With every passing year, the opportunity to taste some of @velierspa’s early Caroni rum bottlings gets only more difficult, with most bottles either having been emptied or remaining unopened on a shelf as part of a collection. Thankfully there are also those who continue opening these bottles and sharing them, and I do have to thank @the_rum_cartel today for a sample of this 1994 Caroni which was part of Velier’s stock that was partially aged in Guyana.

I did talk a bit about this phenomena in my review of the Caroni 1996 Paradise #1, which explained that Velier’s stock of Caroni casks had to be moved from Trinidad in 2008 as the old Caroni warehouse was to be demolished. Fortunately, DDL’s warehouses in Guyana were able to store these barrels, and this particular Caroni rum stems from some of those Guyana stock. Distilled in 1994, this high proof Heavy Trinidad Rum (as cited from label, but unclear if it points specifically to the HTR marque) was part of a pretty large batch of 23 “drums” that were fully aged in the tropics, 14 of those in Trinidad and coupled with another 3 in Guyana, resulting in 7,142 bottles at an abv of 52%. This should also not be mistaken with its sister bottling of a full proof 17-year-old 1994 vintage derived from 7 “drums”, producing 2,293 bottles at 62.3% abv.

I do think that the 94 vintages have one of the best noses among Caroni rums, and this was no exception. It was an instant classic, presenting all the right notes you’d expect from a heavy Caroni, that brown caramel, a little punch of petrol, and then ripe yellow bananas began to creep in, along with some spritely cola, and a rather heavy dose of cantaloupe. Now interestingly I did pick up a bit of vinegar underneath it all too. I wouldn’t entirely categorise this as complex rum, but it certainly had all the right elements within.

The palate itself was deceptively soft at the beginning, coming off rather elegant for a Caroni with sweet caramel. The intensity then started to build, introducing those dirty, tarry notes, petrol fumes as we know it, all the right things a heavy Caroni should possess. The middle brought about a hint of dryness, likely from the long exposure to oak, and it gradually grew, but never to the point that it became overwhelming. It really peaked in the middle, but stopped short of dominating your palate with those dirty notes. The finish was a tad shorter than I had expected, as the sweeter notes of cola and cantaloupes began to return, a little milk coffee and some roasted chestnuts too.

This was a rather good dram in my honest opinion, it didn’t have to be overly complex to win me over, and I was very happy with a sort of balanced profile that didn’t allow the heavy fumes to overpower all the other notes within. This then, along with many other older Velier Caroni bottlings really managed to capture the rums at its best, proving that age is but a number.

Image Courtesy of @weixiang_liu