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| Photo copyright © H.Kristoffersen |
Best Oliver y Oliver I ever had.
As most of you will know by now, I’m a Danish guy.
Therefore anything popping up in the rum world, which has
even remote relations to Denmark, is automatically interesting. As I found out
with the A.H. Riise Royal Danish Navy Rum, it’s not necessarily good.
But it was interesting none the less. And when new Danish
players emerge, I just have the check them out. I did so with Ekte, and today I have a nother Danish newcomer on review.
The Rom de Luxe Batch #1.
Rom de Luxe is a spare time project by three Danish rum nuts
who decided that meeting online and swapping the occational samples just wasn’t
enough.
At first they aimed to supply a trading platform for
rarities, where people could offer up their rare bottles for sale for a small
fee. They simply wanted to create a safe and trustworthy place for people to
trade these rare collectors items hassle free.
As they started working on the solution, they found it much
harder to market than first anticipated. Partly due to private sales on social
media platforms and of course more established trading platforms like eBay. So
the trading platform project was put on hold for a while.
But they also wanted something else: To find great rums in
smaller quantities to bottle and supply to the Danish market.
The Danish market is one of the fastest expanding rum
markets in the world, and especially in the more expensive price ranges, so it
makes perfect sense that they wanted to introduce more great rums to this
market.
So this is the primary focus of RdL today: Find and bottle
awesome rum.
I can relate to that!
The Batch #1 is a Modern Rum native of the Dominican
Republic, and is sourced from the (in)famous Oliver y Oliver compound. As with
most OyO rums, information is rather scarse and undocumented, but looking back
at previous OyO products and following a long talk with one of the guys behind
RdL, there does seem to be a rather plausible background story about the rum.
It was distilled in 2002 or 2003 on a column still –
probably multi – before being laid to rest for 12 to 14 years in what was
sherry casks with 95% certainty. No mentioning if it was PX or Oloroso.
It was bottled at mouth watering 65,4% cask strength with a
lab confirmed sugar content of 9,02 grams pr. litre of rum. But apart from
that, it should be devoid of any other additives, colouring, chill filtering or
anything else.
To me that sounds quite exciting and a little bit different
that pretty much every single Oliver y Oliver product out there. Sure there is
starting to show up some cask strength Dom.Rep. out there, but it’s still not
something that we have gotten used to yet.
Presentation
The RdL#1 comes in a rather stubby and squarish bottle
closed by a synthetic cork with a wooden stopper, and absolutely no information
anywhere on the bottle on it.
The only thing visible on the bottle it self is an etched
Rom de Luxe logo.
Now there is something neat and fresh is a huge sea of
boats, pirates and parrots.
Just a few piece of information is instead shown on a small
card board tag tied to the neck and secured with a wax seal. The text is even
handwritten by the wife of one of the guys behind RdL.
I feel the authenticity literally oozing out all over the
place with this thing. This is really a small time indie bottler just wanting
to get their little liquid treasures released into the world.
The rum is a dark copper beast which creates a very thin
layer of liquid on the inside of the glass, the ring quickly transforms into a
lot of tiny specks.
Nose
Heavy notes of dark chocolate and rum cream up front.
Thick toffee, lots of vanilla and a little oak comes after
that.
There is a faint sharpness somewhere in the back, but
nothing to suggest that we are in the mid 60s of ABV. Not even close. If I
didn’t know better, I would have thought it was a 45%’er.
After nosing around with it for a while, I suddenly
discovered some freshly cut, moist grass, which came off as insanely pleasant.
Not very complex and perhaps a bit nose heavy. Even though it
doesn’t display any crazy unpleasantries, it still feels a little lob sided.
Very nice and unobtrusive on the nose. This could turn out
the be my favorite Dominican so far.
Taste
The nose transfers beautifully on to the palate.
More dark chocolate and rum cream at first, with a very
nicely added layer of soft oaks, which gives it a slight tannic bite. Perhaps
it’s more of a nibble.
Then comes the toffee and vanilla with full force, to
complete most of the things I would have expected from a Dominican rum, but it
also brings a little squeeze of ripe oranges.
Far, far in the back, the moist grass is back, for just a
dash of freshness among the rather sweet notes.
The massive proof suits it well. It helps the flavours
expand and seem sweet without getting sticky.
It reminds me a lot of the way the Diplomatico Ambassador
felt. But the RdL actually does a way better job of incooperating 65% than the
Diplo did 47%, as the RdL doesn’t become sharp in any way, like the Diplo did.
It’s still very much a column rum, and it lacks complexity
and depth to really knock me on my ass, but it is a very nice piece of rum.
Finish
The massive ABV also helps the finish last a very long time.
It never gets lava hot, but it bring a lot of warmth, which takes a long time
to disappear. For several minutes everything feels warm and nice.
There is nothing new happening during the fade, expect for a
little bit of wet card board appearing, which unfortunately subtracts a bit
from the finaly result.
Rating and final
thoughts
Best Dominican I’ve tried so far. By miles.
It is still far from my favorite profile in rum, but this
one actually had me going for both seconds and thirds. And I have to admit that
I’ll be coming back to it from time to time from now on, when my sweet tooth kicks
in.
It retails for around €120, which may seem like a lot. But
remember that it is a cask strength rum, and we are pretty much where we are
supposed to be with the price ranges we are seeing these days.
I’ll admit that there is a lot of other choices in the €120
range, but if you like your rums sweetened and would like to try something
Oliver with just a little sugar, then you should definitely try to get hold of
this bottle.
If you’re not into sweetened rums or if you’re just so over
these kinds of rum, go to your sweet tooth friend and get him to buy a bottle,
so you can try it. Then you can decide if it’s for your or not.
For me, this was a good example of something I forgot I once
liked, and because it’s not over the top, it actually brought the sugared ones
back to my attention.
Personally I can’t wait to see what else RdL comes up with
in the future.
So far the Batch #1 is the only available product, but Batch
#2 from Foursquare and Batch #3 from Bellevue is not far away. Stay tuned for
that! I know I will.
Getting back to the #1, I have to wrap things up, and
circling back to the ”best Dominican I’ve tried so far”, I’m sticking with that.
That’s why it ends up with a very nice…
Rating: 77/100
Links
https://www.facebook.com/romdeluxe.dk/about/
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