Barrel the Bottle, Binny's Podcast, Rum Show, I'm Greg. I do communications with Binny's. But you know that because you're a faithful listener and you have stuck with us for like five years, which is pretty amazing. The Rum Show. It's only been five years. I don't know, how long has it been? The Rum Show. Love that. I look at Jim, but Jim wasn't around. And I'm down to the Rum Show. The Rum Show. Six or seven years of this nonsense. And we got another one. Today, I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. I'm Chris, I have no faith in anything. Roger's waiting for you to do it for real. So he sells wine. I'm Roger, I do beer and I'm also a Rum enthusiast. Hey, I'm Pat, I'm all about having fun. You know, go to a friend's house, light a fire in the kitchen, maybe go to SeaWorld, take my pants off. What does he do? Is that Anchorman? Is that what that is? Yeah, it's a rum episode, all about having fun. We got six handpicked rums, came in recently. Recently being the week of Christmas when your local Binny's was too busy to put them on the shelf. But now they're on the shelf at your local Binny's and we're gonna taste them and talk about them because they are unappreciated gems in the distilled spirits world. Are we gonna have to taste funky, poopy, estuary rums? One and a half of them are. Dunder. Dunder. Oh, you're doing ACDC. Uh-huh. Dunderstruck. We'll talk about Dunder when we get there. But first up, we're gonna taste some pretty easy drinking, crowd pleasing rums, one of Roger's favorites. We got two handpicked single barrels in from El Dorado. So we're gonna start with one of those. Oh, it's not even just one producer. We've got an assortment of rums. Oh yeah. El Dorado continuously putting out some of the best rums on the market. Their distillery, Pat, you need to fill listeners in. It's essentially like the museum of rum. They've amassed all these different stills. The wording I use to the staff is that this is the most historically significant distillery in the Western hemisphere. El Dorado Rum is made at DDL, Demerara Distillers Limited, which is a big distillery and beverage company in Guyana. I think they produce and bottle all the Pepsi or something for Guyana as well, a whole bunch of stuff. The Demerara River Valley in Guyana is famous for producing some of the highest quality sugar cane in the world. It's your standard run of the mill sugar cane, but it's just a higher quality. This is a giant river, coastal river delta area, really rich soils, makes great sugar cane. It's in the tropics. El Dorado, of course, is Spanish for the Dorado. Yes. And it's funny, they bought the trademark of El Dorado from Cerales, the Puerto Rico's number two rum distiller behind Bacardi. Who had a golden rum named El Dorado or something back in the 60s or 70s. Everyone knows El Dorado is not in the Caribbean. Was going to guess Chrysler? Please. Was it a Chrysler? But anyway, back to DDL. Cadillac. So how we got to DDL, Demerara Distillers Limited today, is that way back in colonial times, every different sugar plantation had its own still. Why would a sugar plantation have a still? It's the only way to preserve sugar cane after the harvest. Because once sugar cane is cut, it immediately starts to rot. And so you either process it into molasses and then refine sugar, or you distill it into rum. It's the only way you can save what you've spent time and energy and human resources growing and cultivating, is by either refining it or distilling it, right? And so every distillery, every sugar plantation had a still. And as the sugar trade kind of slowly collapsed, because we kind of... Damn sugar beets. We discovered the value of sugar beets. And then so we could grow these sugar beets in Europe. We didn't need tropical sugar cane in order to make table sugar. And so the sugar industry collapsed. Wait, what did people do for sweetness before like, you know, 1500? I don't know. Can you imagine being a medieval peasant? That would suck. The worst. Like, oh my God, I can live with no Jordans or something, but live with no sugar? Like, get out of here. I would be totally down to be part of the feudal system as long as I was on top. Well, yeah. Even then, Chris. Even then. No, I know. Well, I mean, the upside of sugar beets is that, you know, harvesting sugar cane is terrible, especially back in the day. But sugar cane processing, if you're going to appreciate true sugar, which if you want to learn all about sugar, you should listen to our previous Barrel to Bottle episode, all about simple syrups where we do a deep dive and talk through the different tines of sugar and evaluate them. But the ironic thing with a lot of brown sugar is that it's actually refined sugar that has molasses put back into it, which is to give it color. Before you guys start another sugar episode. Joke's on you. Let's all take a moment to appreciate good old fashioned all American corn. Yeah, baby. Corn syrup. Okay, back to the detail. So as the sugar plantations slowly collapse and went out of business, they were absorbed by neighboring plantations and they took over their land and all the distilling kit. So the stills and the fermenters, et cetera, were moved over to the surviving plantation. There was a slow conglomeration and amalgamation of all these different distilling plantations. Until by the late 60s, we only had a couple surviving. Then post Communist Revolution Cuba in the 60s and 70s, other Central, South and Caribbean nations wanted to communize their governments and whatnot. These assets were brought under state ownership and conglomerated further. So all these things were brought under one roof essentially in Guiana, and with an exception, but that's later. Either way, all these different types of stills ended up under one roof, and under control of the government that only lasted a couple of years. Then it was re-privatized and became Demerara Distillers Limited, okay? And then they finally brought in the last of the fold. I think it was the late 90s, early 2000s. One last other sugar estate had a couple different stills on their