I didn’t think that there will be any more rums of this batch. After all, the last relese I am aware of dates back 12 (!) years ago. But apparently this year’s rotation of the Main Rum Company revealed a few more casks and the Flensburg Rum Company was the quickest player on the market. If that’s a good sign is a different story – I really don’t know. By the way, we’ve already had the Cadenhead’s KFM 1991 16YO (click also for more background information on the maruqe “KFM”) and that one was already incredibly woody; good, but a really challenging contender. I am really wondering if 29 years didn’t take this style too far but we shall see. Before, let’s have an older bottling to calibrate our taste buds.

Cadenhead’s Enmore (Versailles) “KFM” 1991 12YO (66%): I’ve already had this many, many years ago and fell in love with the rum back then. How about today? Nose: Oh my sweet, syrupy, bone-dry Demerara. I know that doesn’t make much sense but if you’ve ever smelled this beauty, you know exactly what I mean. The fruits such as plums, amarena cherries or ultra-ripe apricot are omnipresent but even at only 12 years we already get lots of wood, coffee, licorice and cinnamon. Exactly my type of rum, and I didn’t even mention that there’s absolutely no sign of the alcohol whatsoever. It actually smells even milder than the Flensburger at only 45% – unreal! Palate: Plums, cinnamon, coffee and cocoa break the first ground but wood, pepper, the syrup of the amarena cherries and something akin to foul raspberries are soon to follow. What an amazing rum, really. It is too bad that these things essentially only exist with time travel. I’d go as far as saying that this rum doesn’t need any additional maturity, at its twelve years it is close to perfection, perhaps even slighly too mature even. Finish: Long with wood, pepper, plums and dark cherries. Later also the coffee/ cocoa combination. When did twelve year old rums stop being like this again? What a cask this was, it is unbelieveable. There really should be a method of simply duplicating bottles. Go scientists, go. (94/100)

Flensburg Rum Company Enmore (Versailles) “KFM” 1991 29YO (45,4%): Let’s dive right in. Nose: Demerara at its best. This is everything we love about these old Guyanese rums. There’s plenty of wood, but clearly not too much, black tea, muscovado, hints of the pencil sharpenings, prunes and plums, coffee, rich chocolate and cocoa as well as cinnamon, cloves and quite some pepper. I think we might be in for a real treat! Palate: Wood galore, way more dominant than the nose suggested. This is joined by a bitterness that reminds me of overinfused black tea or burnt coffee, something that makes this profile rather unpleasant. Here and there we get some proper, really delicious Espresso as well, but the rum is shifting back and forth between the latter and rather bad filter coffee like grandma used to make it (super thin, bitter and watery – those are bad memories). There’s not too much more at the palate actually, at best I can name chocolate, pepper and cloves but at the end of the day it all boils down to Grandma’s coffee adventures and wood. What a pity. The finish is super long and bitter with wood and coffee. Now what do we make out of this? The nose was magnificent. The rest somewhere between great (Espresso), bad (filter coffee), and undrinkable (bitter wood). Definitely a tough one to score but the nose really bumps it up. (73/100)