Montanya Distillers Exclusiva Rum
Photos via Montanya Distillers
Here at Paste Drink, you may already have noticed that we’ve been producing no shortage of rum-related content in recent months, riding a wave of seemingly compounding interest in the fast-growing sugar cane spirit. In the last year, I’ve tasted rum of all sorts—aged white rum, oversweetened “premium” rum and gorgeously aged classical rum, although almost all of them have shared one thing in common: They hail from the Caribbean, or Central America. USA-made rum is still something of a rarity—or aged American rum is, anyway. Although many distilleries make a cheap white rum as a cash cow (much like their vodka or gin) while waiting for aged whiskey to arrive, Colorado’s Montanya Distillers is a rarer breed. Their status as a female-founded and operated distiller already makes the company a rarity in the craft spirits world, but it’s their focus specifically on rum, using American-grown, single origin sugar cane from Louisiana, that really makes the distillery unique.
That rum focus results in a handful of interesting products, including a few that you would expect—a white rum (aged, then filtered) and a gold rum—but also the significantly more unusual Montanya Exclusiva. This release from Montanya caught our attention for the fact that it is aged two and a half years in American oak barrels that previously held Colorado whiskey, before being finished in a significantly more exotic way: Six months in French oak barrels that previously aged Sutcliffe Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon and port.
Both these aspects are unusual, to say the least. French oak doesn’t see a lot of play in American distilling, thanks to the regulation of bourbon’s initial aging, which states that only American white oak may be used. Likewise, you don’t see a lot of rum finished in red wine barrels, although dessert wines such as port and sherry are a bit more common. Still, combined with the Colorado-produced aspect of Montanya Exclusiva, it made me particularly curious to sample this expression. And the results are as unique as you might expect.