While passing through Panama’s very pleasant airport en route from Haiti to Guatemala I picked up a sample pack of Nicaragua’s Flor de Cana rum.  While I had heard lots of good things about this rum I had never really tried it.

I have to be honest and say this rum did not exactly grab me.  Mind you, I do not have anything very bad to say about it either.  Flor de Cana make nice smooth rums.  I just do not find them especially interesting.

Flor de Cana Extra Dry (4 year old rum at 40%):  Light, dry, honeyish nose.  Tasting reveals a pleasant, somewhat honeyish rum.  There seems to be a faint hint of chocolate.  Despite the honeyish profile this rum is not cloyingly sweet.  There is a little burn, but I would consider it a smooth rum.  While this rum goes down quite nicely I get an odd plastic note I do not much care for - this flavor seems to hang around in the background of both the nose and the taste.  Overall, a smooth, unexciting mixing rum that is not offensive when taken straight.

Flor de Cana Gold (4 year old rum at 40%): Similar honeyish nose to the Extra Dry.  The palate is a little sweeter than the extra dry, the honey is stronger, and there seems to be a faint hint of caramel.  Unfortunately I also get an unpleasant suggestion of something astringent, on top of the same plastic note I got from the Extra Dry.  I like this less than the Extra Dry and would not want to drink it unmixed.  However, it mixes smoothly enough with coke.

Flor de Cana Black Label (5 year old rum at 40%):  The same honey nose as above, but more intense and now carrying light floral notes.  The palate is significantly smoother and fuller than the two younger rums.  There is a fairly deep honey flavor, along with a hint of sharpness, and a suggestion of some kind of blossom - maybe orange blossom.  I get a hint of the plasticiness I found in the two younger rums, but it is no longer distracting.  This would make a flavorsome mixing rum.

Flor de Cana Grand Reserve (7 year old rum at 40%): Rich honey nose with an underlying spiciness, perhaps wild honey rather than generic mass-produced honey. The palate is full-flavored honey, with a rich toffee undercurrent.  These smooth sweet tastes share the stage with some spicy, woody and vanilla notes.  While the rum itself is not especially syrupy, flavorwise it is all about sweet and simple tastes - basically there is not that much going on.  Incidentally, the plasticy note from the younger rums is gone.  This rum strikes me as too boring to sip, but it could work for those who appreciate subtlety.  As a mixer this stuff is clearly quality.  Save it for drinks that will show up its rich smoothness.  This rum makes a great rum and coke for those times when you want something smooth.  Go easy when pouring the coke though since rum this smooth and mellow can easily get lost.

Flor de Cana Centenario (12 year old rum at 40%):  This rum was not part of my airport sample pack.  I tried it a couple of times in a bar in Antigua.  Unlike with the above rums I never did a side-by-side comparison.  In any case, the Centenario did not strike me as that much of a step up from the Grand Reserve.  This is another rich, smooth, honeyish rum.  Alongside the honey I got a little spice and woodiness, but there were not exactly layers upon layers of flavor to explore.  I need to try this rum again.  However, I think I will end up rating it similarly to the Grand Reserve - i.e. a sipper for people who appreciate subtlety and prefer a mainstream and inoffensive taste, and perhaps a high quality mixer for drinks that show off the rum.

My conclusion?  I would be pleased to find the Flor de Cana rums at hand, but I would not make too much effort to seek them out.  I do not find them interesting sipping rums, but they all make for a pleasant rum and coke in which rummy richness replaces rummy bite.  As mixing rums, the longer aged offerings would work well in rum-heavy drinks that require smoothness and silkiness.  I can see the Black Label or Grand Reserve making a great El Presidente.  I usually prefer more assertive rums, but Flor de Cana could work on when something smooth, rich, and undemanding is required.

One place I very much wanted to visit in Haiti was the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince. Haiti no longer sees many tourists, but back in the day it rivaled Cuba as a Caribbean playground. The Hotel Oloffson, dubbed the “Greenwich Village of the Tropics”, saw all kinds of famous visitors, many of an artistic bent. In particular, Graham Greene was a regular at the hotel. The Comedians, Greene’s novel about Duvalier’s Haiti, immortalized the Oloffson as the fictional Hotel Trianon.I dropped by the Hotel Oloffson while taking a look around downtown Port-au-Prince. Port-au-Prince is not a nice city, so the Oloffson was a pleasant retreat in which to while away part of the afternoon.

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While in Haiti I spent around a week in Cap-Haitien. Cap-Haitien was the nicest part of my visit to Haiti, being more pleasant, relaxed and interesting than Port-au-Prince. I stayed in the atmospheric old Hotel Roi-Christophe, parts of which apparently date back to the 18th Century. There was a serious oil shortage during my visit, the result of the road to Port-au-Prince having been cut by the storms and floods that had all but destroyed the city of Gonaive. The combination of the oil shortage and the nearby humanitarian disaster lent the city an air of crisis. There was no electricity, and nightfall saw UN patrols rumble through pitch-black streets. The hotel bar was a rare oasis of light, drawing in aid workers who sat around drinking beers and planning sorties to Gonaive.  Even that oasis of light tottered on the brink of being extinguished.  With no fuel available in Cap-Haitien, the hotel manager was forced to drive to the Dominican Republic border just to buy fuel to keep things going for another couple of days.

