Black Tot day tasting.
On July 31st 1970 the Royal Navy halted the rum ration for the sailors. An institution that had started around 1655 and at one time included a ration of half a pint of rum daily. For this reason July 31st is known as Black Tot Day and lovers of rum celebrate all over the globe by consuming a (responsible) quantity of rum.
The idea behind this tasting was to explore the various island styles that make up a typical Navy rum blend (so focusing on the English speaking islands) plus with a couple of extra nods to the French and Spanish style.
With rum, fermentation is predominantly where you build your flavour and distillation is where you select which bits you keep and which you leave out. I wanted to show different approaches to fermentation i.e. short vs long and also different approaches to distilling i.e. technological advanced, highly scientific approach vs traditional and also huge industrial style column stills, tiny wee column stills and ancient wooden coffey and 200 year pot stills. Included within all that was a few variations on maturation and cask usage.
This particular tasting was to be augmented with a couple of extras. First, if you had a smart-phone you could look at pictures of the different stills and distilleries as I had uploaded some pictures from google images to this blog (see below and sorry that I've not credited the original photographers - if I can find who took them originally I will, promise). And second, I purposely left out Pusser's Blue Label from the tasting selection as I gave people the option that if they bought one across the bar then I would give them a Ron Zacapa 23 for free. Thus fulfilling the part of actually drinking a proper Navy rum on Black Tot day, and also seeing if the audience could then recognise it's component parts that they had drank earlier in the evening. The Zacapa allowed me to talk about Solera ageing and give a nod towards the Spanish style of making rum. Also it was a nice one to end the evening on, especially as the Rhum Agriciole and Guyana and Jamaican Hampden would have been a little bit harder work. One of the Guyana Mezan bottles was sent incorrectly so I had to do one on one night and the other on the second - that's why there are two listed for number 4.
The tasting was king of divided up into drinks pairs with 1 and 2 being the easy drinking, 3 and 4 being slightly more challenging and un-rum like, 5 deeply pungent and 6 going down the Navy route and with 7 to sip a a nice reward.
Good reactions across both nights. Obvs. Zacapa came out as a winner. Everyone liked the Trinidad - but then what's not to dislike? The Foursquare was a love or not that bothered. For those who liked a bit more complexity the Mezan's were winners and for those who were into single malts the Agricole was an eye-opener. I was fairly pleased that people got into these slightly more tricky styles. The Jamaican was a love or hate and no where in between. But I did guarantee that I thought that after the tasting they would forevermore recognise a big estery Jamaican pot-still if ever presented with one.
Here's the list in full. As always some tasting notes and more information on the distilleries to follow sometime in the late future. (If you going to rock up some tasting notes then should at least consider these drinks in some depth and that takes a bit of time.) Still they will get done one day.
1. Plantation - Original Dark - 40% - Trinidad & Tobago (Angostura)
2. Foursquare - Rum 66 - 12 YO - 40% - Barbados (Foursquare)
3. Trois Riveries - Cuvee du Moiln - 3 YO - 40% - Martinique (Trois Riveries)
4. Mezan Guyana 1990 - 20 YO (Single Cask) 40% - Guyana (Versailles Pot Still at Enmore)
4a. Mezan Guyana 1998 - 13 YO (Single Cask) 40% - Guyana (Savalle Column at Uitvlugt)
5. Smith and Cross - Plummer and Wedderburn Pot Still - 57% - (Hampden, Jamaica)
6. Pusser's Blue Label - 54.5% - British Virgin Islands (Admiralty Navy Blend)
7. Ron Zacapa 23 - 40% - Guatemala
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