Bacardi Reserva Limitada

If you’ve visited this blog before, you’ll know I’m a big fan of a good story and an even bigger fan of using special products to promote a brand.

Last night at the Sydney Rum Club, the boys from Bacardi bought along something that’s pretty special. Bacardi Reserva Limitada.

This rum is the jewel in the crown of Bacardi’s rum empire. Aged rums are blended after as many as 16 years languishing in the Caribbean sun, the result is a rum not quite as robust as Bacardi 8, and not quite as smooth as Ron Zacapa Centenario XO. Reserva Limitada wins the race in terms of how fine a spirit it is. Subtle, with nary a trace of heads nor tails, Bacardi’s masterpiece is comparable to a cognac or a great grappa, it is distillation at it’s finest.

Where can I buy a bottle? I hear your say. This wonderful rum is only available at two locations (although the guys from Bacardi Lion claimed only one.) Both are are fair trek from this, the Lucky Country. Your options are  (1) The Bacardi Distillery in Puerto Rico and (2) The Bacardi Store in Nassau. You will save yourself a whole 5 bucks if you’re in the Bahamas.

I think it’s going to be a while between drinks on this one. I’d love to try it in an old fashioned with some Fee Brothers orange bitters.

Time for a Tea Party?

I must admit that I’m not really a huge fan of flavoured vodka, in particular when the flavour is manufactured at the International Flavor Institute just of the Jersey turnpike. Raspberry flavour that originates here contains precisely zero raspberries.

I’m told that where the myriad of flavours that Absolut bring to market come from, by a man claiming to be a professor of vodka.

All that aside, I felt I had to post on this, Absolut are making a special flavour, just for Boston. While Black Tea & Elderflower vodka probably  contain no tea or elderflowers I kind of like the idea. Always a sucker for a limited edition bottle, tying an edition to a specific location really appeals to me.

Previous Absolut flavors include black pepper and mango in New Orleans and pomegranate, blueberry, acerola cherry and açai berry for Los Angeles.

What flavour would Sydney be?

All Black

Being a kiwi, I’m sorely tempted to launch into a celebration of the All Blacks and their victory over the Australians in the Bledisloe Cup match last weekend. Living in Australia, I know that by and large, no-one cares.

The All Black that this post refers to is the Johnnie Walker centenary edition of their Black Label blended scotch. I’m a big fan of special edition bottles and frankly it’s nice to see a good story coming out of the Diageo owned brand, what with their closure of the Kilmarnock Distillery.

The bottle goes on sale in September and is sure to be a hit in Japan, the opaque black finish mirroring the packaging of the highest quality beef and foodstuffs the land of the rising sun produces.

Harking back to 1909, the bottle should be used to produce Stengahs. A whisky concoction made with half a measure topped long with soda. Popular throughout the British Asian empire, the drink replaces fluid in hot climates without the accompanying dizziness of a drunken spell in the Singapore sun. Start drinking them at eleven in the morning on a hot day and you’ll see what I mean.