This pot still rum from multiple Jamaican distilleries gave us strong notes of solvent and smoke, with hints of caramel, banana, brine, ginger and medicine.

This blend of 100% pot still rum from Long Pond and Clarendon distilleries in Jamaica is bottled at 43% ABV, is aged for a minimum of two years, spending at least one year aging both tropically and continentally. The bottle and corresponding page on Plantation’s site are a rum nerds dream: along with all the information you’d expect from a reasonably transparent brand, we get fermentation time (1 – 3 weeks), the break down of not only volatile substances (312 g/hLAA) but also the portion of esters (156 g/hLAA) and coloring (E150a, between 0% and 0.1% by volume).

In the lab we measured a density of 0.942g/cc, agreeing with their declaration of no added sugar. Though interestingly they choose to say “Dosage : 0 g/L”. This seems to say “There’s no added sugar, but not because that’s like,,, bad or anything.” which is simultaneously a fair, and a little funny.

On the nose the first things you notice are smoke and solvent. Nosing deeper there might be a little overripe pineapple, and then some tobacco. On the palate is remains fairly aggressive: not really funk per se, but peat, brine, something medicinal. A little caramel and banana. The finish is moderate, especially considering it’s low proof; finally there’s some oak, followed by a little ginger.

While we were a bit perplexed by it, it didn’t do half bad in our blind taste test: we thought it was pretty good neat (7.3/10) and as a mixer (7.7/10). While it’s not particularly funky in a high-ester sort of way, I wouldn’t really recommend it as an introduction to Jamaica; it’s very interesting but it’s idiosyncratic, and can be hard to approach on it’s own terms.