Sibling Rivalry Part Deux!

Appleton Estate Rum, 8-Year, 12-Year, and 15-Year Old
Classification: Jamaica Rum
Country: Jamaica
Region: Nassau Valley (St. Elizabeth: 18.166N, -77.728W)
Mash Bill: Fermented Molasses
Strength: 43% ABV (86° Proof)
Color: Unknown (most likely artificial color)
Filtration: Unknown
Maturation: 8 Years, 12 years, and 15 years respectively in ex-bourbon American oak
Price: 8-Year: $27.99, 12-Year: $34.99, 15-Year: $65.99

Tl;dr summary - Three rums, each one progressively older than its predecessor. Kudos to the folks at Appleton - the progression from youngest to oldest is very much in keeping with expectations. As the age increases, so too do the vanilla, oak, and roasty-toasty notes while simultaneously the fruit notes diminish. The 8-year is the most spirit-forward whereas the 15-year is the most oak-forward. It’s the 12-year that remains the sweet-spot to my tastes, a great balance between age and fruit.

Well, well, well, what have we here? Inspired by Thanksgiving Week Vacation Cocktail numero uno, I realized it was long overdue to spotlight rum on my little slice of the Interwebz. Despite being featured in numerous cocktail recipes here, rum has never starred on the big stage of an impressions writeup. In fact, this is the first impression entry featuring a spirit other than whiskey. Considering this milestone, let’s go for the gusto and make it a trio of rums, all hailing from the same distillery, Jamaica’s Appleton Estate.

The rum world is a fascinating place. Unlike major whiskey varieties like scotch, bourbon, or Irish whiskey, there is no uniform set of regulations governing the production of rum. While I will not attempt to iterate through the global spiderweb of rum regulations in this post, I will tell you that rum purchases generally require far more consumer due diligence to decipher and deduce what exactly is in that bottle of rum you are purchasing. There are two especially nefarious practices to be aware of in the rum world - misleading (or outright bogus) age statements and whether additives such as sugar or flavorings are added to the rum after distillation. Sadly, many rum producers are legally allowed to place misleading age statements as well as add additional sugar and/or flavorings to their rum without disclosing as such on their label. Thankfully Appleton Estate does the honorable thing here and does not covertly add any additional sugar or flavorings to their rums and the age statements found on their respective labels is the age of the youngest rum in the bottle.

As hinted in the King of Barbados entry, Jamaican rums are renowned for their ‘funk’ and while the ins and outs of ‘funk’ in rums is beyond the scope of this post, the executive summary is that funk in a Jamaican rum tends to be aromas (and tastes) of overripe fruits, particularly banana. Also know that funk in rums is not the exclusive purview of Jamaica, many rum producing nations across the globe produce ‘funky’ rums. Still, it is the rums from Jamaica that are most recognized as funky, perhaps due to the immense exposure they receive from their inclusion in many of the legendary cocktails emanating from tiki culture. One final funk note - while Appleton Estate certainly brings some funk, it must be stated that on the scale of funkadelic, Appleton is on the lighter side. Other Jamaican distilleries such as Hampden Estate or Worthy Park bring the Parliament-Funkadelic to the bottle and are definitely worth seeking out and sampling if Appleton floats your boat.

Appleton has offered a 12-year version for as long as I can remember and it has been a staple on our shelf since I first discovered it. The 12-year is on the very short list of rums that I recommend without hesitation to anyone that asks. It can be enjoyed neat, over ice, or as a mixer. Appleton 8-year is a ‘new’ item in their lineup, having been discontinued a number of years ago, but brought back in the summer of 2021. Along with the 8-year, the 15-year made its debut in Appleton’s lineup in 2021 and serves as a fitting layover point between the 12-year and their ultra-aged 21-year old offering.

