As followers of this blog know, I’m a big fan of Lost Spirits Distillery and their very scientific approach to understanding and then optimizing each phase of rum making to make exactly the flavor profile they’re targeting. While already receiving rave reviews and awards for the first rum iteration, Navy Style, they’ve recently released a second iteration, Polynesian Inspired rum. For those of us who don’t live in California it’s been might tough to get our hands on the Polynesian, as the only distributor who had it initially doesn’t ship anywhere, including Washington State where I live.
A few days ago I finally got my hands on three bottles of the Polynesian Inspired Rum. After trying it out I hit up Bryan Davis, co-owner and mastermind of Lost Spirits Distillery, for details about how he makes the Polynesian style different than the Navy Style. What started as a simple question ended up being a 90+ minute Skype call where he walked me through his presentation at the Miami Rum Renaissance, as well as answering a whole bunch of other questions I had about his process and the distillery itself. Coming off the call I knew there was way too good information to cram into just one very long, rambling post so I’m breaking what I learned into several posts.
For this post, the big news Bryan gave me the OK to share is that Lost Spirits Distillery will be releasing a third style of rum within the next month or so, a Cuban Style that will be drier than the Navy and Polynesian. Bryan says the wood does more of the talking in this rum while the fermentation components do less. I’m sure the Cuban will be a Tour de Force of flavor much like the first two, and my next quest is to get ahold of a bottle of it. Bryan anticipates that the Cuban style may even supplant the Navy Style in popularity. Bonus tip: If you run into someone wearing a Lost Spirits shirt at Tales of the Cocktail 2014 in New Orleans next month, flag them down and you may be able to score a sample!
Looking forward to getting a few bottles of this. Love their three other rums.
How did you get these bottles? I'm in Seattle too, and I'd love to get my hands on these rums.
My bottles were purchased online. Check out places like HitTime, Beltramos, DrinkUpNY, etc… The Lost Spirits site has a list of retailers. Supposedly there's now a supply of the Lost Spirits in-state, but I don't know if they've hit the liquor stores just yet.