estate that they brought back over, and all this is under one roof. So where does that lead us today? Demerara Distillers Limited has nine different stills under their one roof, essentially. I bet they're all different shapes and sizes. All different shapes and sizes. Yeah. And of those nine, they make, I think, 27 or 28 different distinct rums, different marks of rum. They make this wide variety of styles, and then they can blend those different styles together and then age them. And so you can come up with many, many different rums. Two of the stills of note are that they have the only remaining surviving wooden stills in the world. So that's the big thing. They have three of their stills are what they refer to as their heritage stills. They have the only functional wooden column still in the world. It's a wooden coffee still. It's a double column still made out of wood. Mind blowing. Is it like the still of Theseus? Yes. That's exactly how I described it to our staff in Oakbrook earlier this week, and I'll get there. Then they have two pot stills. They have a single pot still and a double pot still. Double pot still. Like a still feeds another still. One still feeds vapor into the other still, which boils the second still, which then feeds into retort and then a rectifier. A retort is a rum-specific thing and we'll get to later. But these stills- Oh my God, I thought this was going to be a quick one. We can do a lot of stuff later. These stills are made of a local Guyanese hardwood called Greenheart wood. It's a wood that they used on local like docks and jetties and such because it's very water-resistant and it's leak-resistant and all that. But still, over time, it's going to rot. So these stills are made out of singular planks of wood. So as one plank rots, it is replaced with a new piece of Greenheart wood. Therefore, even though some of these stills date back to the 1730s and they've been in continuous, near continuous operation since, the pieces of wood have been replaced as necessary. So it is the still of Theseus, right? Even though we've replaced every board in these stills, is it still the same still? And could you build another still out of the old boards? No, because the whole reason you replace the old boards is because they've lost their structural integrity for distilling. But part of the character of these stills is the built up residue of previous distillation runs. Totally wild. Totally wild. Long story short here, the pot stills that are made out of wood, they have, they're very unique in that, sorry, Greg, I said very unique. He got a bit, I'm in your head. How's it feel having me live in your head? The thing with wooden pot stills is that you can't just crank the heat and the steam, so they have steam coils inside that boil the wash, but you can't just run it full bore the way you would a copper still. To like clean it out or something. Yeah, so they require very nuanced, slow, long distillations. And so when I say long, I mean, your standard Scotch whiskey, spirits still run that for something like a Glen Glass or a Glen Drana, these other Scotch's we've tasted recently, these are going to take like six hours. A spirit still run in one of these Demerara pots, these wooden pots is taking 12 plus hours. So it's very slow and it allows all these really heavy, oily elements to come through in the distillate itself. So their pot still liquid is really rich and big and chewy. And that's what Roger's favorite, the naval rum ration was mostly made of for many, many, many years. A pot still rum was, nobody knows for sure, but it's the common kind of conjecture is that it was possibly 80 percent Guyanese pots, wooden pot still rum, like really big, heavy, chewy rums. I mean, if you want to get a taste of history, we're talking about a wooden pot still that was commissioned in 1732. I mean, the fact that this is still functioning totally is crazy. So, the first rum I've passed around. Finally, we'll talk about a f***ing rum. Oh, we have rum still. So, the first rum we passed around, we did two single barrels of El Dorado this year, a 10 and 11 year old. I passed around the 10 year old first. It is from a couple different column stills, Savalle still, which is a four column French still, the Coffey still, two column still, and then a single wooden pot still, and the double wooden pot still. The single wooden is called Versailles, they pronounce it the dumb Kentucky way, and the double wooden pot still is called Port Morant. The single wooden pot still Versailles, normally what you get in a regular El Dorado rum, that Versailles still, that make is only put in El Dorado 15 year old and 21 year old, so kind of cool. But long story short- How many brands are coming out of this one distillery with all these different stills? Dozens. So how does that work in capitalism? Because they make 28 different styles of rum, they can make however many, whatever the integer is of those blends. They can sell you your batch, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because this has the double pot and the single pot, it's got a lot of that heavier, oilier character to it, but it's blended with the lighter fruitier column still distillate. It's a kick ass rum. These are some of the only El Dorado's you can get to cast strength. This 10 year old is 55.2 percent alcohol. El Dorado 10 year, Binny's Hand Pick. This is a batch, a single barrel. Single barrel on the shelf at 79.99. Very nice. All right, let's talk about it. For a 10 year old rum. Finally. I'm loving the pineapple and the fruitcake on here. Big time. Caramelized banana, like big tropical character. Yeah. Then you get it on the pallet and it's just waves of different spices. Then carrot cake for sure and then it's cinnamon and then there's like this banana leaf kind of character in the finish. Oh, it's so good. All that. This is stunning. Pineapple upside down cake. Yeah. With the little neon cherry in the middle. That's key. Isn't that good? This is fantastic. History in a glass, dude. Okay, so it smelled the same 20 minutes ago, but it tastes a lot better now