All of Appleton Estate’s rum begins life as fermented molasses. To distill all that fermented molasses, Appleton employs both column stills as well as double-retort pot stills. While column stills are familiar to most whiskey enthusiasts as they are used the world over to produce a wide variety of distilled spirits, it's the double-retort pot still that brings a bit of razzmatazz to the party. Essentially an ingenious innovation stringing together multiple pot stills to allow simultaneous double and even triple distillation, double-retort pot stills were born from a desire to improve efficiency, but now serve as a vehicle to deliver a ester-rich ethanol prized by many Caribbean-based rum producers. If interested, a deeper dive into the anatomy and chemistry of the double-retort can be found here. Once distilled, Appleton uses ex-bourbon barrels (allegedly ex-Jack Daniel’s barrels) for the bulk of their aging duties with all aging occurring in the year-round heat of Jamaica. The journey to the bottle is completed when Appleton’s blenders select both column distilled and the double-retort pot distilled rums to be blended together and proofed to produce the final product. And speaking of final product, let's get to tasting three of them:

Appleton 8-Year

Nose: Molasses, brown sugar, gentle funk, orange zest, banana

Taste: Gentle alcohol bite, medium sweetness, fruit/banana sweetness, gentle chili and baking spice

Finish: Moderate ethanol, short length, gentle oak, brown sugar, banana, molasses

Overall: If one made a pie chart detailing the characteristics of this rum, the largest slice would be ethanol (youthful spirit), then brown sugar, then fruit. The Jamaica funk is not as pronounced as I’d like and I personally get more brown sugar notes in the taste but more molasses notes in the finish. An excellent mixing rum, but not a sipping rum for me.

Appleton 12-Year

Nose: Ripe Banana, funk, chocolate, orange, cinnamon, vanilla

Taste: Mild alcohol bite, medium-low sweetness (less sweet than the 8-year), orange, bitter orange, cinnamon, nutmeg

Finish: Medium-short in length, cinnamon and nutmeg, molasses, the slightest wisp of oak

Overall: The fruit and funk are several notches higher when compared to the 8-year. The molasses remains hidden until the finish where it just starts to peek through the blanket of fruit and spice. There is oak, but it is ever so gentle. A true jack of all trades, this rum is enjoyable neat or mixed.

Appleton 15-Year

Nose: A surprising punch of ethanol, more than the 12-year but less than the 8-year. Almost zero funk and very faint fruit. Roasted nuts, coffee, and oak char. Molasses is more pronounced on the nose than the 8-year and 12-year.

Taste: Vanilla syrup, molasses, oak char. Moderately sweet initially then progresses to a drying finish with light tannins

Finish: Oak, molasses, medium length. Given its lofty age statement, my expectation is for a much longer finish, but what is there is enjoyable

Overall: The oak is the most pronounced element of this rum, leading to a drying finish. Unlike the 8-year and 12-year, the molasses is most noticeable in the 15-year particularly in the finish. What is surprising and disappointing to me is the diminished amount of fruit and funk in this rum. While this is a sipping rum through and through, it certainly could be used in cocktails but that feels overly extravagant at this price-point. For my rum-purchasing dollars, the 15-year will be a one-and-done purchase as it does not rival the 12-year to my tastes. 

Final Verdict

The Appleton 8-year is an honorable entry in the lineup. Its current price, flirting with $30, while a notch high, is partially justified by a legitimate age-statement and a 3% bump in ABV over virtually all of its competitors. The rum certainly tastes youthful, more youthful than its stated 8-years, but this too can be interpreted as a positive as the rum mixes beautifully. There is no doubt this is a molasses based rum with a gentle Jamaican funk, it's a straightforward rum, so long as you do not have sipping aspirations for it. Things get a bit more interesting when it comes to the 12 and 15-year entries. 

I purchased the 15-year almost five months ago and since that day, I've debated labeling it as disappointing. Ultimately, I shall not do so as the connotation of that word is disproportionately harsh to the rum sitting in that bottle. While the 15-year is not a disappointing rum, it is an outmatched rum, specifically by its three year younger brother. Sampling these three rums simultaneously highlighted precisely what I desire from an Appleton rum - first and foremost I want fruit, then funk, then molasses, and lastly oak influence. Across the 7-year age difference between these three rums, as they get older, the spirit-influence decreases, the fruit-influence decreases, and the oak influence increases. Oddly, as far as the funk goes, it's strongest in the 12-year, then the 8-year, and weakest in the 15-year. Like the fruit influence, I would have expected the funk to diminish proportionally with age, but alas, that is not the case to my tastes. Perhaps the funk prevalence in the 12-year is an intentional artifact of the blender's intentions. I can only speculate on that, but ultimately, that is precisely why I adore the 12-year, it is a brilliant balance between fruit, funk, and age.

Stay funky my friends, until next time.

A hard day at the office...

