Category: spirit reviews

The Real McCoy Limited Edition 12 Year – A Peek Under the Hood

If you’ve paid any attention to the high-end rum world as of late, you’ve no doubt noticed a large upswing in the number of special, limited-edition releases by the major players. Guyana’s El Dorado has a healthy handful of special “finishes” (red wine, white port, Madeira, Sauternes) for their twelve- and fifteen-year mainstays. Mount Gay has its Origins series (pot vs. column, virgin cask vs. charred cask), and a pricey, limited edition XO cask strength. Ron Zacapa’s Reserva Limitada 2014 claims to have spent two additional (?) years aging “…in a herb garden created high above the clouds…”

On one hand, special releases are a good thing for the rum category, providing enthusiasts like yours truly with more collectibles for their shelves. Equally important, they provide strong evidence outside of the rum world that there’s more to the category than millions of liters of Bacardi silver and Captain Morgan. On the other, some of these releases feel like gratuitous money grabs. Sure, they may be limited release, but do they really warrant the 2x or 3x premium for similar products from the same producer? Into this maelstrom of special, limited release products steps The Real McCoy, a relative newcomer to the rum world, that recently released a limited-edition twelve year rum. Let’s put it up on the rack and take a look.

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A New Batavia Arrack from By the Dutch – Not What You’d Expect

A welcome outcome from the now decade-long focus on authentic craft cocktails is that many obscure ingredients from dusty cocktail books are now available on store shelves and backbars. American spirits importer Haus Alpenz has been particularly instrumental in reviving obscure ingredients, including Batavia Arrack Van Oosten, an older sibling to Caribbean rum. However, in the decade since its release, the Van Oosten’s unusual, raw funkiness hasn’t led to its widespread adoption. Thus, I was recently surprised to see another importer bring a second Batavia Arrack into the U.S. Having tasted and used this new expression from By the Dutch, it’s a very different animal and worth a fresh look. Before jumping to tasting notes and recipes, let’s dig in to a bit of Batavia Arrack history to set the stage.

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Checking out Demetrio Tequila

Tequila is big business these days. Consumers have been bitten by the agave bug, eagerly snapping up spendy bottles that fifty years ago would have been labeled “Mexican brandy.” While there are plenty of big brands (Jose Cuervo, Patrón, Sauza) and celebrity-backed brands (Carlos Santana and Casa Noble, Justin Timberlake and Sauza 901) clamoring for attention, there are also dozens of decades-old Mexican distilleries quietly (relatively speaking) producing top notch tequilas. One such brand that’s somewhat new to the U.S. market is Demetrio.

While tequila has a reputation with some as Mexican firewater that requires lime and salt to choke down, it may surprise you that Mexico has extensive and comprehensive regulations regarding tequila and its parent category, mezcal. These regulations are known as NOMs (Norma Oficial Mexicana), and included among the regulations is that each licensed distillery receives a government assigned NOM number, present on any bottle produced. Multiple online NOM databases can help you dig deeper into your bottle’s background. It’s not at all uncommon for a distillery to produce multiple brands of tequila, which a NOM database search will clearly show, as you’ll soon see.

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Ron Cartavio – Peruvian Rums That Belong in Your Arsenal

Close your eyes, and image a dark, intense sipping rum, created in a distillery surrounded by vast sugarcane fields and then aged for a decade or longer. Odds are you’re picturing an idyllic Caribbean island like Jamaica or Martinique. You probably weren’t thinking of a coastal valley just fifteen minutes from the Pacific Ocean in South America. Sure, Peru is known for Machu Picchu, pisco, and wine, but rum? Believe it or not, rum from Peru makes sense – numerous South American countries support sugar industries and produce rum, including Venezuela, Guyana, Brazil, and Argentina. Knowing that, it’s not a stretch to imagine that Peru might also play in the cane spirits world. Since the high-end Cartavio rums started appearing on shelves around 2008, they’ve won a bushel of awards at spirit tasting competitions. Let’s check it out.

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Avuá Cachaça: A wonky introduction to Brazil’s national spirit

July 2015 – Mrs. Wonk and I are seeking respite from the stifling New Orleans heat and humidity at Arnaud’s French 75 bar. Tales of the Cocktail hasn’t flown into full swing yet, so it’s just the two of us at the bar. I spy a bottle on the backbar unlike anything I’ve ever seen – downright architectural, with angles, lines, and curves all about. What is this mystery bottle? Some new high-concept vodka? I casually ask the bartender, and the bottle appears before me, alongside a small sample in a glass. The aroma hits me before my fingers touch the glass. I smile. Oh yes, this is cachaça.

In the simplest terms, cachaça is made in Brazil from fresh-pressed sugar cane juice. If this sounds like rum, you’re on the right track. More specifically, it very similar to rhum agricole, a style of rum made in the French Caribbean from sugar cane juice rather than molasses. So what’s the difference? In terms of the production process as the average person understands it, not a whole lot. Sugar cane is crushed to extract the juice, which is then fermented and distilled, followed by an optional aging step. Per regulations, cachaça is bottled between 38 percent and 54 percent ABV, and up to six grams of added sugar per liter is allowed.

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A Tale of Two Piscos: Pisco Portón and La Caravedo

Imagine you’ve taken a seat at your friendly neighborhood craft cocktail bar. As you scan the bottles, you see all manner of gins, tequilas, rums, brandies, but only a single bottle labeled “whiskey” – no Scotch, no bourbon, and no rye – just “whiskey.” You opt for a classic Manhattan, made with, of course, whiskey. Your first sip is filled with smoke and brine – it seems it’s a smoky Scotch whiskey, rather than a vanilla forward bourbon or a spicy rye like you’d expect.  Suddenly that classic Manhattan is not such a classic anymore.

You might think it’s ridiculous for a bar to have only one type of “whiskey” when there’s such a broad range of flavor profiles, but something akin to this happens with pisco, the wonderful grape-based brandy from Peru. If a bar has pisco at all, it’s likely to be a single bottle, which is a shame because the range of piscos available have quite a range of flavors. I was vividly reminded of this recently when I sampled two piscos from the same producer side-by-side.

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