Mount Gay Rum Master Blender Collection: Andean Oak Cask
Photos via Mount Gay Rum
When you’re the world’s oldest commercial rum distillery, it’s safe to say that opportunities for new “firsts” tend to become few and far between. So it is for Barbados’ Mount Gay Rum—it’s one of the most recognizable brands in the world, with a core lineup that exemplifies the Bajan style of rum, alongside their peers at Foursquare. It’s a company built on brands that are sacrosanct—although products like Mount Gay XO or Black Barrel can occasionally be refined (and they were, under current Master Blender Trudiann Branker), actually replacing them would be unthinkable. But there are still ways for the company to embrace a “first” from time to time, especially via the yearly Master Blender Collection series of limited releases, currently in its fourth year.
After three previous releases that dabbled in peat (The Peat Smoke Expression), pot still purity (Mount Gay Pot Still Rum), and port cask aging (The Port Cask Expression), 2021’s Master Blender Collection series release is dubbed Andean Oak Cask. It is so named for the (probably obvious) fact that it has been finished in so-called Andean oak, Quercus humboldtii, a species of oak that grows only in Colombia and Panama, which is not often used for spirit aging.
Specifically, this is 14-year-old, cask-strength, pot still Mount Gay rum that has survived an unusually long period of tropical aging, before then spending 11 months finishing in newly charred (level 3) Andean oak casks. It’s then bottled at 48% ABV (96 proof), and is non-chill filtered. This is an extremely limited release, with a mere 1,026 bottles headed to the U.S., where they’ll carry an unsurprisingly high MSRP of $195. In other words, good luck coming across a bottle of this stuff in the wild, but perhaps you’ll be able to find a dram of it somewhere.
According to Master Blender Branker, the time aging in Andean oak had the effect of primarily modifying the rum’s spice profile, resulting in what is labeled as a “delicate, yet opulent blend with layers of spice, nutmeg, vanilla, ripe pear and toasted coconut.” I received a sample, so let’s get to tasting and see how this unique oak aging affected the rum.