This pot column blend from J. Wray & Nephew gave us strong notes molasses and chocolate, with hints of banana, grape, wood, brown sugar, and baking spice.

Given it’s ubiquity it rum cocktail lore, Coruba can be surprisingly hard to find. The lineage of this dark Jamaican rum dates back to the 1889 founding of Swiss based “Compagnie Rhumière de Bâle”—which portmanteaus to CoRuBa. Bottled at 40% in a bottle that Aaron Goldfarb aptly observed looks like suntan oil, Coruba is known equally for it’s heavy use in tiki drinks, and an insane level of added coloring. While hard facts are scarce, it’s generally believed to be a blend of pot and column still rums—it certainly tastes like it. There also seems to be consensus it’s produced by J. Wray and Nephew, which would narrow it down to Appleton and New Yarmouth,

In the lab we measured a density of 0.949g/cc; if you assume the only additive is sugar, this could indicate around 5g/L of dosage, but given the non-negligible amounts of coloring and glycerin it’s generally assumed it includes, it’s hard to make and specific claims. We can, however, be confident Coruba is not “additive free”.

On the nose it’s pretty mild; molasses and chocolate with a hint of banana and a bit of an aggressive ethyl note. On the palate a little bit of spice and wood join the mild molasses and chocolate. There’s some brown sugar notes, but more than any of that you notice the heavy mouth feel (glycerin confirmed?). The finish is bordering on nonexistent, but it does leave a little bitter after taste.

In our blind taste test we thought it wasn’t great as a neat sipper (6.4/10) but at least a decent mixer (7.5/10). I don’t think anyone has ever thought of Coruba as a tipple to sip neat, so we won’t judge it so harshly for it’s shortcomings there, but even in the presence of simple syrup and lime juice it failed to stick out. A fair criticism here would be that, perhaps, no one said Coruba was a good daiquiri rum, however if you’re in the market for something Jamaican and darkly colored to round out a cocktail (and I do feel like I may get crucified for saying so), I would recommend something like Worthy Park 109 over Coruba.