Chilean UN soldiers attend mass

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Barbancourt is an interesting distillery. Calling the House of Barbanourt eccentric would be a stretch, but it is definitely an anomaly in the rum world. Standing out as it does from the pack, Barbancourt attracts more than its share of controversy. While few deny that Barbancourt produces delicious and quality rums, some question the raw materials used.

The marketing blurb goes that Barbancourt distills exclusively from fermented fresh sugar cane juice, following the seasonal rhythms of the sugar cane harvest to produce a Haitian version of Martinique’s famous agricole rums. However, some say Barbancourt takes a less discriminating approach, feeding its fermenting vessels and stills with sugar syrup and molasses during the seasons when fresh sugar cane juice is unavailable, producing a delicious but odd hybrid that is quite unlike the rums of Martinique. Through visiting the distillery I hoped to learn about how Barbancourt is made, what makes it unique, and where it fits in comparison to other rums.

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In Haiti I was surprised to find all sorts of obscure products bearing the Barbancourt name.  Besides the well known Barbancourt rums there was a comprehensive range of Barbancourt liqueurs, and a rum called Berling, also produced by Barbancourt.  In fact, most of these ‘Barbancourt’ products have nothing to do with the internationally famous Rhum Barbancourt.  Haiti has two rum and spirits producers, both legitimately using the Barbancourt name.

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Who knew that Grand Marnier oranges came from Haiti? I sometimes worry about my level of obscure booze related knowledge, but until I visited Cap-Haitien I had no idea Haiti was the leading source of fine orange flavors in French liqueurs. Grand Marnier, Cointreau and Marie Brizard all rely on Haiti for their bitter orange needs.

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Barbancourt in a coconut on the beach, an excellent reason to visit Haiti.

Strangely though, I only tried Barbancourt once before visiting Haiti*. I first tasted Barbancourt while in Cambodia, a trip on which I seem to have tried a lot of interesting products. For a small and poor country Cambodia has a surprisingly good selection of imported booze. This must say something about the type of foreigner Cambodia attracts. In any case, that Cambodian taste of Barbancourt made a big impression. I do not recall which of the Barbancourt products it was (probably the 5 Star), but it tasted unlike any other rum I had tried.

On my trip to Haiti I wanted to see what Barbancourt products were available there, which ones were popular, and how the locals drank their rum. I also wanted to visit the Barbancourt distillery and learn more about how Barbancourt rum is produced. I will write about the Barbancourt distillery later. For now lets just look at the rum.

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I meant to post this weeks ago. . .

While in the Dominican Republic I spotted a magazine article saying that Bermudez rums were in the process of being launched in the United States for the first time.  The Bermudez rums are pretty good.  The Bermudez Aniversario 1852 ended up being the bottle I took out of the country with me.  Yes, I even picked it over the Brugal Extra Viejo!

I have no idea if Bermudez will be made available throughout the whole of the United States.  The article only mentions North Carolina.  What do I know anyway?  Perhaps Bermudez has been available in the U.S. for years and a new distributor is simply creating some publicity for themselves?

However, just in case there is somebody in the United States who read about Bermudez rum on this blog, wants Bermudez rum,  and cannot find Bermudez rum, here are the contact details of the importer:

C&R Imports

(919) 272-4165

pereza@cnrimports.com

Maybe somebody can import this stuff to New Zealand?

When the world thinks of Haitian rum it generally thinks of Barbancourt, an exceptional product compared by some with the finest cognac. Barbancourt is universally well received and can hold up its head in the finest of company. Few care to know Clairin, Haiti’s ‘other drink’, Barbancourt’s rustic and alcoholic cousin, a relative frequently found incoherent and exhibiting delirium tremens.

While traveling in Haiti I made an effort to get to know Clairin. It was no easy task. Requests for information were often met with nonsensical babbling, contradictory answers, and invitations to have a swig of something horrible. Only occasionally was I rewarded. At the end of it all I was left thinking Clairin is probably a waste of time. I would like to be proved wrong, but for now that is how I see it.

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I have been traveling around too much to be in Mixology Monday mode recently.  Unfortunately I missed the last one on 19th Century cocktails.  How did I manage to miss that?  It sounded great.  Ahh. . .the travails of travel.

Anyway, this time round the theme is Guilty Pleasures, hosted by Two at the Most.  The main idea behind the theme seems to be ‘comfort cocktails’, similar to ‘comfort food’. There is also a suggestion that it could include drinks that appeal a poorly educated palate.  Hmm. . .

Forgive me if I randomly muse rather than picking a single drink.

OK, what I’m really going to do is smack you in the face with a Bunnyhug.  However, I’ll soften the blow by first musing on cream, creme de menthe, and other inoffensive things. Read the rest of this entry »