Thanksgiving Vacation Cocktails - Round Three

Ohh la la, espresso martinis. I don't know how cocktail geeks feel about espresso martinis. My gut tells me that some of the 'cool kids' in the cocktail world might sneer at the thought of an espresso martini as it seems like it was overplayed back in the day like the Cosmo or Appletini. Regardless, one of the cocktail-centric YouTube channels I enjoy espoused their love for the drink and having never personally enjoyed one, my interest was piqued.

The recipe featured on YouTube calls for a specific coffee liqueur, Mr. Black coffee liqueur, which will not come as too much of a surprise if you spend time perusing cocktail-centric channels on YouTube. Mr. Black exploded in popularity in the United States right around 2019 and it seemed like it was the de facto coffee component for any cocktail recipe found on the Web that required such a flavor. The new hotness of Mr. Black plays beautifully into this week's side-by-side cocktail theme as there is another coffee liqueur in the world, and not just any old liqueur, but a titan, the fabled Kahlua. How does the new kid stack up to the OG? What better way to find out...

Ingredients

• 1.5 ounces vodka
• 1 ounce espresso
• 2/3 ounce coffee liqueur (Mr. Black for one, Kahlua Especial for the other)
• 1/3 ounce vanilla syrup (I cheated here and added real vanilla extract to taste to a simple syrup)

Composition

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker, add ice, shake it like you mean it, double-strain and serve.

Results

Before discussing the drinks, it is insightful to discuss how Mr. Black and Kahlua compare to each other. Kahlua is rum-based with coffee and vanilla added. Mr. Black is vodka-based that coffee is cold brewed/steeped in. The Kahlua is significantly sweeter than the Mr. Black when sipped neat. Kahlua tastes precisely like a coffee and vanilla syrup. Mr. Black on the other hand reminds me of an imperial stout - roasty, toasty, and not inherently sweet, but also not bitter.

The differences between the two coffee liqueurs absolutely carryover into the cocktails. The Mr. Black-based martini is not overly sweet, in fact I'd say its sweetness is neutral and perhaps just a whisker bitter. The Kahlua version is significantly sweeter, but not in a cloying way. The espresso notes dominate both drinks and truth be told, the vodka is completely invisible. Neither taste as though they have any alcohol in them at all which is quite remarkable (and potentially dangerous).

As for our personal preference, we are split down the middle on this one. Matic opted for the Mr. Black version and I opted for the Kahlua version. It's fitting that I tend to sweeten my coffee and espresso whereas my better half does not to the same degree. Therein lies the litmus one can use to determine which version to serve - for folks that take their espresso au naturel, the Mr. Black version is the way to roll. For those that want a touch more sweetness, it's the OG Kahlua that will carry the day.

One final note - both versions, while delicious, did not strike either of us as a mid-day or early-evening type of cocktail. Coffee for us tends to be a early morning or occasional post-dinner beverage. As such, these cocktails felt more appropriate as an after dinner libation, but your mileage may vary depending on how you enjoy espresso and coffee in your day to day life.

Thanksgiving Vacation Cocktails - Round Two

As promised, for round two of Thanksgiving Week Vacation Cocktails we are going old school. First appearing in cocktail recipe books in the 1920s, the Sidecar most likely was first mixed and enjoyed a tad earlier, somewhere in the World War 1 era. With over one hundred years under its belt and spawning countless variants in its wake, you would be correct in declaring the Sidecar a classic vintage cocktail. But in a twist reminiscent of Darth proclaiming his paternal bond to Luke in the bowels of Bespin's Cloud City, there is another. Hailing from New Orleans and making its first appearance in the mid-1850s, the Brandy Crusta is considered by many to be the inspiration and father of the Sidecar.

Unlike the King of Barbados where the drink recipes were identical save the rum used in each, the Sidecar and Brandy Crusta do differ by a significant degree, but the foundation remains quite similar - Cognac, orange liqueur, and lemon juice. 

Let's start with the Sidecar, a drink whose proportions are identical to a basic Daisy or Daiquiri - two ounces spirit, one ounce sweetener, three-quarters of an ounce of bitter:

The Sidecar
Ingredients

• 2 ounces Cognac or brandy
• 1 ounce Cointreau
• 0.75 ounces fresh lemon juice

Composition

Place all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake well, strain and serve.

The Brandy Crusta has a bit more going on and it should be noted that the recipe below is a modern interpretation of the original. By the mid-1900s, the Brandy Crusta had fallen out of fashion and all but disappeared from the cocktail scene just as the Sidecar's popularity really began to surge. Fast forward to the early 2000s and New Orleans bartender Chris Hannah resurrected the classic with subtle tweaks to accommodate modern preferences. 

