Holiday Shopping For The Tiki Lover

Selected and imported by MinistryOfRum.com founder Ed Hamilton, this black rum is a blend of extra light, light and heavy pot-still rums. The molasses used is from sugar grown on the Worthy Park Estate where the rum is distilled. Located 1,200 feet above sea level, the distillery is situated in the Vale of Lluidas, and produces mostly bulk rum.

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.

Doorly's XO Rum is created by the R.L. Seale company at the Foursquare distillery It's aged in American oak ex-bourbon barrels before going through a second maturation in European oak former oloroso sherry casks.

Highly regarded U.K. independent rum bottler Mezan now exports some of their gems to the U.S. The first wave of releases includes the Jamaica XO, a blend of rums from several distilleries, and with no age statement other than an XO designation. It’s created in batches of 5000, and batches may vary in their source rum ratios. After blending, the Jamaica XO undergoes additional aging in used American oak barrels. There’s no sugar or coloring added to this rum, a hallmark of the Mezan lineup.

Botran Rum is a single estate rum which uses two varieties of sugarcane which is harvested on the Pacific south coast of Guatemala. The first press of sugarcane (aka virgin sugar cane honey) is used for distillation rather than the traditional molasses. Botran uses “dynamic aging” which is a variation of the solera process. For the No. 18, rums aged 5-18 years are blended that have matured in American whiskey, sherry, and port casks. Notably, Botran has a Protected Denomination of Origin (PDO) and is certified as a Ron de Guatemala. Botran was relaunched in the US in August 2022 with updated packaging. ($44.99/700ml).

The Ron Cartavio distillery was founded in 1929 and nationalized by the Peruvian government in 1968. The X0, distilled in a combination of copper pot and column stills, is a blend of rums with a weighted age of 18 years in Slovenian and other oak. It's a brilliant, rosy topaz in color with voluptuous legs.

Produced from pure cane sugar grown in the volcanic soils of the island of Martinique, La Favorite Rhum Agricole is distilled in a copper column-still. Founded in 1842, La Favorite is one of the few remaining independently owned rhum distilleries in the world.

Domaine de l’Acajou on Martinique was purchased in the late 1880s by Homère Clément, who sought to produce rhum agricole after learning distillation techniques from brandy estates in France. Clément VSOP Rhum Agricole is distilled from fresh sugarcane juice in a single-column copper pot-still. It's aged a minimum of 4 years in a combination of new French Limousin oak and re-charred ex-bourbon casks.

One of the most beloved rums in the mixology and Tiki communities, Smith & Cross is revered for bringing back the funky, high-hogo style of rum that had been sadly absent for many years. Distilled at the Hampden distillery in Jamaica, it’s a blend of two styles of pot-stilled rum, Plummer and Wedderburn, which fall at different points on the funkiness scale. Its gold color implies more aging than you might expect – the oldest rum here is three years, and most is far younger.

Plantation O.F.T.D. (Old Fashioned Traditional Dark) Overproof is a group effort. Alexandre Gabriel, Master Blender for Plantation Rum, brought together six rum luminaries--Jeff "Beachbum" Berry from Latitude 29, Martin Cate from Smuggler's Cove, Paul McFadyen from Trailer Happiness, Paul McGee from Lost Lake, Scotty Schuder from Dirty Dick, and Dave Wondrich, cocktail historian extraordinaire. Over many tasting and blending sessions, they formulated a rum ideally suited for use in top-shelf Tiki and tropical cocktails. The O.F.T.D. is a blend of rums from Barbados, Guyana, and Jamaica in the overproof dark style, and replaces Plantation’s Trinidad-sourced Original Dark Overproof Rum.