than I know. I know, all of that. Isn't that cool? There's nothing else like this in the world. I was supposed to go to this distiller a few years ago with Jeff. I was going to do this one again. The big boss man asked Jeff why we should go, and Jeff goes, I don't know. He was like, well, you should just get him to send samples. Then Jeff told me, and I almost killed him. So you haven't seen the double wooden pot still? This is a notoriously hard distiller to get into. You can't just go and visit, they don't do public tours. It has to be a prearranged industry thing. It's not. It's a 300-year-old industrial facility. It's a sugar mill on a dank f***y river that feeds into the ocean. I want to say it's 10 or 20 miles inland from Georgetown, Guiana. Georgetown is the capital right on the ocean there. This is delicious. What am I doing with this? It's almost too nice and interesting and complex to make into a cocktail, but rarely do I want to just sip a thing of rum. It's not precious. First of all, at a higher proof like this, make a rum old-fashioned, dude. Oh, hell yeah. That lets the spirit shine because there's not much else in it. Yeah, but at 80 bucks, you're not losing your mortgage payment over making a good cocktail with it. This is the little spice in the tiki drinks. That's the whole point of high potency, high flavored rum in tiki cocktail culture. What do you call this if it's this and some orgeat and some lime juice? Basically, a Mai Tai. You're almost there. Yeah, true Mai Tai doesn't have a bunch of juices in it. I would argue you could make a pretty exceptional Mai Tai with this where it was very restrained. Maybe a little bit of acidity is always nice with rum. At this higher proof, you definitely should experiment with some ice. Yeah, maybe a little tea punch. Yeah, big block of ice. Yeah, tea punch. A little lemon juice, a little bit of simple syrup. I mean, you're not far off a daiquiri at that point. Something else you might want to consider with this is doing a Manhattan-ish riff, but instead of going with a red or a rose over mousse, try a blanc vermouth with this. Interesting. I think that could be pretty cool. That'd be pretty good. I'm going to go get a blanc vermouth. Yeah. I mean, some orange bitters, some orange ango. We have orange bitters here. Should we get a blanc vermouth to dry this? I mean, it depends on how long this takes, but yes. Yeah, maybe. You're talking blanc vermouth not dry. I'm talking blanc vermouth not dry. Which I think is perfect for this. I'm talking sweet, but with a stone fruit accent. Yeah, absolutely. I think that would be pretty f**king cool. I agree. What do you guys think of this tenure? It's awesome. It's good, it's oily, it's rich, it's fruity, it's tropical. This is what good rum tastes like. I can't say enough good things about El Dorado. Anyone that's ever met me is, I'm sure at some one point or another been told that they should drink El Dorado rum. I've often said that their 15 year is one of the best bottles in our shelves, regardless of category, regardless of price point. These single barrel picks are exceptional. They are not to be missed. I'd like to add the detail that it has a rum funk factor of 0.02, which is almost non-existent. Pretty much non-existent, I would say. I mean, they're only used in molasses distillate there. So any funkiness is just weird barrel character at that point. Next up here, El Dorado Barrel No. 2, which is an 11 year. And this one is again, a blend of column and pot distill, but it's only the Versailles single wooden pot still. So like I mentioned- Single still, single barrel? No, not single still, because it's got a couple different column stills, but the pot still component was only one of the two pot stills. Still the coffee? The single, the single, no. Well, it's still coffee, not the wooden coffee. Not the wooden coffee. Neither of them- Wait, there's a not wooden coffee still? Yes, neither of them have the wooden coffee. That's C-O-F-F-E-Y for kids playing at home. So this is the Diamond Coffee Still, the I-Flat, and listening at home, I-Flat is spelled U-I-T-V-L-U-G-T. I'm sorry, what is spelled that? You fluge it? I think you spelled that. Oh! It's Dutch. Those powders. You're not wrong. That was a Dutch sugar plantation. You, I am told it's pronounced I-Flat or I-Flot. That's cause they all gave up. U-I-T-V-L-U-G-T. I-Flat or I-Flot. And that's a four column French style still, despite the fact that it's a Dutch plantation. And then the single wooden pot still. And Coffey still is named for the inventor, right? Coffey is named for Aeneas Coffey, the patenter of the Coffey still, which is a two column continuous still. I'm trying to think of a candy that has like brown sugar and orange peel and I can't, but that's what's right up front here. I agree with that wholly. This 11 year versus the 10 year, I think this shows more of a mineral character. I think it's a little brighter and higher tone in its fruit. And I think the spice is more prominent. It's not as meaty and oily as the 10 year. It's a little lower in proof. It's 53 versus 55. This has been a toss up. 50 50, I've taken these around to a lot of stores now and half the staff seems to prefer the 10 and the other half seems to prefer the 11. I think I prefer the 11. Initially, I think the 11 shows the proof a little more. Yes, I think so too. But I think it's in a more elegant way. It's got enough lightness and airiness to it and lighter, high-tone fruit that it's like, I don't know what else to say besides calling it more elegant. Yeah, I completely agree with everything you just said, the contrast between the two. It is a more lifted and elegant and lighter on the palate, which is not to say lacking in character. It's loaded with flavor. There's a lot of fruit. There's a hyper-ripe fruit. Higher proportion of column still in here than the 10? I mean, it feels like it. They didn't disclose the exact proportions. Just in the weight and the unctuousness, I think it feels like more columns still distill it. Yeah, it certainly does. I like that you guys are picking