This review of @dead_reckoning_rum’s highly anticipated bottling of a two-years-and-five-months-old @mhoba_rum was long overdue, one that I should have done late last year. However, the post office had other ideas which led to me receiving my rum only a week or two ago. But enough of that, and do let me share with you more details of this exciting bottle that I was so looking forward to.

By now, @dead_reckoning_rum is a rather recognisable independent bottler among rum fanatics across the world. Founded as Australia’s first independent rum bottler by Justin Boseley, a former sailor and chief officer of mega yachts that travelled the Caribbean islands, Justin has a knack of sourcing single cask rums from across the world, and bringing them to Australia and finished in various different casks for a short period of time in the South Australian climate, also known as “Australia dry aging”.

This particular rum that Justin had bottled comes from @mhoba_rum in South Africa. Mhoba themselves are a rather interesting distillery, one of the few that sees the entire process through on their own, from growing organic sugarcane in their plantations, to distillation through self-designed and self-built stills, and finally hand filling and labelling each and every bottle.

Mhoba distills their spirit from freshly squeezed sugarcane juice, similar to that of rhum agricoles, and this single cask is no exception. It was aged for two years in South Africa in an ex-South African red wine cask from Vrede En Lust, before it was shipped and finished in Adelaide in an ex-bourbon cask for an additional five months, bottled at cask strength of 56% abv and an outturn of 377 bottles.

The nose packs a lot of intensity, richness, and sweetness, and with it, so much complexity in that one little bottle. It has a treacly, sweet overtone that probably harks back to its red wine cask influence, and immediately followed-up with sweet corn and cantaloupe. Along with this comes a side of funkiness, a tinge of sourness that you usually find in higher ester rums, but also grounded by thick, brown caramel, and a hint of savoury notes as well.

Now the palate is rather mind boggling because while the nose presents a profile that might remind you of a high ester rum, the palate tells another story of one that relates to tropically-aged demerara rums. Lots of sweetness, vanilla, marshmallows, and the slightest hint of that funk that pops-up in the middle. The texture is thick, rich, chewy even with a slight tartness at the sides, but I’d say it has a very good balance of both the red wine cask and bourbon influence. The finish was slightly shorter than I would’ve liked, bringing with it notes of corn, grapes, custard, lots of candy really, and a bit of tobacco.

Being a huge demerara lover, I really liked this rum. And rather than thinking that the nose should have been more akin to the palate, I thought that the divergence in flavours made this an even more appealing rum given the disjoint between the two. If there was any negatives, I’d say the finish was a tad short and perhaps weak in terms of its structure, but otherwise a wonderfully good rum, and a very different Mhoba from the rest!

Also, do check out @88.bamboo’s very comprehensive and interesting interview with @dead_reckoning_rum [link here!], exploring Justin’s rum journey, and the future of the Australian rum scene!

Image Courtesy of @weixiang_liu