We’ve managed to secure the only stock in Australia of this month’s Rum of the Month exclusively for our members. We are very proud to feature a truly legendary Cuban-style rum – the Ron Cubaney Exquisito 21 year old. Enjoy it with a friend, or hoard it like toilet paper… your choice!

After the overwhelming response we got to the sample bottles of Ron Cubaney 15yo we sent out for our launch we’ve decided to listen to our members – MORE CUBANEY!! So we’ve listened and more Cubaney it is.

Built on the hard work of the Oliver family and destroyed by revolution – not once but TWICE! The Ron Cubaney Exquisito 21 year old is a multi-award winning 21 year old rum made to the recipe of the Oliver family’s original distillery. Aged in the traditional Cuban method in a solera system using both American bourbon and French wine casks, this is rich and complex rum that is a delight to share amongst your (closest) friends.

Oliver & Oliver is a rum distiller based in the Dominican Republic that produces a range of top-shelf spirits across a variety of brands, including Vizcaya and Opthimus.

The Ron Cubaney Exquisito is aged using the traditional ‘Solera Method’. The solera method is based on stacking multiple layers of aging barrels (called “criaderas”) on top of each other, with each layer progressively topping up the next one down and blending with it, year after year. The word “solera” comes from the Spanish word “suelo” which means “floor”. So as the angels take their share, the barrels are topped up with the contents of the slightly younger barrel and the average age of the barrel slowly increases over the years. The purpose of this labor-intensive process is the maintenance of a reliable style and quality of the rum over time.

Our Tasting Notes:

Ron Cubaney Exquisito 21 Años Solera is a dark amber coloured rum that has been solera aged for 21 years. The spirit has a strong bouquet that is sweet with touches of dark chocolate, vanilla, honey, oranges and wood. On the palate there is balanced oak and sugar cane notes, along with complex, very full-bodied, flavours from its long aging. The finish is long lasting, smooth and mild – perfect served straight with a Cuban cigar on the side. It received a Gold Medal at the Beverage Tasting Institute of Chicago with 91 points, and a Gold Medal at the Madrid International Rum Conference.

Colour: Dark amber

Nose: Excellent bouquet, sweetish, dark chocolate, vanilla, honey, oranges and wood.

Palate: Harmonious and smooth, wonderfully balanced oaks and sugar cane notes, complex, very full-bodied, generous and excellent. Simply majestic.

Finish: Long lasting, smooth and mild with long legs.

FROM THE DISTILLERY

The ‘Exquisito’ is a modern cut rum, very aromatic and complex. This dark stock and red cherry rum stands out because of its true flavor of the oak cask. It is soft on the palate and very tasty. It is a well-structured rum with a stable body.
Its character is distinctive and vigorous with all the properties of a long aging one. It is an extraordinary and ample rum. Many consider it the best in the world.

ABOUT OLIVER AND OLIVER

Cuba has always enjoyed a reputation as one of the world’s foremost producers of rum. In the late nineteenth century some of the finest examples of Cuban rum were being produced by the Oliver family.

Juanillo Oliver, a Catalan and Mallorcan, arrived in Cuba in the mid-nineteenth century as a Spanish soldier, establishing his family on the island. After finishing his military service, Oliver decided to settle, in an area that later became known as Oliver, near the town of Las Placetas.

It was here that he and his family began to cultivate tobacco and sugar cane. The Oliver family soon began handling, storing and selling their traditionally grown products. They soon the built a mill to grind sugar cane for the production of sugars and alcohols, and Juanillo soon found himself creating local, artisanal rums and brandies.

The Oliver family’s name was soon synonymous with the finest central Cuban rums and cigars.

That was to change as revolution gripped Cuba.

During the War of Independence, separatists attacked and burned farms and destroyed the famous Oliver family distillery.

After independence was achieved in Cuba, the Oliver family abandoned its sugar cane production business, instead focusing on the cultivation and production of tobacco and other businesses and agricultural activities. They continued peacefully until 1959, when revolution again struck Cuba.

In the years following 1959, many members of the Oliver family fled Cuba and their descendants spread throughout Europe and the Americas. It wasn’t until, in the late nineteen eighties, a member of the new generation of Oliver descendants returned to Cuba.  Pedro Ramon Lopez Oliver’s curiosity led him to explore his family’s history. While poring over the family archives and papers, Pedro discovered the original formulas developed by the Oliver’s for the production of unique, hand-crafted Cuban rum.

Encouraged by his discovery, the descendants of Juanillo Oliver committed themselves to reviving the rum brand that had disappeared in the violence of revolution. In the early nineteen nineties Pedro and the wider Oliver family began to develop their rums, this time in San Francisco de Macoris in the Dominican Republic. It was here that Ron Cubaney – named after its rediscovered Cuban ancestry – was born.

The Dominican Republic shares many of the same characteristics of climate, topography, and geology as Cuba and was chosen as the ideal country in which to resume the manufacturing of this previously lost Cuban-style rum. The family operated distillery sought the advice of a group of Cuban Maestros Roneros who were living in exile in the Dominican Republic at the time. These Maestros Roneros Cubanos brought with them decades of experience in the production of Cuban rum, and became the ideal artisans to help reawaken the Ron Cubaney name.

Cuban experts were hired to help create the new plant for the production of rum in the pure, traditional Cuban style. The Oliver family had recreated the same process, heritage and formula used in the nineteenth century.  Those techniques are still used by the present Maestros Roneros Cubanos and technicians.

The plant began by purchasing 100,000 litres of distillates and malts that had been aged for 15 years from a Demeraran source, forming the first stock produced under the new Cubaney name. This was the basis of their mother rum and the single point of origin for the rums being enjoyed today.

After a hiatus of over a century, the authentic line of Ron Cubaney Exquisito can once again be enjoyed through its range of light, dark and spiced rums.