This pot column blend from multiple Jamaican distilleries gave us notes of tropical fruit and butterscotch, with subtler hints of solvent, strawberry, pineapple, coconut, and baking spice.

This Jamaican rum from Infinity Spirits is a blend of aged pot of column rums from multiple Jamaican distilleries: Worthy Park, Monymusk, Hampden, New Yarmouth. It has a minimum age statement of 3 years, and is bottled at 40% ABV—though you may have a hard time finding that information on the bottle, because it comes wrapped up in a crinkled faux newspaper attempting to invoke the glory of prohibition-era rum runners. Visually it’s a little kitschy for my taste, but someone clearly put in some effort, and hey, at least it’s not pirates. Underneath the crumpled trade dress there’s a more standard label wrapped around an otherwise quality feeling bottle with all the same information. Besides it’s entry on the official Infinity Spirits site, I wasn’t able to find much information about this bottle online; it doesn’t help that the word “Smuggler” is used by multiple other (ostensibly more popular) rum brands, but as of writing it has no reviews on Rum Ratings or RumX.

In the lab we measured a density of 0.953g/cc, which suggests some dosage: about 13g/L (interestingly, almost exactly the same amount of dosage in Cane Island Jamaican Rum, also bottled by Infinity Spirits). Unfortunately this added sugar is not mentioned anywhere on the bottle.

On the nose the Jamaican pot still is evident; pineapple and overripe banana show up first with some more abrasive solvent and a subtler oak note. On the palate the main addition is butterscotch, and the added sugar muddles some of what complexity was once there. In our blind taste test on two separate occasions we described the palate as “saccharine”. If you really dig in you might pick up hints of strawberry (probably the most interesting note from this expression), a little coconut, baking spice, and manure (gross). As you might expect, the finish is light and short, even for it’s low proof; it indexes on honey and fruit with a mild touch of baking spice.

In our blind tasting we thought it was decent as a neat sipper (7.0/10), and pretty good in a daiquiri (7.8/10). There’s nothing particularly remarkable about this rum, but it does deliver an overall pleasant combination of several Jamaican distilleries, and may be an approachable entry point into the classic Jamaican profile, especially for drinkers who prefer their tipple sweetened.