I distinctly remember the vague unease I felt, when I first laid eyes on the marketing for Ten to One Rum back in 2019. My immediate impression is that the bottles were quite clean, striking and attractive … but maybe just a little bit too slick. My eyebrows went up at the sight of the company marketing what it had labeled as simply a “dark rum,” a fraught term with no concrete or useful definition in the U.S., which unfortunately can lead to misleading labeling. The fact that the brand was credited to a guy who was “formerly Starbucks’ youngest VP” likewise hardly seemed to promise a focus on tradition or quality. My defenses went up immediately.
And then I tasted the products, and proclaimed myself more or less wrong about all of it. The marketing may be swinging for more of a center cut segment of the potential customer demographic, but there’s nothing at all wrong with Ten to One’s formulations, nor their Trinidadian-born owner Marc Farrell. These people are serious about the rum blends they’re putting into these bottles, and they’re producing some of the best mid-priced blends regularly available in the U.S. market today. In particular, Ten to One White Rum quickly became one of my favorite all-around daiquiri rums, a role where it absolutely excels. It’s honestly hard to to better for a classic daiquiri than this rum.
As for extensions to the lineup, however, Ten to One has been pretty quiet since 2019, with just the occasional special release in addition to its flagship White Rum and Dark Rum. That era has now come to an end, with the introduction of a new extra-aged blend, Five Origin Select. This is a permanent line extension, albeit one that will be available in limited quantities year round. It comes with the higher expected MSRP of $65, a modest bump from the $45 of the Dark Rum and $33 for the White Rum.
As the name would imply, this is a blend from five rum markets of the Caribbean–Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. The company points out its highlight of the blend is “11-15 year old Guyanese (demerara) rum distilled on the famed Port Mourant Double Wooden Pot Still,” which to rum fans obviously means a product of the sole Guyanese distiller, Diamond Distillery. Unfortunately, Ten to One doesn’t offer more detail or average age ranges for rums from the other ports, but it seems safe to assume this is likely a blend of younger and older distillates with an average age significantly higher than found in Ten to One Dark Rum, which is also a blend from four of the same ports, excluding Guyana. It’s clear that the intention here is more toward crafting a rum blend for neat drinking, with the increased complexity this implies. It’s bottled at a modestly elevated 46% ABV (92 proof), a nice level for a flavor-forward sipper.