Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum matey – that was the theme of our July Rum Tasting.  So it turns out that when you send out a Rum Tasting invite, people do not throng to the tasting tables.  What is it about rum that sounds so unappetizing to liquor drinkers?  Rum is not only a fascinating beverage, made from sugar cane or the sugar cane byproduct molasses, it is also delicious.  Just stay away from the mass produced stuff that smells and tastes like lighter fluid, and you may find your new favorite beverage!

While we had the opportunity to taste some Montana made rum, we decided to keep the theme tropical and tasted rums from the Caribbean islands, Central America and South America.  We tasted these fabulous rums in this order:

• Mount Gay (Barbados) – the world’s oldest rum brand, a nice sipper on ice and a totally affordable price
• Ten Cane (Trinidad) – one of the world’s newest rum brands – we liked this first press cane juice distilled rum so much we’ve decided to kick Bacardi to the curb and treat rum drinkers to 10 Cane for the same price from now on!
• Oronoco (Brazil) – produced in the highlands of Brazil by some brothers who left the financial world to become booze makers – bravo!  A beautiful rum!  It’s light and flavorful and makes an amazing Mojito!
• Myer’s Legend (Jamaica) – a dark bitter rum that’s hard to find and when you do – don’t sip it unless you really like the readily available Myer’s dark rum Original, which is usually sitting on the bench until it’s called in to jazz up a Mai Tai.
• Ron Zacapa 23 year (Guatemala) – this fantastic dark sweet sipper is aged above the clouds at over 10,000 ft elevation and it is just amazing, coats your mouth with delicious cane nectar and leaves you wanting more.  This rum opened eyes and made us take notice of just how incredible a rum can be!

Lesson learned from this rum tasting – while people may shrink from drinking straight rum they have no trouble with mixed rum drinks.  The Mojitos and Rum Punch flowed like water and the party was super exuberant, especially for those who joined us later and received my mini speed tasting presentation.  Note to self – I’m probably more entertaining after tasting, but who can remember?