@whiskylivesingapore was a pretty hectic affair, having squeezed all my various rum samplings into one Sunday afternoon. Yet there were some very special rums that required my full attention, dedication and quiet patience for me to enjoy the drams and tease out the tasting notes individually.

The first of the three is one that is almost synonymous with @velierspa - Caroni. And this isn’t just any ordinary Caroni rum, but the first of a new series known as the Paradise range, named after the cognac tradition where eau de vie is transferred into dame-jeannes to rest in a warehouse named the paradis, where the oldest cognacs are kept.

Similar to that, Caroni rums of the Paradise range were transferred from Trinidad or Guyana to the Cognac region of France in 2019, and placed into dame-jeannes to rest until its bottling fairly recently. The first bottle in the series is the Caroni 1996 Guyana Blended Paradise #1, bottled from a single cask #5552 at 62.7% abv with 249 bottles produced.

For those who might not be familiar as to why a Caroni, distilled in Trinidad, would be labeled as “Guyana”, this story stems from the time in 2008 when Luca Gargano was still purchasing casks of Caroni rums in Trinidad, but was in need of finding storage areas in the Caribbean as the old Caroni warehouse was to be demolished. Thankfully, he found a place in the form of DDL’s warehouses in Guyana where they remained till 2019. The “Blended” simply means that this Caroni was a blend of Heavy Trinidad Rum (HTR) and Light Trinidad Rum (LTR) or with neutral spirit from Caroni.

On the nose, the 1996 was just filled with delightful sweet caramel, vanilla, extremely elegant. And there’s a hint of unripe fruits, a bit of greenness perhaps, coupled with a touch of wood. This one is uniquely complex, very much like one of those caronis that are so finely balanced between the tar and floral notes, little bit of pineapples, and hibiscus.

The palate matches the nose for its elegance, and just rolls over your tongue so easily. Interestingly it starts off rather savoury, glutinous rice, but very lovely, round, brown sugar. You do feel the higher abv in this one, a tad spritely, marshmallows, juicy red fruits, plums, red grapes. The complexity is really quite something, and epitomised with lingering sourplums in the long, long finish.

The Caroni Paradise range starts off rather strongly with this immaculate 1996. Sure, it isn’t a HTR that overpowers you with the tar and petrol, but not everyone is in it for a “dirty” Caroni. Don’t get me wrong, I do like a tarry Caroni too, but this one has its own uniqueness, and despite not possessing those heavy overtones, it still is characteristically Caroni, and a really fine one too.

Image Courtesy of @weixiang_liu