As I’ve continued to spend time with our lineup of zero-proof rums I’ve begun projecting certain rum personalities onto them, a bit like a castaway on a deserted island would draw a face on a volleyball to keep themselves company (for example, Lyre’s Dark Cane Spirit is a bit like a young, dosed Demerara). In this light Strykk is a bit like a column still overproof—it has a burn, but not too much complexity. The burn indexes on menthol and ginger, but if a bit of a kick is something you’re missing during dry January, Strykk has it in spades. Beyond the kick it’s relatively light on the palate; their bottle mentions notes of raisin, vanilla, and warming oakwood, and while none of those seems wrong they’re all very subtle. We also got notes of orange and black tea, but again, very subtle. In our taste test, everyone agreed it made a good mixer, but as a neat sipper the panel was divided (it’s worth noting it got better neat ratings from those who regularly sip spirits neat). For cocktail nerds, one exciting aspect of its focused profile is that it’s great to play around with in recipes; you can make a halfway decent Zombie using Strykk as your overproof and something like Monday as your Puerto Rican rum (as of yet, nothing I’ve tried even resembles a high ester Jamaican). As the novelty of zero-proof tipples wears off, that specificity is something I increasingly appreciate.

My first encounter with Lyre’s Dark Cane Spirit was a few days before our blind taste test. The rum alternatives were beginning to arrive in the mail, and unable to contain my excitement I cracked open two of the first to be unboxed (Crystal Barbados and Lyre’s Dark) and stole a few sips. Crystal Barbados came first, and, well, I was a bit deflated. Then I tried Lyre’s, and the primary reaction I had was relief; I wasn’t even that concerned whether it tasted like rum, I was relieved it tasted *****good*****. And the rest of our taste test panel agreed—Lyre’s consistently got the highest ratings for both sipping neat and mixing into a daiquiri. On the nose, it’s a bit like a young, dosed Demerara, if you turned the saturation to 100, and added a dollop of butterscotch. If an actual rum smelled this way, I would be concerned it smelled a bit too sweet but Lyre’s cascade of caramel and cola works well. Notably, there’s not much of the faux oak that tends to be hit or miss for me in many other zero-proof rum. On the palate, its relative reservedness is hard not to contrast with its boisterous nose, but beyond that, it’s hard to find any faults. A pleasant acidity and sweetness assert a continuity with the cola fragrance. Hints of baking spice and menthol swell into one of the subtler finishes, but after a few sips, there’s a satisfying burn at the pack of your throat. The tasting experience, along with the delightfully goofy (but very well executed) bottle give the sense that Lyre’s knows exactly what they’re doing, and they’re fully committed to the bit. Of all the rums we tasted, it may not have been the one that most convinced you it was rum, but it was the one that most convinced you you weren’t missing out.

To speak of “legacy brands” in the world of zero-proof rum 2024 is a little like speaking of “legacy brands” in legalized cannabis. Everyone is a newcomer, and yet if there is a legacy brand, it’s probably Ritual. I’ve tried Ritual a number of times over the past couple of years, sometimes neat as an oddity, or in a cocktail where its main job was to make juice taste weird. Revisiting it with a more focused eye its main value proposition has always been in the name: you enjoy the ritual of pouring a brown liquid out of a bottle and drinking it, here is a bottle of brown liquid. On the nose there are strong notes of wheat bread and cereal, perhaps a suggestion of the charred apricot they note on the bottle, and a melange of baking spice warmth that is probably the clearest indication that rum is the target being imitated. On the palate things get interesting; if this is your first experience with a solid rum alternative you may have a moment of glee when you realize “This has a burn to it! How does it have a burn to it without alcohol?”. The heat pulls ginger to the forefront, with cinnamon and other baking spices in close pursuit. It doesn’t finish quite like a rum, but it does have a finish! On a second sip the presence of something acidic is more noticeable (sure enough citric acid is listed as ingredient 6). It’s a bit of a reminder that the thing you’re drinking is not, in fact, rum, but if you forgive that as you must, it does make for an altogether pleasant tipple.

Drinking zero-proof rum is a bit of a performance art. There are lots of perfectly suitable non-alcoholic beverages out there, but if you’re sipping zero-proof rum on some level you’re trying to pretend that it ***is*** rum. And at the same time, it’s impossible to really believe it. It’s all rather kind of embarrassing: there’s a thing that you like, that you know is bad for you, and you’re trying not to drink it, so you’re going to play dress up. Monday’s solution to this is to make that dress-up look cool as hell. Their almost cryptic art-deco-inspired bottle design suggests that the drinker knows something you don’t. “A cultural shift is underway” the back reads. Yes, the drinker of this bottle definitely knows something you don’t. But *this* drinker will tell all! On the nose you’re met with some wheat-y cereal notes similar to Ritual, but they’re joined by a solvent-like note that demonstrates they figured out how to get a bit of charred oak (or something charred-oak-like) in the bottle. By the second whiff some subtle but very pleasant caramel enters the mix. On the tip of the tongue, it’s pretty mild and texturally pretty thin. As it coats the back of your mouth there’s some baking spice, some subtle citrus, and banana. This is followed by a really pleasant burn that seems to aerate oak and vanilla. My only real gripe is that there’s an artificial coffee note that shows up more as an aftertaste that isn’t particularly pleasant. The back label gives you permission to leave the bottle out of the fridge in any “cool, dry place,” which is good news because you’ll really want to leave this one out on a shelf.

The sadness of heading into dry January is not just that I must abstain from rum, but also that I must abstain from a certain amount of nerding-out about rum. It’s for this reason I got fairly excited when, while searching for zero-proof rums to try, I saw a reasonably priced bottle named for a bastion of rum excellence: Barbados! My excitement was tempered when I read the text just below the title: “Established in California”. Beyond the letdown that this was *not* somehow a white-labeled release from Mount Gay or Foursquare, I was further annoyed that even the California “established” designation wasn’t concrete (a small “Made in the USA” on the back is as close as we’ll get to a provenance). But let’s allow for the mention of Barbados as a statement of aspiration. What does it taste like? In a single word: bubblegum. It’s bubblegum on the nose, it’s bubblegum on the palate, it’s bubblegum on the finish, to the point it’s a bit surprising it’s not bright pink. In other words, I think a taste of this would probably kill Richard Seale. It’s label includes the tasting notes “subtly sweet”, “woody” and “smooth”; I’ll grant smoothness, but “subtly sweet” is understatement to the point of falsehood, and if there was any woodiness present it was lost on me. As a rum alternative, it misses the mark completely. But as a non-alcoholic bubblegum liqueur (if one is interested in such things), it can be quite nice. At our blind taste test, one participant who doesn’t drink much rum neat was delighted at the first in the lineup, precisely because it did not taste like rum. It made for a very idiosyncratic, but perfectly pleasant daiquiri. Sitting with the rum again I’m struck that a mea culpa may be in order. When selecting zero-proof rums to review this month I had only a few criteria: - It must be truly zero-proof - It must be clearly aimed at substituting for rum - It must not be a spiced or flavored offering In my excitement to taste an alcohol-free rum from Barbados, it was entirely lost on me that nowhere on the bottle does it mention being a “rum” or “cane spirit” alternative. But perhaps it’s a positive sign for the Certified Barbados Rum GI that I take Barbados to be synonymous with rum.