Flavorful Silver Rum Picks

Engineered with cocktails in mind, Chairman’s Reserve White Rum (formerly Silver) rum is a molasses-based rum. Made at St Lucia Distillers, it is distilled in a combination of copper pot and Coffey column-stills. The rums are aged separately in ex-bourbon barrels for 3-4 years. Then the rums are blended and allowed to mingle for another 6 months in oak vats.

Santa Teresa Claro is the latest release in the range, developed for the export market with a focus on its use in mixing cocktails. A blend of light and heavy rums, Claro is aged up to three years in ex-bourbon barrels (Venezuelan rum must be aged a minimum of two years). The aged rum has been carbon filtered to remove most of the color that it acquired from its time in American oak, resulting in a pale golden color.

This rum is produced by R.L. Seale and Company, Ltd. distilled from molasses and aged for three years in used American oak barrels. This rum is charcoal filtered, blended and bottled in Barbados.

This Pennsylvania distillery uses 100% turbinado, a raw sugar rather than a processed molasses. A 100ml bottle at 140-proof meets the maximum allowance for alcohol content and volume set forth by the Transportation Security Administration for personal carry-on of beverage alcohol aboard commercial aircraft in the United States, hence the name. Note: This is sold in 100ml sized bottles.

The Denizen rum lineup (tagline: Free the Flavor) is offered by New York-based Citizen Spirits and custom-crafted in the Netherlands by highly regarded rum blenders E&A Scheer. Citizen Spirits founder Nick Pelis says that creating the perfect daiquiri rum was his inspiration for the Aged White flavor profile. It’s a blend of Caribbean rums: Eighty percent from Trinidad’s Angostura distillery, the remainder from several Jamaican distilleries. Although labeled a “three-year-old rum,” significantly older rums are found in the blend alongside unaged rum, so “three years” is more accurately an average age. Before bottling it’s lightly charcoal-filtered to remove coloring.

The first-ever white rum from Plantation is named for three rum-producing “stars” of the Caribbean: Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad. The blend features unaged rums from Barbados and Jamaica, a 3-year-old rum from Trinidad and a 12-year Jamaican rum. Each rum brings their respective island’s distinctive flavors and characteristics to the blend, from the lighter, refined Trinidadian rum to the funkier, full-bodied Jamaican rums. Any color from the aging process has been removed via carbon filtration before bottling.

Banks Rum is named for the botanist Sir Joseph Banks, an adventurer who sailed with Captain Cook in the mid 18th century. The 5 Island blend is composed of 21 rums from 5 different islands - Trinidad, Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados, and Java, each lending their own unique style, flavors and character. The final formula was created by Master Blender Arnaud de Trabuc, who uses a combination of pot-stilled and column-stilled rums, charcoal filtered for clarity.

J Wray & Nephew is a renowned overproof rum produced in Kingston, Jamaica weighing in at 126 proof. Wray & Nephew, as it's known behind bars, is not only a very popular spirit in its home country, but is also the top-selling high-strength rum in the world. It is produced from a combination of both pot and column distillations of a 30 hour fermentation of sugarcane molasses wash and proprietary house yeast.

The Rum Society is a recent entrant into the rum space, with a most unusual background. Produced by Pernod Ricard’s Absolut division in Sweden, the three numerically dubbed expressions (#40, #62, and #65) are pot-stilled, mostly unaged, offered in limited release, and targeted at rum geeks. The #40 is unaged pot still rum from the Versailles single wooden pot-still in Guyana.

From Foursquare Distillery in Barbados comes this aged and filtered white rum bottled for the Real McCoy--a company founded by a documentary filmmaker whose research into the famed rum runner led him to found his own rum brand.