Today we look at a very unique blend - the Kaiman, by Compagnie Des Indes for their 5th anniversary. The blend is a mix of 72.2% 1973 Guadeloupe and 27.8% 1993 Guyana / Jamaica. For the 1993 components, both were blended together in a single cask since 1995. The Guyanese rum itself consisted of three different rums, from the Savalle still, Enmore, and Port Mourant; while the Jamaican was a pot still Wedderburn.

On the nose, you’d never guess that this is a rum with an average weighted age of 40.44 years. There’s lots of bright grassy notes, almost like a young Clairin of about 4 years old. Tropical fruits, pineapples, some spice mashed with liquorice and olives in brine. But as you leave it to breathe further, the demerara characters are revealed, toasted warm bread, candied apples, caramel. All very enticing!

(Image Source: @weixiang_liu)

The palate was a tad disappointing for me, it started off relatively flat, not much sweetness in it. There are those faint hints of raisins and leather from the demeraras, but was generally dominated by menthol, very herbal in fact, more liquorice and bitter wood. But despite all that, the texture of the rum was great, smooth, soft, and layers of flavours were clean. And as I said before in a blind tasting you would be hard pressed to notice that this was a rum of such age!

Its a bit of a conundrum for me because while the nose grew better with time, the same couldn’t be said for the palate. In fact I tasted it a second time straight out of the bottle and the tasting notes were definitely more pronounced. I just thought the rum could do better will a little more “oomph”. But all-in-all still an interesting rum blend!