45 results

September 24, 2024 —   Hampden appears to have two very exciting new expressions on the horizon. Bottled for La Maison du Whisky's new 2024 Foundations Collection, we have a Hampden 1753, which marks the year of the J...

November 21, 2023 —   Has it been five years already? Hot damn! I still recall when Hampden had first released their inaugural Great House Edition in 2019, which at the time didn't seem to indicate that it was ever g...

August 29, 2025 —   Bar Madame is well-acquainted with Hampden Estate rum, having previously hosted Daniele Biondi just a year ago to unveil the one-year-old Hampden 8 Marks, and to mark the beginning of Madame’s i...

January 7, 2024 —   To all the rum lovers out there, @hampdenestaterum hardly needs any introduction - one of the stalwart distilleries of Jamaica, and one whose name has become synonymous with the terms “high-este...

October 20, 2024 —   With the happy union of Jamaica's Hampden Distillery's Christelle Harris and Matthew Hann just last June 2023, we saw the start of an all new series of specially curated Hampden blends that is m...

June 29, 2024 —   Hampden Estate has a new star and his name is Maverick! "Inspired by the birth of Matthew and Christelle’s son, Maverick, we are excited to share a blend that celebrates his arrival and the adve...

January 16, 2024 —   You haven’t fully explored the world of rum until you’ve tried a Hampden. We’ve tasted, reviewed, and raved about our fair share of Hampden bottlings here at 88 Bamboo over the last few years. T...

January 5, 2023 —   Hampden's are big - so when the Jamaican rum distillery releases a new mark, you'd be forgiven for being surprised that the interest in it would be pretty lukewarm. Granted, there wasn't much fa...

November 25, 2024 —   "When an unlabelled bottle makes an appearance at a spirits festival, you know you're in for something!" is a saying that I not only made up and will continue to repeat, but is also probably som...

May 10, 2024 —   Hampden has come a long way in fully realising its place as one of the great rums of the world - its distinctiveness gives the Jamaican distillery a unique identity that I'm more than certain mo...

October 17, 2023 —   Ever since its inaugural release in 2019, the Hampden Great House has been a highly anticipated annual release. It perennially features a select blend of different marks and vintages, which is d...

May 10, 2025 —   Hampden has now added to its core range a third expression - the Hampden 1753  - paying homage to the year of the Jamaican rum distillery's founding, and thus joins the current slate of Hampden ...

November 24, 2023 —   In 2022 when the Hampden Pagos was first announced, Pagos to mean "Cru" in Spanish, it certainly raised a brow of interest given the Jamaican distillery's surge in popularity over the recent few...

May 24, 2022 —     It looks like the Jamaican funk-master Hampden Distillery is ready for a Great House 2022, keeping with a tradition of annual release blends that started in 2019. For those unfamiliar, back i...

May 9, 2022 —     Image credit to /u/sirabra. Background: so I visited a rum tasting event which offered some rare pours for reasonable prices. I tried, among others, the Samaroli Hampden 1992 Cask 11 (an inte...

December 7, 2022 —   Hampden is basically the gold standard of Jamaican rums these days - some might even in their fervour venture as far as to place the estate synonymous with the category of modern rums - which is...

September 2, 2026 —   As it seems, Hampden's new Trelawny Endemic Butterflies series is not giving us one butterfly, but rather eight more of them! More mouthwateringly, all eight expressions from the new Hampden Tre...

November 24, 2025 —   Say what you will but Hampden, with the support of La Maison & Velier of course, sure know what they're doing when it comes to grabbing your attention - I can't help but imagine that they've...

June 14, 2023 —   Hampden made quite the splash when it was decided that it would make a bid for a fully Sherry cask matured expression which was to be named "Pagos", taken to refer to the "Cru" classification in...

May 16, 2022 —   Background: a cask from one of the best Hampden vintages, bottled by one of the best rum IBs. What could go wrong? Nose: very expressive, yet incredibly gentle; there is as much balance and ref...

May 8, 2022 —   Background: my third C<>H. This is the only fully tropical-aged exemplar of the mark I have tried. This one isn’t as universally loved as the HGML; some say it is “too extreme”. For a fun...

November 12, 2021 — Tasting some of that great Hampden Estate 8 year old 46% at Straits Clan today! I must admit I did not exactly enjoy the rum when I first tried it almost 9 months ago, but tasting this for the sec...

August 6, 2024 —     Swedes is a Swedish bottler that currently offers 5 rums (as well as 20 whiskies and 1 tequila), only distributed - for the moment - in Sweden and Norway. A rigorous selection at the end of wh...

