose is already present in the solution, but scientific measurements show that the noise is greater than the measured difference. So, in practice, treating v as a constant is a defensible simplification given the data.^3 Also, just to double check Drejer, I took some 37.5% ABV rum (and made sure the initial hydrometer reading is 37.5% ABV), and then carefully dissolved 4g of sugar into it, then topped it up to exactly 100mL and stirred well (equal to 40g/L of sugar). My hydrometer floated at precisely 25% ABV. So, this is a nice agreement, because that means my hydrometer agrees with Drejer's, and my methodology gives an answer very close to Drejer's as well. I added sugar in increments of 20g/L and got the following readings: 55%, 50%, 45%, 40.5%, 36% But what if we explore another end of the scale? One where my formula and Drejer's pretty substantially disagree? I chose 60% ABV and high sugar content because that's the most extreme scenario, and actually, both formulas held up reasonably well. Science is supposed to be reproducible, and that was really the point of this exercise. For the most part, they do. At ABV and sugar content so high that you won't even plausibly encounter it, it appears that my formula is a bit more accurate, but only within a couple percentage points compared to Drejer's. At 37.5% ABV with 40 g/L of added sugar, my formula, Drejer's formula, and the measured result all landed in the same place to within a fraction of a percentage point. If you've been relying on Drejer's hydrometer method for a typical bottle of rum, this is good news! While my formula does not completely align with my data, it is around twice as close as Drejer's formula. But your formula is scary! Here's a calculator: The calculator does not produce radically different values from the Drejer table. What it does do is save you from having to read the chart row by row, and it uses the exact formula so you do not need to guess between the lines when the ABV is not an integer. Hydrometer tests > Note: values below 5 g/L can effectively be treated as no added sugar, because measurement error and natural barrel-derived compounds can easily account for that difference. For a complete table of hydrometer test results, see the . --- ^1: Drecon, Drejer's website(http://www.drecon.dk/) ^2: The Lost Volume Demonstration - Carolina Knowledge Center(https://knowledge.carolina.com/professional-growth/activities/the-lost-volume-demonstration/) ^3: Apparent Specific Volumes of Sucrose in Different Aqueous Cosolvent Mixtures at 298.2 K - Pharmaceutical Sciences, p. 325(https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/20e7/6d53984a0a9bc45abbc257d97a0912b1393f.pdf)

2026-06-30

Scoring & Ratings

Scoring philosophy Basically I am ripping the rating scale straight from t8ke. It's already a very widely used standard, and my ratings should be 1:1 comparable to anyone else rating with the t8ke. I just added some clarifying context to some of the scores, since some of the descriptions are rather nebulous, and I wanted to explain how a 6/10 could be either a decent sipper but kind of boring, or a very flavorful but chaotic rum with flaws. Rum Ratings Click column headers to sort, and use the dropdowns to filter.

