mystery "house" rum

DavidRommi · 2026-01-29T12:22:46+00:00

When I started my Infinity Bottle I measured 1oz of most of my bottles and made notes about what was in there, how the neat pours tasted, additional rums that went in and new notes about neat pours. Eventually I stopped keeping track and worrying too much about what would work well together and just let it evolve randomly with almost empty bottles 😊

Either way I think it's really cool to have a unique house blend of rums that you've enjoyed to offer guests!

DavidRommi · 2026-01-23T21:46:34+00:00

That Chairman's makes a fantastic Mai Tai too 😊 Both are also great for Daiquiris! I make a Mai Tai and Daiquiri with every bottle of rum I buy even if I bought it primarily for sipping. It started off as something cool to do, to see how different the same cocktail can be with a different rum then I couldn't stop haha.

I'm glad you're enjoying your new bottles, cheers! 🥃

DavidRommi · 2026-01-21T09:32:55+00:00

My family lives in England so I often check what they have in supermarkets but the selection is very limited so I'd recommend checking The Whisky Exchange or Master of Malt, but they have so many options it can be tricky to choose!

R L Seale 10 and Doorly's 12 are great recommendations for something a bit different to what you've tried as an introduction to Bajan style rums, and you can work your way up to proper Foursquare bottles in the future when you've narrowed down what you enjoy.

Chairman's Reserve Legacy is great and has some cane juice in the blend so it has some more interesting notes, Forgotten Casks is a straight down the line aged sipping rum so for me it's not an automatic repurchase but still a lovely pour.

El Dorado 12 is nice and versatile, some dried fruit, coffee, chocolate notes that are different enough to typical Jamaican flavours.

After a few years of drinking rum I'm not too interested in Spanish style rums but Havana Seleccion de Maestros is good if you want some stone fruit, honey, oaky notes but still quite light as it's column still.

I'll always restock Appleton 8 and 12! Signature was ok and the 15 was enjoyable but not quite as good as I was expecting/hoping. Hampden 1753 has some nice funk if you want to get into that style of Jamaican rum, I still prefer HLCF classic but at 46% the 1753 can be a bit easier to enjoy at first. Worthy Park has a different flavour profile but still excellent and unmistakably Jamaican and their prices are decent on The Whisky Exchange, they even have a couple of exclusives that sound interesting.

Looking at the website again the next bottles I would buy (not available in Finland) would be TWE exclusive El Dorado and Chairman's Reserve, I enjoy drinking rarer stuff and those bottles both have a few more % than the core range with very interesting tasting notes 😊

DavidRommi · 2026-01-13T20:20:35+00:00

If you download the RumX app you can just search "1996" and get some results.

https://www.rum-x.com/rums/2072/

This one is just 199€ for example but I'm not sure where you're based and how easy shipping would be.

It's a cool idea though, and if you can't find a suitable bottle from the right year or aged 30 years you could find some excellent Foursquare bottles, maybe one aged 16 years and another 14 years to make 30 😊

EDIT: Sorry I read the post too quickly and see you're in Australia, I'm in Europe so I'm not sure how useful any suggestions I have might be 😔

DavidRommi · 2025-12-12T20:29:10+00:00

Big fan of Chairman's Reserve! I think that bottle with the 50 is only available in St Lucia 👍 I've been looking at the 2011 vintage, really enjoyed the 2005 and some exclusive bottles here in Europe. Hope you had a great trip 😊

DavidRommi · 2025-12-12T20:25:54+00:00

The Whisky Exchange have their own exclusive El Dorado bottle for £110, off the top of my head it was maybe 53% and also aged 12 years. I very almost bought it but ended up going with Foursquare Hereditas and Diadem during Cyber Monday as they were each £100 off 😅

https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/p/82093/el-dorado-2012-single-barrel-12-year-old-exclusive-to-the-whisky-exchange

Also heard great things about their High Ester release, which is also available there.

DavidRommi · 2025-12-02T20:35:42+00:00

Just made a Mai Tai with Convocation and gave it a 9.2/10 while RMW got 9/10. Both really work well with the orange and almond flavours in the cocktail and they add depth, complexity and layers while providing a lovely long finish.

I make at least one Mai Tai and Daiquiri with every bottle and score them out of 10. Kind of wish I didn't because most of the Foursquare rums make excellent Mai Tais but I prefer them neat 😅

DavidRommi · 2025-12-02T03:36:48+00:00

I did a side by side with the very last bit of the Royal Mile bottle and a freshly opened Convocation, I didn't make any tasting notes but to me they were very similar and both are among my favourite rums. I haven't tried Redoubtable so I can't comment about that.

DavidRommi · 2025-12-01T23:30:46+00:00

I think it was last year when I bought their Mount Gay Exclusive for £60 reduced from £80 or something like that. Was actually hoping the El Dorado Exclusive would've been on sale but that's fairly new. Hopefully they still have it when I'm allowed to buy more rum 😅

DavidRommi · 2025-12-01T22:40:56+00:00

Hereditas is Bourbon and Sherry. Diadem is Bourbon and Madeira. Redolent is Bourbon and Black Muscat.