up on the contrast there because that's something, now that we have 45 stores that sell a lot of product, we can't just buy one barrel of something because it yields 20 to 25 six-pack cases or so, depending on what it is. And then so we can't even talk about it without teasing people at customers, not teasing people, teasing customers at stores who are never going to see it. So a lot of times when we're doing barrel picks, we're trying to get a couple, but we want to be able to tell a story about it. So we want to say, here's column A, here's column B, and check with the Binny's near you, check the website, whatever. And so we just did that recently, we were just down in Mexico the other week doing a bunch of tequila barrel picks at Casa San Matias and Casa Siete Leguas. And we did several repasados and nejos at each where we actively chose of the ones we like the best, which ones have kind of conflicting or contrasting stories to tell. And that's kind of how we approached this. Makes a lot of sense because if you buy both of these, you're not getting anything. You're not getting two of the same ones. Yeah. Yeah, I love the fruit character on this. I know in a lot of like Caribbean cuisine and Hawaiian for that matter, guava jelly is a popular. I thought you were going to say spam. No. Spam jelly. This has like a guava character to it. It's like bacon jam. They make bacon jam. How come they can't make spam jam? Oh, you certainly could. Really? Sure. Oh, we're doing a spam jam wine pairing episode. Pencil it in, baby. Let's go. I think with these rums, another thing that would be fun to do is to try these alongside some of the other El Dorado's. Yeah. If you don't have them already, it's a good excuse to taste this, especially alongside the 15 and the 8, I think in particular. The 8 is the unsung hero of the lineup, but you'll get to taste some of those unique marks that we were talking about. If you've had El Dorado, I think a lot of people's exposure has been the 12 year, which is an excellent rum. It's beautiful. It's definitely more on the like vanilla, maple, sugar, brown sugar realm. But some of this complexity here is just next level. And again, it's great. Like get these before they disappear. But when they do, these are going to be gone fast. You're going to want to check out the 15 and the 8 year in particular. We are down. We are at 30 cases each on these left so far, which is actually decent. But we're recording this mid January. So listeners, depending on when this comes out, if you're interested in these, get your ass in gear and get to your local Binny's. Up next, as producer Jim let us know, is a rum that is being requested by many customers overseas who are begging to have us ship them this handpick to places. Just like throw a dart at a Balkan state and or an Eastern Bloc, and they're banging on the door for this. I don't think they... Balkanization of the rum industry? I don't think they prefer Eastern Bloc anymore. Soviet era. They've shed that quite some time ago. You seem to be confusing me with someone who cares. Anyway, I think it's worth mentioning, it's pretty amazing that Americans continue to sleep on rum and they aren't in the Balkan region of Europe. Are you shaming Americans for being behind the curve compared to the Balkans? Yes, we are. I think you got it. All right, so up next is a Binny's Beverage Depot exclusive batch of four square rum from Barbados. This is a 12 year old rum. This is like all four squares, it is a blend of column and pot distilled. So like we mentioned with El Dorado, it is lighter fruitier from the column, richer fatter fuller oilier from the pot stills. I'm ashamed to admit this. I thought the bottle was going to be square. Instead of round, I'm surprised that it comes in a round bottle, like a Balvany bottle. You're so freaking literal. What? He's a caveman. I picked up on that. Let's talk Barbados. Our oldest modern interpretation of rum, essentially, as far back as we can trace, comes from Barbados. Barbados is the ancestral home of modern rum. There is probably some sugarcane, fermented, and then crudely distilled liquids being made in Southeast Asia many years before. But for what we consider rum as a modern product, Barbados is the birthplace. Barbados rum is started from the Barbados sugar trade, which they were a notable producer of sugarcane, not so much anymore. But all their rum stylistically is molasses-based distillate, not fresh-pressed sugarcane or anything else. Foursquare itself has column stills and double pot stills. Retorts are a piece of equipment that is essentially a micropot distillation in the lying arm of the still. So if you're unfamiliar with how a still works, a pot still works, there's a pot, and you're boiling a solution of water and alcohol. And the way distillation works is that water has a boiling point of 212 degrees, and alcohol has a boiling point of 165 degrees. So if we take some mixture of alcohol and water, which, what is that? That's wine, that's beer, that's pulque, which is agave, fermented agave juice, whatever, we are boiling that in a closed vessel. If we heat that vessel to say 180 degrees, the first vapors that are going to rise are alcohol, because it boils at a higher percentage point, right? Then we are boiling the alcohol vapors off, it hits what is called a line arm, which is this angled arm that condenses those vapors down to a condenser that cools them and chills them into a liquid. People remember the classic swan neck at the top of a still and then a curving copper- Exactly, a curving copper worm. Then so if we do that twice, we end up with very high proof liquid that we would then call rum or vodka or whiskey or whatnot. Vodka, higher proof still though. Vodka strips out what is considered the actual flavor of the input ingredient, whether it's grain, potatoes, sugar, whatever. So we have this blend of pot and column, but the pots at Foursquare have retorts and in that line arm, there's these secondary little tiny pot-like chambers that can be filled with wash from the previous stills, so undistilled, but