Cane Island Trinidad 8 Year Old

Description

Let’s go back to the traditional home of exceptional rums…the Caribbean! An 8 year old, ex-bourbon barrel matured, pure single rum, 100% matured in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago – The Cane Island Trinidad 8 year old.

Cane Island has been buying, blending and bottling rums from around the world for around 10 years now and the Trinidad 8 year old is part of their ‘Single Estate Series’.  As it says on the label – this is 8yo minimum aged rum from a single estate in Trinidad, namely Trinidad Distillers Limited (TDL). If you haven’t heard of TDL – that’s ok, it’s much, much more commonly known as Angostura Distillery, which I bet you have heard of!.

Interestingly, the molasses used in the production of this rum is sourced from outside the country as the last sugar refinery in Trinidad and Tobago closed down in 2007. The Molasses now comes from Guyana, the Dominican Republic, and Fiji.  Fermented for between 48-56 hours using their own proprietary yeast strain.

The Cane Island Trinidad 8 year old is column-distilled in TDL’s five-column still with heavy spirit being tapped at around 80% ABV from the first column and a much lighter  spirit tapped from the fifth. Several medium-body spirits are taken from other points on the stills and used for blending. All of these spirits from differing points in the still are aged separately for 8 years in ex-bourbon (Jack Daniels & Four Roses) casks before blending and bottling. Cane Island are quite open about sugar and colour – they add around 10g/l of sugar and may use E150 (caramel) to colour their rums for consistency. We applaud their transparency!

Rum Stats

Tasting Notes

Nose: Mashed banana, stone fruit , stewed apple and pastry – like bakery apple slice.

Palate: Lovely visocus mouthfeel – coats the whole palate instantly. Sweet tinned prunes with chocolate notes, salted caramel, liquorice, coffee and vanilla custard

Finish: Sweet and easy with a nice mild pepper to offset. The fruit and spice notes really last and that slight pepper walks with them the whole way.

This is a truly easy going and most sippable rum.  Whilst sweetened – it’s not overly sweet, and the pepper really offsets that nicely.  A very approachable rum that won’t scare  a ‘newbie’ with new and unfamiliar notes, but with enough complexity and great balance to satisfy a season rum drinker.