If some very old vintages have marked history and the palates of the luckiest, forever, Neisson is gradually writing the lines of a new page and bringing back to life a story that our, your children, will cherish with a certain nostalgia; and which one day, will constitute a new ultimate, an El Dorado for future generations. May time be favorable to them, we will leave them the best...

Price : €105 for a bottle from a single barrel (#11169), selected in partnership with LMDW and Velier. 70cl and 43°. limited to 290 bottles.

Age : 9 years. Distilled in April 2005, aged on November 30, 2005 and bottled on July 31, 2014.

In addition to this 9-year-old 2005 vintage, there is also a 7-year-old bottled at 45.8°, released only in Martinique and made from 4 barrels. Note that Neisson should release a rum from the same harvest at the end of the year, which will then be aged 10 years.

The glass holds a liquid with a precious appearance, a melting and oily dress, a molten gold color with bronze highlights.

A nose with a good memory of the 1995 vintage, with this powdery nose where each aroma seems to be included in a thin layer of oak, as if to magnify and highlight each scent : lots of ripe and dried fruits, apricot and peach, apple, mango, fruits on the point of decomposing, having reached the most invigorating maturity, before the explosion... and this woodiness which brings so much class and which seems to include and caress each of these fruits, depositing on the surface a thin layer of woody and vanilla particles... noble art, genius and therefore necessarily a good dose of insolence, but what mastery...

The spices and cocoa contribute to the warm side, always in this finesse with surgical precision, and always (still?) in a perfect balance. And to top it all off, as if it were not enough, the rum offers you in its goodness a brown of freshness (fresh grass, citrus, zest), and the purity of fresh almonds laid bare by manicured nails, for a nose that ultimately has a lot of similarities with the 1995 vintage (tasted together), and which has nothing to envy it (and God knows that we are starting from a long way back).

And we could stay for hours above this glass that seems to be perpetually evolving, as if tireless . After a long moment, caught up in reverie or still lucid, we would swear we find black fruits, candied cherries, prunes, and floral notes (white flowers, Mexican orange blossom), for a nose that becomes more and more captivating, intoxicating, and that makes you lose your footing in an ocean of lucidity and complacency. We are well, the perfect place at the perfect time, with the perfect sum of elements, all together, here and now.

The attack is just as classy, ​​literally melting and satiny in the mouth, deliciously woody liquid gold (licorice), fresh (sugar cane, iodine) and spicy (cinnamon, ginger); all of which evolves in a very harmonious and always perfectly balanced blend, heady and fresh. The warmest aromas seem caressed and highlighted by the freshness of citrus fruits, cane, and that little sea air that exults the senses. Magnificent, we never fall into the easy way out with this rum, and there is always that little extra that makes the mouth evolve in another direction, in another dimension; intelligently and always with disconcerting mastery.

This Neisson offers a stroll in the mouth, and in a fraction of a second we go from the cane fields to the seaside, from the orchard to the majestic forest of oaks whose bark is delicately struck and grilled by a summer sun. A stroll, quite simply, quite naturally and smoothly, as if it were the most normal and harmless thing in the world. Confusing, and brilliant.

The finish is long, very long, and the walk will continue until dark night . No need to tell you that it will be clear and starry, that we will remember every moment spent, every bit of every memory. Perhaps even the most curious will discover, nibbling on a piece of mountain, a trail of oak powder, left there by a shooting star, a sign that hope is always very present, and timeless, provided that we take the time to observe it, and to look for it…
Note: 92