fermented alcohol The heavy stuff that didn't make the story. Yeah, exactly. And in Jamaica, they fill them with the super gross stuff like Dunder, which is essentially sour mash and bourbon, which is- So it is actually gross. When I say it's gross, it's actually gross. Yeah, like bacterially fermented gross nonsense. And so with those retorts, you can really manipulate flavors. And so Foursquare has a double retort pot still, and the retorts on their stills have chilled heads, which have these layers of cooling water pipes running through the tops of the retorts. So depending on how they manipulate the water flow in the tops of those, they can manipulate the spirit that comes out. So even though they just have the column still in the pot still with the double retorts, they could, in theory, make practically infinite amounts of different distilled spirits, depending on how they manipulate the retorts and stuff on the pots In a way, a retort acts like a plate in a column still. Yeah, like a micro distillation. Exactly. But strangely adding flavor, depending on what's in there. It seems like more like a botanical basket in gin, if it were in a different stage. You could distill gin in a double retort still and use the retorts as the botanical baskets. That'd be cool. But either way, that's Foursquare in a nutshell. Foursquare is the archetypal Barbados rum, molasses distillate, column and pot distilled blend. It is- Shaking the bottle, folks. It is- After that very, very deep dive, mega nerd delving into distillation. Don't make fun of me for my passion for transparency. That's highly educated. Now, the thing with Foursquare though is every single rum they produce is natural color and no added sugar. Whether it's a 12-year-old Dorley's rum, which unfortunately we don't sell at Binny's, or RL Seals 12-year-old rum, which we do sell at Binny's, or Probotas rum, which is a blend of Foursquare rum and Jamaican Pot d'Isil rum, we have all kinds of options for you, but they are all natural sugar and natural color. That's a big deal with rum these days because there are no rules to follow so much with coloring and sugar additions with rum. Yeah. Pat, you're freaking me out, man. You're waving that around. Let's try the rum. This grip. This rum's really, really good. This is 12 years old and 62% alcohol. Now, this is not a single barrel. This is a hand-selected batch. So they made a batch and we essentially either said, yes, we'll put our name on that or not. We have a lot of it available. Oh, right. Yeah. It smells simple. It smells easy. And then as you sip on it, it unfolds and it unfolds in this ever-expanding, unfolding way with all this complexity. It's a spicy meatball. I mean, it's about the same proof as the Eldorado's. It definitely expresses that fiery spice. It's higher proof than the Eldorado's. The Eldorado's are 55 and 53 and this is 62. So Richard Seal, the man who runs Four Square, admits and says, we make rum for the bourbon drinker. And so their rums are put into first use ex bourbon barrels. And this is lactone at work. This is American oak at work. This is toasted coconut, vanilla, that creamy character, that is all American oak just blast in this room. I mean, that just goes to the point that there's no need for caramel coloring in this at all. No, this is a ridiculously crowd friendly flavor. People love this. You know, four square rums have become a darling in like the allocated type of spirit chaser crowd for a good reason, though, because this is this is delicious. It's high proof. It's natural color. This is everything everybody should want. Like baked pineapple brioche. I mean, the coconut is off the charts to me. You get a ton of that coconut character. It's a lot of fun, right? So available at a Binny's near you for one twenty nine. OK, you're your whiskey guy who's going to pay that much. This is 12 years old and it has absurd complexity and 62 percent alcohol. This is this is worth every penny. This goes back to the idea that Americans just are not on the rum bandwagon. Yeah. And the quality of spirit you can get from rum is remarkable. And a lot of aged rums, for what it's worth, are considerably lower proof. So yeah, that's where you get a 99 percent of all rums we get are 40 percent alcohol or 80 proof. And so even if I get a hand pick, I'm lucky to get them, convince them to do it in 92, much less 124. All right, so those are three distillery bottled handpicks that have come in recently. I've got three more rum handpicks that came in from an independent bottler based out of Kentucky. What? Bottling their spirit in Indiana. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, that's weird. At least it's not Italy. Hey, Pat's been to Italy, did you know that? Yeah. You haven't heard this clip show yet? So our natural transition here. We're next going to try, I have three barrels of rum from Rolling Fork Spirits. We had Turner Wathen on the podcast years ago and when he was first launching Rolling Fork Spirits, which is an independent bottler of rum. And this first barrel we're trying is a four square that was aged in Ruby Port. It's so dark. I was going to say this is so dark. Ruby Port. And that's a nine year old four square. What's our proof on that, Greg? 53.14 alc by volume. Similar distillates which tried different ratio of pot and column. There's no way to tell what they blended of those two before put it into these different batches. Finished in Ruby Port or aged in? It's got to be finished. It would be way overblown if it was the whole time. Probably. It just says age nine years, Ruby Port cask. It seems much more subtle in the nose. This is just, you know the stats, right? Like they picked up the cask at some point, started aging it, and now you're just picking it from a warehouse. So rolling forks big thing is taking the best rums they can find and pairing them with the best wood they can find. So early on, that was a lot of bourbon barrels and they were real big on tatery bourbon barrels. It's like whatever weller barrels we can get, whatever pappy barrels we can get, blah, blah, blah, blah. It made great rum, you know, but nowadays they're a little more open to some other things. So of these, I'm going to show you three rolling for Binny's hand picks today. And only one of them is a bourbon barrel. But this first one, Ruby Port, it's killer. It's got all that, like, gooey, gloppy red fruit character. Sure does. And a bunch of spice, but it's not, like, out of balance at all. This is a beautiful rum. And it really coats its alcohol. Mm-hmm. It absolutely hides it. Cherries, man. Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me of like a, yeah, like a spiced cherry pie. Yeah. Okay, if you like the Angel's Envy stuff, but you always thought it was a little too whisky-y, this is fun. It expresses almost as a mixture of the Angel's Envy rye and their bourbon together. The port and the rum influences. Huh, man. This, too, I mean, with these expressions, do not fall into this trap of remember that most rum is 80 proof. So, put some water in this, you know, to see how it changes. Experiment with, you know, very small from as small as like, you know, an eighth of a teaspoon to an ounce. Yeah, because a couple of these are pretty high. Mm-hmm. Grace, do you like that one? Yeah, it's really nice. The port character is very upfront. Cocoa and caramel on top of all of it. Running out of descriptors. It's worth saying it's such old hat to us. But again, we've been celebrating Cider because Cider Summit is right around the corner. And, you know, it's sad with these stereotypes that persist in the beverage world. And much like cider, there's still just this perception that all rum is sweet. And it's just not true. The best rums are, you know, definitely are not overly sweet. And you're really missing out if you enjoy aged spirits from the breath of the whisky category to aged tequila. You're going to find an aged rum that you're going to love. If you're into weeded bourbon, you better try this. Yeah. Yeah. Most bourbons are sweeter than the rums we're trying. Yeah, no weeded bourbon. Wait for the next one. So, that nine-year-old Port Casque Four Square, 89.99. That's fantastic. Natural cast rank, natural color, all that jazz. The next barrel is a 13-year-old Jamaican rum from the Worthy Park distillery, big high ester distillery. Yeah, estery. Aged in a Weller bourbon barrel. Oh, boy. Oh, my God. Did you pick up some Worthy Park rum cream as I requested? I did not. 61.74%. I'll bring it for another episode. I asked one thing. He's like, why don't you do rum adjacent things, like this Worthy Park rum cream, just because he wants to try the Worthy Park rum cream. It's like, I'll bring you the Worthy Park rum cream for some other day you want to try. It's nodding at acknowledgement. Yeah. I think our listeners need to hear our review. Proclaiming for the rum cream. I wasn't going to grab like six- This is coming from Mr. Lambic over here, who walks past the Lambic shelf and goes, I'd like to try this $30 took one. We better talk about this on the podcast. But it sure brought an extra dimension to that episode. Every day and not talk about it on the podcast. I still say that was really good. It was so good. I still have heartburn from it. I listened to that this morning. All right. This is a- Actually, I think I do. I fucking literally still have heartburn from that. No. I thought I was having a heart attack yesterday. Shut the fuck up, bad ass. Worthy Park is another one of the, much like the Tilquin of the Goose community, it's one of the select few that the rum nerds are really endeared to. And it's because of that funky- It's funky. Oh my God. What you're tasting is rotten stuff that was in a pit behind the distillery that they're like, you know what we should do with this pit of rotten stuff? Put it in the next stuff we make. They're like, put it back in there. Yep. Dandistrict. Okay, first of all, how old did you say this was? 13? 13. 13, yo. 13, yo. If you're a fan of tropical fruit, I mean, so the point of this, we keep, let's explain dunder without being like too- Again? Ridiculous. Dunder is the sour mash of rum, so the stuff that's left over in the bottom of the still when you're done distilling, you take it and you let it continue to ferment in its own way. That means fermented rinds and sugar cane greens. No, because in theory in the still, it's just the liquid. Oh. So, it's just the gooey, gloppy stuff at the bottom of the still, because not at distilling on the fibers in rum, but then that's sour mash, and then you would immediately add it to the next batch for sour mash bourbon. But with Dunder, you literally put it in a hole in the ground behind the distillery, and then you add rotten fruit to it and allow dead animals to fall into it or whatever. It's like the La Brea Tar Pets. The dead animal thing is like not done on purpose. It's an exaggerated thing. It's an open pit in the back of the distillery. Petruga Dunder. That's producing a lot of carbon dioxide. So, if some unfortunate animal would get too close or too far in the middle, they would fall into it. Yeah. So, because of all these fruits that they're... So, they're throwing in the veritable fruit salad of tropical fruits. And spent cane waste in fruits. Why do we have all this fruit that they're throwing in the hole? Because they know that it's... Because they know that they eat a lot of fruit. They know it's going to add this ester. It's all about pushing the ester content up. Because remember, at some of these distilleries, they're actually distilling rum that's not aged for uses in the cosmetic industry. So when they're making perfumes, they're taking some of their most high ester rums and then selling them for that purpose. That's how aromatic they are. What are the distillates called that have different levels of ester? So it depends on the distillery. So each distillery measures their distillates by grams per hectoliter of essentially dissolved esters per hectoliter of alcohol. They name those different variations by mark, and they have different marks. So some distilleries might have eight, others might have 12 or something. The whole