Rum Corner, 2nd anniversary

Happy birthday to me!

Another year has gone by and the Corner now has 2 years under its belt.
So, an obvious reason to do a small recap of what has been going on.


Another 31 reviews done

Well, I have to admit that I'm not too content with the numbers.
My ambitions always were to be a bit more active than that.

But sometimes life hits you in the face and forces you to prioritise, and even though I love rum, I love my family infinitely more, and at this point in my life, work is unfortunately more important than rum (because I kinda need work to make money to buy rum...).

Done is done. Hopefully I can amp up the release schedule next year.

German Rum Fest 2016

At the time of writing this, I'm in the airport waiting to return home from another great rum show in Berlin.

Dirk and his awesome crew did an excellent job again this year, and created another superb rum experience. Good venue, great food, a large variety of tastings and masterclasses, and most importantly a shit load of awesome rums!

But the best thing of all was meeting of with the extended rum family and even expanding it a bit.
Probably the best thing about the rum universe is actually the people in it - not the rum (please don't tear my head off).

And meeting so many friends at the rum festival just puts that into perspective.

Thank you for a great couple of days everyone. I hope to see you all again soon.

Joining the Rumanics

It goes without saying, but I'm actually a little bit honoured to even have been in consideration to be part of it, let alone actually joining up.

It will force me to try reviewing from another perspective and ultimately I'm looking very much forward to meeting up with the other guys. Being the youngest and least experienced of the whole bunch, it will also be a great platform for learning and evolving.

New scoring system

Another piece of recent news. Because the Rumaniacs operates under a certain format and with certain guidelines, I had to adapt the 100 point system in one way or another.

So even though it was a huge hassle and a substantial piece of work, I decided to just rescore everything and adopt the 100 point system across my entire page.

I unintentionally pissed off a couple of people along the way

I know. That is not something to be particularly proud of. And it wasn't actually intentional.
But you can't make lemonade with out squeezing the hell out of a couple of lemons.

I admit, that in some cases I knew it would probably end up this way, before I typed the first letter. But I never set out to make enemies.

When you are dealing in opinions, emotions and economics, at some point you are bound to piss somebody off. And sometimes even a noble cause can go haywire and shit just start hitting fans in a way you didn't expect.

In all cases I started out in the most civil way possible, but if you ask the right questions (or the wrong ones depending on how you look at it), things can explode in your face without prior warning.

One of the lessons I've learned this year is that, doing what I do and how I do it, I can't be friends with everybody and still keep my integrity. And when push comes to shove, my integrity just can't be compromised.

To all of you whom I may have offended during the last 12 months. I'm sorry.
Unless you behaved like a jerk and deserved it. Then goodbye and good riddance.

Summary

Despite not having had the time to write nearly as much as I had hoped, I don't think my sophomore year has been too bad. In fact I think I could have done a lot worse.

One year ago I said that my rum journey had been an awesome adventure so far.
Year number 2 has done nothing to suggest otherwise.

Rum is still awesome, and the people in it (most of them anyway) are even more awesome.
And there is no chance in hell that the flame with which my rum passion burns, will die down anytime soon. I'm just getting started.