Review: Canerock Jamaican Spiced Rum
Do you like your spiced rum sweet? Well, have I got a rum for you. Canerock, coming to us from the folks at Maison Ferrand (which owns Plantation), has an incredible pedigree, sourced using 100% aged Jamaican rum (5 to 10 years old) from Long Pond and Clarendon, two of the most renowned distilleries on the island, for the base of the rum. Not only that, it’s finished in Pedro Ximenez sherry casks. What non-spiced rum can claim that?
So what’s a rum like this doing slumming with added vanilla, ginger, coconut — and clearly lots of sugar? I’m still trying to figure that out. Sure, all the ingredients are high-end examples of their ilk, but the quality of the base product nonetheless feels hard to measure up to.
While we ponder all that, let’s taste the stuff.
The nose is intense — intense — with vanilla first, then coconut, giving the aroma something of a coconut cream pie character. There’s so much of this duo that it effectively covers up the rum portion of the spirit, making it difficult to determine exactly what it is you’re sipping on at first. On the tongue, generalized sweetness dominates immediately — molasses and brown sugar, then vanilla syrup. Some of the underlying rum becomes more evident after this rush fades, the sherry element adding a gently winey quality to the spirit.
The oxidation of the PX sherry is evident as the finish builds, but only slightly, as it’s tough to muscle through that lingering sweetness. While I did gravitate more and more to this rum as I sipped on it, I never reached a point where things felt completely balanced, with sweetened coconut notes clinging heavily to the back end. While clearly this is designed for mixing, it’s so sweet that you may need to be careful with your choice of mixer to avoid blowing your cocktail out completely — yes, even if you’re on the beach.
80 proof.
B+ / $30 / canerock.com [BUY IT NOW FROM TOTAL WINE]
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