thing with that super crazy high ester marks is they originally produced for Germany because there was a typical to most alcohol innovation, it was a tax dodge. And so Germany put in a crazy high import tax for distilled spirits. And so Jamaica started making this ridiculously high ester rum that would then go to Germany and get watered down with native distilled German brandy and sugar and turned into a local drink called Rumverschnitt. And the real, real word. So then when Germany was like, you can't just send 40 tankers of rum, you was this much in tax. And they're like, whoa, settle down. That's not rum. That's flavoring. That's no different than food coloring. Like we don't owe you that much in tax. And they're like, oh yeah, you're right. You don't. And then all this bullsh** was made in Germany. And it got the Germans essentially hooked on this crazy high ester profile. And then Germany wised up to it. I want to say in the late 70s, they put an end to that thing. And then so ever since then, Germanic and Danish nations have been like the biggest importers of high ester rum. And like all these crazy high ester rums. So the point where most distilleries, whatever their highest ester count rum is called, they call that Mark Continental, meaning it just goes to continental Europe. I can imagine that the people eating schnitzel and cabbage that's been boiled with mustard on it are into the really high ester rum. The rum for schnitzel. Drink your rum for schnitzel, schnickle fritz. So high ester rum, to Jamaica's credit, Jamaica was the first distilling country with actual labs and actual scientists and people actually analyzing things to the molecular level. They're on the cutting edge of science in distillation more than any other Western country. And we just like, well, whatever is rum. And we don't think about it in any way. So we keep talking about these esters, but let's describe them for our listeners. Okay, here's what I've been thinking about this and smelling this this whole time. Here's what I think. If you took a thousand banana peels and let them sit outside, and then somehow condense them into a bouillon cube. Banana bouillon, baby. Yeah, like hyper-concentrate banana peel bouillon. Overripe banana, greeny, grassy, leafy, that type of thing. I will say, though, in this particular single barrel, that it was in such a big, broad, sweet, single barrel of bourbon, there's some balance here. I think very much so. There's vanilla and caramel and it's there. It's offset by some richness. If I had to come up with one amazingly tropical in a varied sense way that encapsulates both the aroma and flavor of this, I think I'd have to go with Jack first. It's like cherimoya for sure too. It's pretty damn good. Just as obscure and equally delicious. It smells super funky, but it's like orange Julius. If you're really interested in exploring ester level, we have in most but not all Binny's still, we got a limited amount. We got these tasting kits in from the Hamden Estate Distillery in Jamaica in November, December this past year. And it's eight 200 ml bottles of eight different ester levels of rum from the Hamden Estate, all unaged rum going from what the Jamaicans would consider essentially zero, which is like 100, 250, all the way up to the craziest of continental shit, which is 1800 plus. They're the eight different distillation marks that Hamden makes and has made for decades. You can taste them all unaged in an eight times 200 ml pack from one of the oldest and most revered, independently operated Jamaican rum distilleries. Hamden Estate, famously, producers of rum fire, which is what people try. Famously, one of those things that Roger annoys me about constantly. Hey, I asked so much about that rum that I think I finally got Brett to bring it in. That's a funky one. It's very intense. When are Pete Freak's going to get into this kind of rum? Because there's a lot of overlap there. There is. Like intensity in notes. We'll see. Hey man, it's the summer of rum, right? This year is going to be the year. This year is the summer of rum. Summer of rum. All right, I got one more for you guys. The last of our three rolling fork single barrels going around is a 12-year-old Brazilian rum aged in Ambarana. Oh, God. We've had a lot of Ambarana. Wait, wait, wait, give it a chance. So most Brazilian rum is fresh-pressed sugar cane on a column still. So it's gonna have a bit of that grassier, funkier character to it, a la Rum Agricole. This is bottled at 52.56% and it is from the pre-distillery and in Ambarana and bourbon casks. I would say that this is one of the more deft uses of Ambarana I've encountered. It's gotta be finishing, right? Yeah, it's still Ambarana or it's, you know, 12th use or something. There's still some Ambarana DNA there, but it's not one note the way a lot of Ambarana can be, which I really do appreciate about this. I mean, it is very distinctive. This is different. It can very easily overtake beer and spirits. This, I think, is there. It's not overwhelming. I will say, I think it probably combines with the rum to produce. If people have to just have a knee-jerk reaction descriptor for Ambarana, it's usually cinnamon. This, I think, is a little more complex. Almost more like potpourri. Bright on the cusp of too much for me, but it's really unique, and I get why everyone's kind of fallen in love with it. It's a perennial line stepper, that's for sure. If it's on the edge of too much for you. I'm getting a lot of spearmint notes. Do you get that? You can get that inside of the poop. Oh yeah. The poop. Light roast Ethiopian coffee, absolute funk fest. This is not as funky as the Jamaican rum we just had. But it's a different kind of funk. I agree, it's not as funky. It's a different kind of funk. The other one was like rubber and banana peel. And this is like, it's deeper and richer. I don't know, it's just not for me. You can't tell me that it's differently funky, gentlemen. Differently funky. This rum's great, man. I think this is totally cool. This tastes unlike anything else in our store. And I am guilty