Description
Welcome to a rummy Easter treat! Our Members Extra from the Grove Distillery in WA is just that – hot cross buns in a bottle! Enjoy the Hot Cross Rum! If you’re rather partial to a toasted hot cross bun slathered with butter – well this is your huckleberry!
This is a STRICTLY LIMITED-EDITION Easter wonder with only 200 bottles produced. Outside of ‘The Grove’s’ West Australian cellar door, the ‘Tribe’ is the only place to get it.
So at last – an Easter treat for the grown-ups! A rum that oozes sultanas, cloves and doughy flavours by the bucket – but all wrapped up in a rum that’s got it goin’ on! There’s a touch of funk too – the spices don’t mask anything – rather they add to the experience.
Yep, it’s a spiced rum! But it’s much more than ‘just’ a spiced rum. Much more than just a liberal use of outside flavours to disguise a sub-par spirit. For a start, the base rum is 4-year-old, single cask, first fill bourbon cask aged (the 100L bourbon barrel used to age it has previously aged their own Bourbon). This 4 year old rum is then set to steep in the spices, botanicals and fruit for two months to extract all those delightful, well, hot cross bun-ny notes we love.
Look, let’s be honest. If you don’t like Hot Cross Buns – you’re not going to like this one. If you DO like a nice tasty, toasty Easter bun with a steady stream of melting butter dripping down your fingers, then you really should get into one of these limited edition Easter wonders!
Check out their Rum Affogato Cocktail Recipe and what we can only imagine is one of the yummiest cocktails ever – The Hot Cross Rum Apple Crumble Cocktail!
Our Tasting Notes
Nose: Well, as a matter of fact it smells like hot cross buns. Sultanas, mixed spice and cinnamon. BUT –there is more. There’s a real Caribbean-style funk there too, right at the front of it all.
Palate: Believe it or not – there are lots of Hot Cross Bun Notes here. The sultanas really burst through, but the mixed spice, cinnamon and citrus peel aren’t lost. Tastes amazingly like a (gasp) Hot Cross bun! There’s even a buttery quality to the palate as well that completes the hot cross experience! Sweet, but not cloyingly so. Those mixed spice notes definitely keep the sweetness in check, but they can’t hide the funky tropical fruit notes of the rum itself.
Finish: Once again, the liquid hot cross bun just keeps on giving. All those Easter bun-ey flavours keep on going around and around and around. Like kids on Easter morning.
Whilst this is an amazing re-creation of the flavours and smells of hot cross buns in a rum form – it’s certainly not a ‘one trick bunny’. Yes, the hot cross bun is strong in this one… BUT, there is definitely a Caribbean-esque rum at the heart of it. Very approachable – at 40%abv, it’s certainly not challenging to drink neat, with many familiar notes and qualities. But – also complex enough to allow me waffle on for at least three or four paragraphs.
Go on, your kids will be hand-over-fisting Easter-eggs all morning on the 17th – you deserve something to at least help you zone out their sugar-rush! And this is definitely in-theme with the day! So load up a freshly toasted hot cross bun with an absolute slathering of real butter, pour yourself a Hot Cross Rum, and sit back and enjoy crazy sugar-day! If you can’t beat em, join em, after all!
From The Grove Distillery
We have a deep love for craft that’s inspired by Margaret River Wine Country, there’s something special about this place. Here in the sub-region of Wilyabrup, we are bound by the ocean on three sides creating high annual rainfall, which is captured on-site and triple filtered before being distilled into our small-batch spirits.
This is The Grove’s first edition in our Collector’s Series. The spirits that are bottled as part of this Series capture the Spirit of The Grove – a refined elegance that can only be achieved through time and experience. A true collector’s item and a nod to the heritage of the first distillery in the Margaret River Region.
We’ve crafted Hot Cross Rum to make this year’s Easter celebrations even better. It’s a new blend we’re excited to share, inspired by our award-winning Caribbean Spiced Rum, infused with the joy of Easter celebration. We’re paying homage to our spirit for crafting unique liquor that holds history.
James and Assistant Distiller Matt have taken the traditional flavours of a hot cross bun; spices, raisins, orange, vanilla, marrying the spices and spirits together over many months. The result is a spirit infused with Easter celebration, with a cinnamon, clove and raisin aroma. Present on the palate; caramelised raisins, vanilla and cinnamon, with notes of clove and a twist of citrus. Finish with a lingering taste of sweet raisins and molasses.
Enjoy this rum neat, with a hot cross bun of course!
About The Grove
Established as a boutique winery in 1995 and evolving in to liqueur and spirit production in the mid-2000’s, The Grove Distillery was the first craft-distillery in Wilyabrup, Margaret River. From the beginning, Founder Steve Hughes and Head Distiller James Reed had a focus on dark spirits, and after nearly a decade of distilling and barrel-ageing rums, whisky’s and bourbons, this distillery is creating some one-of-a-kind pieces of Australian craft-spirit history.
Head Distiller James lived in the Caribbean in his sprightly youth and it’s here that he saw the locals in Saint John on the Virgin Islands making their rum in ex Jack Daniels barrels sourced from the US. He knew that to make a delicious dark rum he would need to do the same.
Luckily, James also makes some of the best Kentucky-style corn mash whiskey (bourbon) you can get. It’s the barrels that have aged our bourbon that we then use to age our Rum – giving it it’s distinct flavour.
We hand-bottle everything before it’s sent out, winning awards both locally and nationally for what we do here. This is the spirit of the Grove, it’s bravery, it’s not being satisfied with normal, it’s making bloody good spirits while having a good time
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