Perhaps unsurprisingly, a good story can be just as important to rum brands as it is to so many whiskey/whisky brands. So it is with The Forgotten Casks from Saint Lucia Distillers, a classic example of turning lemons into lemonade.
Saint Lucian rum is something I’ve become familiar with just recently, when I tasted a lineup of rums from the island’s only distillery—Saint Lucia Distillers, SLD—back in September. These are what some rum geeks would refer to as “English-style” rums, produced in a combination of column and pot stills from molasses, typically rich and dark in flavor and color and more pungent than the lighter Spanish-style rums of Cuba or Puerto Rico. The distillery produces several different brands—the Admiral Rodney series is solely column distillate, while the flagship Chairman’s Reserve is a blend of pot and column still rums, which yields added complexity. In particular, I was very impressed with the premium Chairman’s Reserve 1931, which is aged in a combination of bourbon and port casks before being bottled at a somewhat higher strength of 46% ABV (92 proof). It remains the finest Saint Lucian rum I’ve had so far, and one that compares very nicely to aged bottles out of more famous rum locales such as Barbados and Jamaica.
One brand I didn’t get a chance to sample then, however, is the company’s mid-tier expression, The Forgotten Casks. I’ve now received a sample, however, so I figured I might as well make one more trip to Saint Lucia, especially to note the story behind this particular bottle.
Back in May of 2007, Saint Lucia Distillers was badly damaged by a fire, which in particular made large sections of the aging warehouses unusable until they could be repaired. This damage necessitated the moving of many barrels of rum to new locations, and in the chaos of this procedure, some of the barrels were misplaced and forgotten. The issue wasn’t identified until 2014, and by that time the barrels had aged far longer than the roughly six years typically present in the flagship Chairman’s Reserve brand. A decision was made to simply release those barrels as part of a considerably older blend, which became The Forgotten Casks. Response to that new blend was positive, so the distillery has continued producing it ever since.