Enjoyed for centuries, rum is a spirit that has never lost its appeal. In fact, sales of rum in Great Britain reached £1.1bn in value in the 12 months to December 2023, overtaking whisky for the second year in a row.
Away from the sunny shores of the Caribbean, this rum renaissance has also taken on a life of its own in a host of UK distilleries. Using imported molasses, small craft distillers throughout the British Isles are making their own dedicated and distinctive rums. Perhaps the appeal lies in rum’s versatility. So, let’s just look at what choices there are.
Dark rum is associated with the Royal Navy. It’s aged longer in heavily charred barrels and is fuller in flavour with lots of that treacly caramel flavour along with notes of spice, fruit and oak. Many of these are “sipping” rums, to be enjoyed by themselves or with ice.
Gold or amber rum is a medium-bodied rum, mid-way between white and dark rum, that is also aged in oak and has more of a honeyed flavour. It can be enjoyed by itself or within a huge range of different cocktails.
Spiced rums feature added spices or botanicals, to provide a more varied flavour. Finally, white rums are often charcoal-filtered, to remove the amber hue. Fruitier in flavour, they provide the basis of countless cocktails, from cuba libre and daquiri through mojito and piña colada to planter’s punch and mai tai.
With such a vast array on offer, we’ve rounded up our pick of the best rums to help you find your new favourite tipple. Our selection includes dark, golden, spiced and white rums from the Caribbean, Mauritius, South America and the UK’s flourishing homegrown market.
How we tested
Most of the rums were sipped by themselves or with ice during testing. There were a few simple criteria the rums (especially the aged ones) had to meet: were they smooth on the tongue? Could you taste the characteristic vanilla, caramel and dried fruit flavours? Did the charred bourbon oak barrels that many of the rums were matured in add that enviable note of toasted wood? With the lighter and white rums, it was also a question of their adaptability. Could you enjoy them with a mixer such as ginger ale or as part of a whole host of well-known cocktails? Once they had all passed those tests, it was simply a case of sip and savour.
The best rums for 2024 are:
Diplomático reserva exclusiva rum
An exceptional rum all the way from Venezuela, where añejo (aged) rums are the order of the day. Rums that have spent up to 12 years maturing in oak casks have been expertly blended to produce a “sipping rum” – one that is possibly best enjoyed without mixers, although, it does make a sophisticated cocktail ingredient. Rich, mellow and incredibly smooth, it boasts complex chocolate and coffee flavours, along with notes of toffee and citrus peel.
Buy now £36.99, Amazon.co.uk
Mount Gay eclipse Barbados golden rum
A solar eclipse seen from Mount Gay in Barbados in 1910 is remembered here in a golden-hued rum devised by master blender Trudiann Branker. The embodiment of the distillery’s style, this light- to medium-bodied rum features vanilla and banana flavours aided by notes of spice. There’s also an appealing, slightly charred oaky edge to the rum, which makes it an ideal ingredient for a Caribbean rum punch or Barbadian cocktail.
Buy now £17.55, Amazon.co.uk
Duppy Share aged Caribbean rum
In whisky-making, the small amount of whisky that evaporates during the ageing process is known as “the angel’s share”. In the Caribbean, the rum that disappears during the same process is blamed on the duppy, a slightly more malevolent spirit. Hence the name of this rum, which is a blend of a three-year-old rum from Worthy Park Distillery, Jamaica, and a five-year-old rum from the Foursquare Distillery in Barbados. The end result is a honeyed, beautifully smooth rum that can be enjoyed by itself, with a sliver or ice or as part of a Caribbean cocktail.
Buy now £22.00, Waitrosecellar.com
Eighty-Six Friends honey spiced rum
A rum born during the 2020 lockdown, when lifelong UK friends Tom Foddy and Tony Gillam decided to perfect their own brand of rum. Naming it was easy enough – they were both born in 1986 and “eighty-six it” was also a warning shout during prohibition when a raid was imminent.
This honey spiced rum combines Caribbean spirits with locally sourced honey from Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, to produce a rounded and smooth drink with hints of spice and vanilla that fully lives up to the company’s ethos: “Keep it simple, keep it premium, keep it natural, and, above all else, favour the flavour.”
Buy now £35.74, Amazon.co.uk
Dà Mhile dark skies organic rum
Wales isn’t necessarily the first place you think of for rum – palm trees and sugar cane don’t form much of the scenery. However, the Savage-Onstwedder family, originally from The Netherlands, have progressed from making Welsh whisky to producing a rich and rewarding oak-matured rum made from organic molasses. With a name that reflects the low-light pollution area where it’s made, the rum has notes of vanilla, banana and dates and a subtle sweetness. Treat it as a sipping rum or enjoy it as the basis of a dark skies mojito.
Buy now £39.00, Vintageroots.co.uk
Mezan XO Jamaican rum
A blended Jamaican rum from a single distillery, this tipple is unsweetened, made without colouring agents and aged in old bourbon casks. As a result, it’s a superb example of a traditional Caribbean rum, with tropical fruit and ripe banana flavours to the fore and intriguing hints of spice and tobacco. As the makers have it, it’s a “hedonistic blend” of their “funkiest rums”, which, in layman’s terms, means you can count on its authenticity. In short, here’s a rum that’s as funky as James Brown.
Buy now £31.00, Amazon.co.uk
The Kraken black spiced rum
There’s a line from a classic John Ford-directed Western that runs: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Which is what the makers of this popular black spiced rum seem happy to do. The rum’s website tells us a lot about a mythical creature with razor-sharp tentacles but perhaps not enough about the care and consideration that obviously goes into the production of this blended Caribbean rum from Trinidad. Layered flavours of caramel and vanilla are backed up in a molasses-rich blend aided by hints of cinnamon and other spices. A monster of a product at a very reasonable price.