2026-06-11

Distillery Spotlights

Destilería Artesanal Taboga

This past weekend I attended the NY Rum Fest for the first time, and it was a fantastic experience. Imagine a conference room lined with about 30 tables, each representing a different company, and some offering upwards of 20 different bottles for tasting. Obviously, I could not try everything; even pacing myself and only taking small sips, I feel like I made it through less than a third of the bottles on offer. I will definitely be coming back next year. Cane juice aguardiente I took plenty of notes, but I wanted to start by spotlighting one company in particular: Nicoya. Their table stood out because Pierre Bardinet pulled a Hampden Estate and actually brought Nicoya's individual unaged marques for us to taste. Nicoya currently produces three marques: aguardientes of cane juice, cane syrup (aka cane honey), and molasses. Instead of using the much more common continuous multi-column setup, each ferment is batch-distilled in copper pot stills and then re-distilled in a copper column. These components are ultimately blended to create both their Blanco and Añejo expressions. Pierre let me try all three marques. Cane juice: Immediately reminiscent of Haitian cane spirits like Clairin Sajous. Vegetal, peppery, fruity, and sharp. Cane syrup: This one was more complex. There was still some vegetal notes, but now it was more deep, robust, and smoky, like Clairin Le Rocher, or Caña Criolla from The Rums of Mexico, with an aftertaste of buttered popcorn. Cane molasses: Interestingly, on the nose and initial palate, this one was the most subdued. Just typical notes of column still rum, but it had a deep umami note to it that I couldn't quite put my finger on. After trying each individually, I asked to have all three mixed together. The result was like an orchestra, where the cane juice was the top note, cane syrup was the melody, and molasses was the bass. Then I asked for more molasses because you always need more bass. It was actually incredible, and had it not been near the end of rum fest with a few more tables to visit, I would have stayed and played around with the blending some more. It was so fun! What other producer lets you taste cane juice, cane syrup, and molasses rums all produced from the same place in the exact same way, side-by-side? History Taboga is a new, small-scale distillery in Costa Rica, but its roots stretch much further back. Taboga Sugar Factory Harvesting sugarcane at Taboga. The Sanchez estate was established in 1916, and the Taboga Sugar Factory followed in 1958. It is an institution in Costa Rica, responsible for 20% of the country's sugar production. They also have operated an industrial alcohol distillery and have been exporting alcohol to Europe since 1997. In 2019, Taboga expanded its operations by opening Destilería Artesanal Taboga to produce artisanal rum. It's important to note that in Costa Rica, the state holds a monopoly on alcohol production. Fábrica Nacional de Licores (FANAL) has historically held the exclusive right to produce and distribute alcohol domestically, and they are likely to be the source of the distillate for Ron Centenario, the dominant rum brand from Costa Rica. Les Bienheureux Alexandre Sirech previously worked for Pernod Ricard, helping to revitalize the Cuban rum export business with Havana Club, before transitioning into the wine industry with his wife. In 2013, he partnered with Jean-François Moueix to found Les Bienheureux. They immediately dove into rum, releasing a cachaça and a cocoa rum in 2014, followed by Embargo in early 2015, and El Pasador de Oro in late 2015 (which I have previously reviewed). Crucially, none of these early rums were distilled in-house. They were sourced, blended, and finished in France. A similar approach was taken with their French whiskey brand, Bellevoye, which became a top-seller in France after being finished in cognac casks. From both a production and consumer preference standpoint, the French clearly possess a deep affinity for cognac cask finishing. Nicoya Pierre Bardinet joined Les Bienheureux in 2020. During a 2021 trip to Costa Rica, he decided that Taboga would be the ideal location for Les Bienheureux to begin distilling rum. Their guiding philosophy was to build a true single-estate distillery, a narrative that you will see throughout Nicoya's marketing and literature. They boldly claim, "Costa Rica deserved a great rum, and so we created Costa Rica's first rum distillery!", a direct jab at Ron Centenario. However, as you'll see, their claims of breaking the state monopoly and creating a single-estate distillery... have some nuances. The Pura Vida and Nicoya bottles. Products The Taboga distillery produces Ron 1916 and industrial alcohol as house brands, while producing Pura Vida and Nicoya specifically for Les Bienheureux. I don't know if Pura Vida remains a separate brand or if it underwent a direct rebranding into Nicoya in 2024, though I suspect the latter. Production Fermentation The distillery ferments its three marques (cane juice, cane syrup, and molasses) separately. Fermentation is strictly temperature-controlled between 28-32°C, and they use a commercial yeast strain from Lallemand. Distillation Stills at the Taboga distillery. The three components are batch-distilled separately in 5,000L copper pot stills, then re-distilled through a 14-plate copper column still. The