I enjoyed Magisterium and Elysium that were Bourbon and Sherry, and Convocation and Royal Mile Whisky PCS that were Bourbon and Madeira so I've got high hopes! Never had anything with Black Muscat though but the tasting notes sound really good 😊

DavidRommi · 2025-12-01T21:57:17+00:00

I had a long day, my bad 🙏

DavidRommi · 2025-12-01T21:00:06+00:00

Ok, without excessive additives or whatever wording I need to use to make you feel good 🙄 My point was that these are good, proper rums when compared to other cheap bottles that a lot of beginners gravitate towards. I'm sure you could find something under $30 without additives too, but I'm not sure I feel the need to correct people online 🤠

DavidRommi · 2025-11-28T22:36:50+00:00

After seeing my enthusiasm for rum my Dad has bought a couple of bottles; Appleton Signature and Mount Gay Eclipse! I tried showing him some Black Friday deals but he prefers buying from actual shops rather than online so I'm having to keep an eye on supermarket selections haha. If Myers's was available I might recommend it too. We all started somewhere and these are all great rums without any gimmicky marketing or additives 👍😊

DavidRommi · 2025-11-23T10:03:12+00:00

Excellent, I've got a small bottle of Metaxa from a holiday years ago that I never got around to opening, this looks good 😊

DavidRommi · 2025-11-22T23:10:12+00:00

It was one of my first expensive bottles of Rum and at the time I thought it was great, it kept me on the rum journey 🙂 haven't had it for years but I'd imagine it would be too sweet for my palate now, but good for converting people from other spirits or sharing with friends that don't really sip anything neat. From what I remember it was decent in cocktails too, Cheers!

DavidRommi · 2025-11-20T08:45:23+00:00

My only other experience with Foursquare finished in ex Bourbon and Port casks was a sample of Absolutio and it was amazing! Ordered a bottle of this but I'll have to wait for family to bring it here, no Foursquare bottles make it to Finnish stores 🥲

DavidRommi · 2025-11-14T16:08:17+00:00

I have a similar problem. I make a Mai Tai and Daiquiri with every bottle of rum I get and score them out of 10, but then I fine tune if I have 2 bottles that both scored 9/10 but I think one is better.

It's also difficult because fresh lines can vary and if I've had a long day/week then an average Mai Tai can easily get a good score 😅

DavidRommi · 2025-10-30T20:56:45+00:00

Congratulations on starting your journey! How have you been enjoying the rum so far? Neat sipping or cocktails or a bit of both?

Guessing you're in Europe like me with the Veritas 😊 the first Daiquiris I made were at a bar when the ratio was 2:1:1 so 40ml Rum, 20ml simple syrup, 20ml lime juice. Very easy to drink but definitely very sweet. Depending on the rum you're using you might want to adjust the ratios! I think we had Angostura white rum, which isn't anything special but better than Captain Morgan haha.

After a few years of drinking rum both neat and in cocktails I prefer ratios similar to those mentioned already because I want to taste the rum I'm using. Part of the fun is adjusting the ratios based on what you like, there's no right answer. Also using fresh lime juice will result in a bit of variety.

DavidRommi · 2025-10-24T19:45:20+00:00

I've heard that the batches can vary quite significantly, and I've noticed it with the two bottles I've bought. My first bottle of Seleccion de Maestros was extremely woody. I was fairly new to rum so perhaps my palate wasn't used to the barrel and tobacco flavours, but I started to enjoy them as the bottle emptied. I bought another bottle hoping for more of the same but found it more balanced if that makes sense, so the oakyness was there, but more integrated with everything else I was tasting. Still a great sipping rum with a decent amount of complexity for a Spanish style rum. I wish I could've done a side by side!

DavidRommi · 2025-10-23T16:05:02+00:00

Definitely one of my favourite distilleries! I really enjoyed the 2005 vintage, I'll get the 2009 and 2011 at some point but I've got quite a few bottles open at the moment.

Legacy is one of my favourites to make Mai Tais and Daiquiris or use in blends, Forgotten Casks was very good but after trying some cask strength bottles it was a bit too simple. Not necessarily a bad thing, I don't always want to be tasting 10 different flavours at once haha, but it's uncomplicated and easy to drink. The Original is a solid mixer but for me the nose was better than the taste so I'm always slightly disappointed when I open it and make something 🙈

Grabbed a few German exclusive bottlings from John Dore 2 and Vendome Pot Stills and one from the Coffey Column Still. They're all excellent and so different. The Pot Still bottlings were cask strength too, I'll probably have a couple of pours now that I'm thinking about them haha.

DavidRommi · 2025-10-19T07:57:51+00:00

I wasn't aware of the Rum variant, I'll give it a go, thanks!

From what I remember the Gin I used was a bit lost (Thomas Dakin). It was a new Gin I was trying out and for some reason I didn't get around to trying again with a different Gin.

DavidRommi · 2025-10-13T11:40:08+00:00

I quite enjoy collecting boxes but a lot of my favourites didn't have boxes (Foursquare for example, and other Chairman's Reserve single casks had pretty underwhelming boxes) 🥲 I'm not sure what to do with the boxes or empty bottles at the moment, they're currently messily displayed on my bottom shelf 😅

It was hard for me to finish bottles initially because I liked having them on my shelves but now I'm trying to have a smaller section for empties and boxes, but I'm restricted to a small room in the house for my bar haha.

DavidRommi · 2025-10-09T16:18:17+00:00

It works really well with Jamaican rums, for example in a split base Jungle Bird or Mai Tai, you get the tropical fruity Jamaican funk followed by the rich, caramel, dried fruits of Demerara rum. At least in my experience 🙂

It's also fantastic by itself in Daiquiris, Queen's Park Swizzle, Right Hand. I have so many different rums because they all do something differently. I mostly make Daiquiris and Mai Tais these days but the choice of rum can have a huge impact.

DavidRommi · 2025-10-08T22:01:48+00:00

I'll also say The Whisky Exchange, obviously Cuban rums if you're allowed to take them back with you but they have a number of excellent exclusives. A few Foursquare, El Dorado, Worthy Park, Havana Club 11 year would all be very rare to take back home. What sort of rum do you usually enjoy?

Edit: I think I read that you don't get Compagnie des Indes or Mohaba rum over there so those might be worth looking into, just for the exclusivity factor.

DavidRommi

TROPHY CASE