May 13, 2022 —   Background: Remember when I said this was (likely) to be the most epic matchup I will ever post? Well, I might just have another think coming, because today, two of my most anticipated bottling...

March 5, 2025 —   What started as an special distillery only bottling has now become a full blown cult favourite annual release from Jamaica's Hampden Estate - and in just the blink of an eye, we're already celeb...

May 13, 2022 —   In the colloquialisms of whisky talk, the word “Sherry” (and by extension, “Sherry Cask” or “Sherry finish”) simply cannot be used enough. A mere mention of the word isn’t just able to command a...

December 15, 2021 — The 1983 Hampdens are some of the oldest Hampden casks found in the market today, and has been progressively released by a couple of independent bottlers in the recent years. This includes Rum Ar...

April 8, 2025 —   And we're back with another Hampden from The Whisky Jury! Now we've covered The Whisky Jury before, having tasted their wide range of spirits from whiskies to rums and even Cognacs and their ver...

November 11, 2024 —   A fun-filled evening at Bar Madame to celebrate the official launch of House of Cane’s very first single cask rum in Singapore - a ten-year-old Hampden <>H. This particular cask was distil...

May 7, 2022 —    Background: what can we say about vintages in rum? In most regions of rum production, sugarcane is evergreen and can be harvested year-round. Barring catastrophic events to the crops, batch di...

August 15, 2025 —   Few, if any, greater forces exist in the rum world than Italian distributor and co-bottler (working with distilleries to create its bottlings) Velier's chief Luca Gargano.  He is the man behind ...

September 25, 2024 —   Habitation Velier has been one of the biggest loves for every rum lover out there, bringing to the fore one of the widest ranges of rum producers from all around the world! The brand, from rum c...

September 18, 2026 — When the Hussey family took over Jamaica's Hampden Estate in 2009, the now cult rum-maker had only up till that point produced white rum which was mainly committed to exports (particularly to Eur...

September 5, 2025 —   A mere three weeks past, Velier and Luca Gargano stirred quite the commotion by unveiling to the world a unicorn from one of the most coveted distilleries - a 1959 vintage from the Hampden Estat...

June 22, 2024 —   Back in 2022, US distributors PM Spirits and Prestige-Ledroit took a trip to visit Jamaica's Hampden Estate. Whilst enjoying and learning more about Hampden, they thought it probably was a good ...

April 30, 2022 —   Background: this is a sample I ordered along with a bottle of IB Diamond rum. The 1992 vintage seems like a great one from what I heard, so I have high expectations for this. Of course this is ...

June 6, 2023 — Distillery Spotlight: Hampden Estate Rum Distillery Region: Trelawny Parish, Jamaica, The Caribbean   Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the funkiest of them all?     Before the world began appre...

November 30, 2024 —   Amidst the multitude of rum bottlings vying for attention at Whisky Live Singapore 2024, it’s the familiar label with the silhouette of the Hampden Estate Great House that draws me in. Now in it...

November 12, 2021 — (Image Source: @weixiang_liu)   Just some of the rums from last evening with @the_rum_cartel, including a couple Caronis, Corman Collins’ latest releases, a pair of 2002 demeraras from Le Gus’t,...

January 29, 2024 —     It has been awhile but I finally found the time to head down to @maison_du_whisky_singapore to sample two very special bottles by @the_colours_of_rum that I had missed during @whiskylivesingap...

February 10, 2026 —   Velier’s Magnum Series is one of those projects where a drinks release is, very deliberately, also an art object. It’s a collaboration between Italian independent bottler Velier and renowned pho...

April 30, 2022 —   Background: the lockdown has been lifted for close to two months. I was busy with my Master’s thesis, and then with socialising post-lockdown. As a result, I slacked off Redditing, as my backlo...

December 4, 2022 — The perfect festive way to end off the Hampden Estate Rum masterclass - with Hampden DOK Rum-infused panettone.  Hampden Estate and Jamaican rum have a bit of a reputation for being shrouded in so...

July 29, 2022 —   Background: this is a dram I had at The Auld Alliance, one of the great whisky bars of the world. An old Hampden bottled in 2019 from a vat of two vintages (1982 and 1983). If we go by the weig...

October 17, 2023 —   It's been over a year since Velier's chief Luca Gargano unveiled big plans to integrate the use of Sherry casks with Hampden's intensely funky spirit - this culminated in the Hampden Pagos range...