cane juice is distilled to a final ABV of 82%, while the syrup and molasses are distilled to a final ABV of 88% ABV. Marketing photos reveal at least one column still and two pot stills on site, though there may be more outside the frame. Aging Each marque is aged individually, primarily in young ex-bourbon barrels sourced from Green River (Tennessee) and Wild Turkey (Kentucky). Roughly half of their inventory consists of first-fill barrels. These factors impart a heavier oak and vanilla influence. The XA expression, and perhaps others, are also finished in cognac casks in France. Oliver Dumont is the Cellar Master at Nicoya. Pierre is quick to declare that he feels that age statements are overrated. You might notice a lack of age statements across the Nicoya lineup. Neither the Añejo, XA, XO, etc. This caught my attention, particularly since Les Bienheureux's other major release, El Pasador de Oro, is a solera-aged product sourced from DARSA (the same distillery behind Zacapa) before being finished in France. I reached out to Pierre for clarification on this philosophy: > Q: None of the Nicoya expressions carry an age statement. Can you explain the reasoning for that decision? Was it a philosophical choice, or are some expressions solera aged and therefore don't have a true age statement? > A: Rum is a category with no rules in which the consumer is misleaded with false statements. When it comes to ageing, I'm often surprised to see some 15 to 30 'years old rums' produced in some countries with 10% evaporation per year. These competitors use the age of the oldest drop in the blend as the 'reference' year. Our rums are young and proud to be young. We have no dogma on the age our añejo can be 6 month, 1 year or 3 years old, we bottle it when we considered that it has an age profile with the oakiness well balanced with the rum. We use no solera. While I don't necessarily agree with the blanket statement that rum has "no rules", I understand the sentiment. In a separate interview with Taste the Dram, Pierre reinforced this perspective, stating: Stop asking 'how old is it?' and start asking 'where does it come from?' Single Estate & Terroir Nicoya heavily emphasizes its single-estate origins, frequently marketing itself as Costa Rica's only "cane-to-bottle" rum. Terroir is clearly central to Nicoya's identity. However, this raises an interesting point: all Nicoya expressions are shipped to France for bottling, and some expressions, such as XA (Extra Añejo), are finished in cognac casks in France. I reached out to Pierre about this for comment: > Q: The single-estate terroir is clearly central to Nicoya's identity. How do you think about the cognac cask finishing in France for the XA in that context? > A: We see the cognac ageing in France as a 'terroir' approach because it reveals through the rum the philosophy of the makers who came originally from the wine/cognac world before entering the rum category. It's an interesting defense. Given that the founders are French, their expertise is in cognac, they built their success on cognac-finished whiskey, the finishing process is essentially an expression of the makers' terroir. Though, in my opinion, if the story is how much the land matters, shipping your rum to France for finishing works against that narrative. Similarly, while Nicoya's total transparency regarding their 12g/L dosage is highly commendable, the addition of sugar presents another deviation from their claims of absolute purity. The Monopoly Nicoya's marketing leans heavily on their role as industry disruptors. I am quoting their promotional material directly: > How could this great nation not have its own rum? > Alcoholic beverages were exclusively controlled by a state monopoly. By demonstrating to the authorities, the quality of the rums we could produce and export, we changed the legislation. NICOYA is therefore the first Costa Rican rum in history! This claim is pretty extraordinary, and so I did some fact-checking. I could not find what the exact legal changes were, nor that the monopoly changed. It appears that, since the 1990s, the monopoly simply softened, and now it's more like a concession system in practice. Taboga has possessed a license to distill industrial alcohol for decades, built an artisanal rum distillery 2 years before employees of Les Bienheureux set foot in the country, and claiming to be the "first Costa Rican rum in history" is a massive stretch when Ron Centenario has been the country's dominant brand for much longer. Last Thoughts On a final note, lot of this information has only been possible because Pierre was very responsive and engaged openly with my questions, and he even sent me a full media package and several powerpoints. I've reached out to the makers of Zacapa and Dictador and have gotten no response, so I greatly appreciate Pierre's knowledge and accessibility. References I have used the following sources for the information in this article: Marketing material provided by Les Bienheureux Direct messaging with Pierre Bardinet About Us - Taboga(https://www.taboga.cr/about-us) \Brand Focus \ The success story of Les Bienheureux - Rumporter(https://rumporter.com/en/brand-focus-the-success-story-of-les-bienheureux/) “Taste the Place: Why Nicoya Is Pushing Rum Beyond Age Statements” - Taste the Dram(https://www.tastethedram.com/single-post/2026/04/04/nicoya-rum-interview-single-estate-costa-rica/)

