Everyone’s doing best of lists at the end of the year, which is fine. Personally, I don’t think it serves any purpose and because of that we’ve never done it but since we’ve introduced scores exactly one year ago we could just as well list all of my favorites. They are grouped into recent bottlings, i.e. those that have been released in 2019 or 2018 and older bottlings, i.e. those that have been reviewed in 2019 but that date back past 2018.

Please note that these are only the rums I have reviewed this year and that they by no means represent the full spectrum of high quality releases. Those aren’t even all the rums I have tried. I still have plenty of both, recent and older bottlings that I have yet to review and clearly there are many candidates who could have made the list. There are even Tier 1 distilleries we did not have had a look at at all (Neisson, for example). So please, do not call either one of them a “Rum of the Year” or whatever. That just doesn’t make any sense, unless we would have had tried them all. What is more, it is difficult to compare rums of the different rum styles among one another and hence the list is clearly biased by my personal taste, even more so than it is anyway.

What’s left to say is that 2019 was definitely not as magnificent of a rum year as the likes of 2018 or 2017. Nevertheless, there were definitely a few great releases as you can see, and again, many more we have yet to try and/ or review.

Recent bottlings

1. Velier Caroni “The Last” 1996 23YO (61,9%) – 94
2. Velier Caroni 1996 22YO “John D Eversly” (66,5%) – 94
3. Habitation Velier “HGML” 2010 9YO (62%) – 93
4. Rum Artesanal High Ester Rum Distillery (Hampden) 1983 35YO (58,9%) – 93
5. Velier Caroni 1998 20YO “Dennis X Gopaul” (69,5%) – 92
6. J.Bally 2003 (43%) – 91
7. Thompson Bros. Caroni 1997 20YO (61,9%) – 91
8. El Dorado Albion 2004 14YO “AN” (60,1%) – 90
9. The Rum Cask Mount Gay “BMMG” 2000 19YO (55,1%) – 88
10. Clément Rare Cask “Coup de Foudre” 2002 16YO (55,2%) – 87

Older bottlings

1. Velier Albion 1986 24YO “AW” (60,9%) – 95
2. Berry Bros & Rudd Demerara (Versailles) 1985 17YO (46%) – 94
3. Velier Albion 1994 17YO “AN” (60,4%) – 94
4. Duncan Taylor Enmore Distillery (Versailles) 1985 27YO (52,5%) – 93
5. Duncan Taylor WIRD 1986 25YO (52,7%) – 93
6. Bielle 2001 14YO SC #63 (52,4%) – 92
7. Chantal Comte La Mauny 2001 14YO (64,8%) – 92
8. Chantal Comte La Mauny 2006 10YO (57,7%) – 92
9. Berry Bros & Rudd Demerara (Versailles) 1985 22YO (46%) – 91
10. Compagnie des Indes Hampden 1992 24YO (59,8%) – 91