Buy now £25.00, Groceries.morrisons.com
Bacardi 8-year-old reserva ocho rum
Here’s something different from the largest privately held, family-owned spirits company in the world. Known as the family reserve, it was inspired by a 19th-century family recipe used to produce rum for special occasions during the company’s early days in Cuba. Aged for eight years, it’s wonderfully mellow, with textured flavours of caramel, vanilla and honey, plus notes of stone fruit, butterscotch and nutmeg. Suitable as a sipping rum, it’s also the ideal base for the Bacardi version of the old fashioned cocktail – 50ml of ocho rum, 6.25ml sugar syrup and two dashes of angostura bitters. Enjoy.
Buy now £35.70, Masterofmalt.com
Bone Idyll botanical rum
From the exciting new breed of British producers comes a small batch run of botanical rum. In what the Kingston Upon Thames distillery calls a “wonderfully adventurous” way, a blend of rum from Guyana, Barbados and the Dominican Republic is re-distilled with scotch bonnet pepper, banana and lime leaf. So, smooth overlays of vanilla, butterscotch and tropical fruit are enlivened by a hint of Caribbean fire. It may get its finishing touches a long way from the Tropics, but this is definitely a rum to party with.
Buy now £36.95, Boneidyll.co.uk
Doorly’s three-year fine old Barbados rum
A white rum to savour, this one hails from one of the longest established producers of rum in Barbados. The rum spends a minimum of three years of tropical maturation in old bourbon barrels, followed by careful charcoal filtration – a technique used on the island since the mid-19th century, to remove the colour and give an incredibly smooth and mellow finish to the flavours of young rums. Tropical and stoned fruit notes are dominant in a rum that’s 47 per cent ABV with an oaky sweetness to round things off. The perfect choice for cocktail fans.
Buy now £25.00, Amazon.co.uk
Bougainville VSOP
From the Oxenham distillery in the middle of the island of Mauritius comes a complex and textured rum crafted from local molasses and aged for a minimum of four years in oloroso and pedro ximenez sherry casks. The highly rewarding outcome is a full-flavoured yet elegant rum with notes of vanilla, dried fruit and caramel, with hints of roasted nuts and demerara. This is one to savour, a little sip at a time, on a peaceful winter’s evening.
Buy now £39.95, Rumshop.co.uk
Equiano original
A combination of continents here, as rum from Gray’s distillery in Mauritius and the Foursquare distillery in Barbados is blended and matured in ex-bourbon casks in the Caribbean. It’s named in honour of the former slave and prominent abolitionist Olaudah Equiano who liberated himself by selling rum. In his honour, the company donates 5 per cent of its profits each year to fund ground-level freedom and equality projects. An admirable project and a prize-winning rum featuring layers of vanilla, dried fruit and butterscotch, complemented by notes of citrus peel and vanilla.
Buy now £38.60, Amathusdrinks.com
Hoolie outlier manx white rum
If you’ve considered buying an island rum, perhaps the Isle of Man wouldn’t necessarily be the first island you’d think of. Yet, this white rum, distilled from molasses in a former Manx milking shed and double distilled in a wood-fired still by enthusiastic spirit-makers Ian Warborn-Jones and Rick Dacey (whose cartoon mugshots adorn the label) lives up to the duo’s maxim of “looking to do things differently from the mass market”. Named after the strong wind or “hoolie” that blows over the island, it’s a charcoal-filtered white rum, with bright notes of liquorice and butterscotch, that’s crying out to be featured in a range of cocktails, from a Manx daiquiri to a hoolie and ginger.
Buy now £34.50, Thewhiskyexchange.com
Bumbu original rum
Here’s an all-embracing blend from eight countries in the Caribbean and South America. It’s the product of a historic distillery in Barbados where some of the rum stills date back to the 1840s. Taking its name from the 16th-century Barbadian name for spiced rum, this prize-winning spirit is as smooth as a car salesman’s patter, with notes of caramel and vanilla and hints of cinnamon and fudge. Good to sip straight, it also acts as a winter warmer when used as the basis for a hot buttered rum drink, with brown sugar, salted butter and hot water. Just the thing for a chilly evening.
Buy now £30.00, Amazon.co.uk
Appleton Estate 8-year-old reserve Jamaican rum
From one of the most respected names in the rum world comes an eight-year-old reserve crafted by blender Joy Spence. It’s made from sugar cane grown in Jamaica’s Nassau Valley, where the limestone terroir, weathered by wind and rain, produces a rugged landscape known as karst. The pure limestone-filtered water it supplies gives the sugar cane a distinctive flavour and is also used to dilute the resulting molasses. The rum is then aged in bourbon barrels, which produces this tipple’s distinctive and appealing notes of mellow honey and vanilla, with hints of spice and dried citrus peel. It’s a world-class rum at an attractive price.
Buy now £30.99, Masterofmalt.com
The verdict: Rums
It has to be said, the quality of all the rums tested was excellent, from sipping rums such as the Bougainville VSOP and the Equiano original, through lighter rums such as the Mount Gay eclipse and to white rums such as Doorly’s three-year fine old Barbados rum.
Rums distilled in the UK also scored highly, with the organic Dà Mhile dark skies, the honey-spiced Eighty-Six Friends and the Bone Idyll botanical rum all making a great impression. However, it was the Venezuelan aged rum Diplomático reserva that took the top spot overall, thanks to its wonderfully rich and mellow taste bringing a burst of the tropics to your glass.
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