Brandy Crusta

Ingredients

• 1.75 ounces Cognac or brandy
• 0.5 ounces orange Curacao (dry)
• 0.25 ounces Luxardo liqueur
• 0.75 ounces fresh lemon juice
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters

Composition

The Brandy Crusta was named for the sugar-crusted rim of the glass in which it is served, it's only fitting that the namesake tradition be honored. Meanwhile, place all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake well, strain and serve.

Father Crusta on the left, son Car on the right

Results

Out of the gate, let me say that both cocktails are entirely deserving of their stellar reputations. Each is wholly delicious and worthy of the effort required. The wine-soaked oak of the Cognac is perfectly complimented by the yin and yang of the sweet orange and bitter lemon. The Brandy Crusta builds upon this flawless foundation and the addition of Luxardo maraschino liqueur and Angostura bitters raise the drink without cluttering it. I realize it is a cop-out to say both are delicious and refuse to pick a side, but that is precisely where my better half and I fell in regard to these two libations. True, the Brandy Crusta has a bit more going on flavor wise but labeling it as 'better' felt like a bridge too far for us. We are going to call this comparison a draw - make one of each, sit back, sip, and contemplate life for a bit.

Thanksgiving Vacation Cocktails - Round One

Ahhh welcome to Thanksgiving week. A week spent celebrating my favorite holiday and a week generally filled with indulgences of many forms. While my much better half and I are no strangers to exploring new and exciting libations, Thanksgiving week gives us a chance to sample old time favorites as well as new and exciting concoctions that we've not gotten around to yet.

To kick off Thanksgiving week, we're rolling with a new kid on the block that we'll be mixing for the first time. As I've stated numerous times in regard to whiskey, there is no better tasting experiment than to sample two closely related items side-by-side. In a stroke of inspiration, we decided to apply this notion to today's cocktail - making two versions identical in every regard save the rum used. The original recipe called for a lightly aged Barbados rum. For the alternate version, we opted to use a staple in tiki cocktail culture - a moderately aged Jamaican rum. 

First up, the recipe. Known as the 'King of Barbados', this libation is a riff on a rum punch, with a French twist of Calvados as well as a nod to the tiki gods with the inclusion of both a honey syrup and allspice dram.

Ingredients

• 2 ounces aged rum (we used a Barbados rum in one version, a Jamaican rum in the other)
• 0.5 ounces Calvados (or apple brandy)
• 0.75 ounces fresh lemon juice
• 0.75 ounces honey syrup (equal parts honey and water, heated and stirred until fully incorporated)
• 0.25 ounces allspice dram

Composition

Place all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake well, strain and serve

Results

The two rums used in our variants of this cocktail are Mount Gay's entry-level rum - Eclipse and Appleton Estate's 8-year rum. A fair criticism of this setup is the fact that Appleton's 8-year is far more aged than Mount Gay's Eclipse, approximately four times as much as Mount Gay claims their Eclipse rum is aged for two years. This will certainly impact the final result, and it's not just extra age the Appleton brings to the drink, but also that legendary 'Jamaica Funk'. Perhaps a better comparison would be to use Appleton's entry-level offering, their Signature Blend, but alas, we'll have to leave that for another day.

As for the drinks themselves, the allspice dram packs a remarkable punch despite being the smallest component of the drink. The Calvados is a fairly healthy component of the drink, but I can't say it is all that detectable in the final drink, though I am sure if omitted, it's absence would be noticed. To our tastes, the rum, allspice dram, and lemon juice are the stars of this drink. 

Both cocktails take on a orange-clove vibe which perfectly compliments the current Fall season. As for the different rums, the Mount Gay Eclipse version is straightforward and wildly drinkable. It would be easy to consume one, then two, then six of the Mount Gay version. The Appleton version is unsurprisingly a tad more complex, there are more flavors delivered when sipped alongside the Mount Gay version mostly thanks to the 'funk' and 3% extra ABV of the Appleton. 

Personally, if I were mixing this drink for family and friends, I'd almost always opt for the Mount Gay version as it is a fantastic riff of an easy-going, easy to enjoy rum punch. If however I had a friend that loved traditional tiki cocktails or Jamaican rum, then the Appleton would be the appropriate rum.

For the next round of vacation cocktails, we'll be traveling back in time to visit one of the old school's classic offerings. Until then, cheers my friends.