of saying on several occasions that different single Ombarana barrels taste like nothing else in our stores. I'm not retracting that. Those have all been true at the time. But this is unlike anything I've ever tasted. And I have tasted more than you. So I... Dear listener. Yeah, dear listener, I appreciate you and I love you. But at the end of the day, I really think this is wholly unique in its place here. It's very, very, very unique. So very, very unique. First thing I thought was, this is the most distinctive rum I've ever smelled. It's up there, right? Yeah, it's very different. And I don't want to just like crown it like that, you know? As usual, Jaboy brought the heat. The heat. He did bring the heat. Jaboy did. Jaboy. How do you spell that? J-A-B-O-Y. No, B-O-Y. Are you kidding me? I looked it up on Urban Dictionary. Jabby. To see if they could tell me the etymology of it. That was the name of my shiv when I was in Stur. Jabby. Roger, go a little hard on that, Peters. Keep going. Yeah. All right, so I was thinking, seemingly this would be a bit of a, kind of a riff on the El Presidente cocktail is somewhat in this family. So it's kind of has its heritage in a Martinez, really old school daiquiris. It was like people coming to the Caribbean, visiting Cuba during around Prohibition. And they're obviously very familiar with martinis. So let's change the base spirit up and use rum. I think we went with the right vermouth here with a Blanco instead of a dry. That's a sweet clear vermouth. Right, yeah. It's a sweet vermouth with the color either not added or filtered out. So do we want it to be equal parts or you want me to go a little more rum? A little more rum. I'm sorry, what's the consensus? Two to one. Yeah. Two to one vermouth to the rest? Oh, no. Look at Raj pouring like this, like he's not gonna just drain my bottle of rum here. Well, that's the thing. I mean, it's kind of sad, but yeah, if we want to do two to one for everybody, it's gonna use a little bit of rum. You guys all said it would make a wonderful cocktail and it was worth it. It's five to one, one and five. No one here gets that alive. The day I skipped. Dude, when I called Roger like seven hours ago, he was like, I don't want to make rum cocktails for all you guys. This is, you should, all this last minute bulls**t. And I was like, yeah, I totally agree. Yet here he is. And look how happy he looks, dude. Rum cocktails for all of us. Smile on his face. This is pure joy. I didn't call you b****s, I said, what the f**k? Big difference. I would just own it and claim you called me b****s. It's like Pat talking about gas station sausage. Ooh, he means happy. Loving? Yeah, with a twinkle in your eye. This turned out pretty nice. I definitely am glad we went two to one. Equal parts, the rum would have been lost. Two parts rum, one part Dolan Blanc from Muth, and this is with the 10-year-old El Dorado, Binny's Handpicked Single Barrel and a couple dashes of Roger's father-in-law, Gaz Regan's Orange Bitters. Roger, you've done yourself proud. Gaz, bless his heart, RIP. He was at the forefront of mixology and in a non-pretentious way. You just made this obnoxiously delicious Rum Manhattan with rum and blanc vermouth and the cheapest and most awesome bitters in a Binny's near you. This needs a cherry. It does need a cherry. And a lime wedge. You know, this would be good with a lime-like twist. Like, just get the aromatics in there, a little bit of oil on the edge. Express some lemon zest. What an unconventional Manhattan, but like, holy s***, is that good? Nailed it. Yep. Yeah, this is great. Blanc Vermouth, El Dorado Rum, Manhattan. What's the Manhattan of the... Get on it, nerds. And Regan's Orange Bitters. So you could use the different orange bitters, Angostura, very orange-forward, but a little more baking spice than the Regan's. I bet this would be good with a spicy pop. I wouldn't say no to a little sparkling wine in this as well. Maybe top it off with a little bit of there's no need to involve Alesha in this. A little, a little, a speck. I'd use something that would be too pedestrian. I'd use like St. Hilaire. No, how dare you. I think this would be a little bit better if it were on the rocks instead of shaking. Yes. Because I want to let it go. You know, I want to let it ease up a little bit over time. I don't think it requires it. Start off strong, keep going from there. But **** is this good. It's fantastic. It's really nice. All right. Not every podcast has a host that suggests Blanc Vermouth. But this one does. All right, so that's six hand-picked rums. We've seen a pretty good gamut and they're all very good. And bourbon drinkers need to pay attention to this stuff. Take a tropical detour this winter. Like these are around at your local Binny's. They came in at the end of the year and they're available. And this is exactly the type of thing I'm looking for for a mixed drink this winter. Yeah, exactly. Mixed drinks don't have to be precious. You can riff and invent or everything is a twist on something. This is fantastic. Try this cocktail. Seriously, this is really good. The main message I'm taking away from this. Again, just to really emphasize this, like the tropical detour, I love that. You know, rum is one of those things that, again, it's just not going to be that big of a departure from things you already enjoy. You know, you got to get past some of the really budget blended stuff and the age rum category is just, we laugh. We just talk year after year. When are people going to discover it? And give it a chance, man. Keep your eye on binnys.com/events. We're going to have a whole lineup of interesting events for the Binny's Lincoln Park coming up soon, including Summer of Rum. Summer of Rum. And World of Whiskeys. And World of Whiskeys. Coming back soon. All right, and we'll be back in your feed next week. I think we're probably due for a wine episode. Nah. But until then, hang out. We'll see you soon. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. I'm Chris. And I'm Pat. Whammy. 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