Guanacaste, Nicoya Penninsula, Costa RicaSince 2019

Standard Wormwood

Matt Pietrek traveled the world, visited countless distilleries, and wrote a medical textbook-sized book on them. Luca Gargano traveled the world and gave us Caroni. I went to my local distillery in Brooklyn. Have you seen airline ticket prices these days? History Standard Wormwood is a pretty small operation in Industry City, a converted industrial complex in Sunset Park. Founded in 2006 by Sasha Selimotic and Taras Hrabowsky, the distillery is dedicated to a single ingredient: wormwood. Their website says they grow it on their own farm in Orange County, New York, and they use it as an aromatic component to a variety of spirits, including, but far from limited to, absinthe. They claim on their website that they are (perhaps?) the only distillery and full cocktail bar in the world that makes every single cocktail ingredient in-house. Production View from the lounge. View from the bar. The distillery floor is small but busy. By the windows up against the bar are what I believe are two stills. One appears to be a hybrid batch still with a 5-plate column head, with additional copper and steel segments nearby that may be swappable configurations. The other is a smooth steel column still, likely used for producing more rectified spirits. It all looks very modular and configurable, and it's unclear whether they share a boiler or whether it's two truly separate stills. They only produce one rum, Standard Wormwood Rum, and I have reviewed it. The menu describes it as > High ester rum distilled with wormwood. Vapour infused with tropical fruits to give funky pineapple and banana undertones. It sounds to me like they distill their base rum with wormwood present in the still, and then pass the distillate vapors through a botanical basket packed with tropical fruit before condensing? I'm not sure if that's right, but it would be akin to a gin-style vapor infusion applied to rum. I remember when I emailed Hovdenak distillery in Iceland for information about their rum, they told me that they actually buy molasses from Jamaica and then ferment it to be funky, and I thought that this was really cool. Taras told me that the distillery originally also sourced Jamaican molasses and fermented it themselves, but that they've since moved away from that, as the fermentation was labor-intensive, took up significant space in a small facility, and didn't even save them very much money over simply buying bulk rum from a bulk supplier. They now source from Ultra Pure. Looking at Ultra Pure's catalog on bulkalcohol.com, one product jumps out at me immediately: > Jamaican Power Blender (Origin: Jamaica) > Blend of small batch pot still rums. Flavor profile: banana, pineapple, papaya, mango, and coconut. Intended for use in 5-15% concentrations with a base spirit. So the base spirit is a light column still rum from USVI, a la Captain Morgan. In other words, Ultra Pure's product is itself already a blend: a small proportion of high-ester Jamaican pot still rum mixed into a lot of cheap USVI column still rum, essentially the same principle as Rum Verschnitt (which is when German blenders imported small quantities of high-ester Jamaican rum and diluted it with neutral spirit, to stretch the funkiness of a small amount of Jamaican rum across a larger volume). Standard Wormwood then takes this pre-blended base, redistills it through their hybrid still with wormwood, and passes the vapors through a fruit basket. Taras told me that Ultra Pure does not disclose which individual Jamaican distilleries the rums in the blend are from. It might be a bit of a shame, because making your own fermentation rich in acids to make it funky sounds totally radical! But, their final product is still very unique. It's a funky Jamaican-style rum with the bitter finish of Malört, and it makes nice mixed drinks. Though, for the price, I can't really say it's a good value, when you can buy a 1L bottle of Planteray 3 Stars and 1L Spike's Breezeway Blend combined for the same price as a 750mL of this rum. But I get it, it's artisanal, small batch rum distilled in NYC. The bartenders were really friendly and knowledgable, and I do recommend Industry City for the vibes, and while you're there,you might as well stop by for a good rum cocktail.

Industry City, Brooklyn, New York, United StatesSince 2006