Tastes

Appletons have that strange distinctive odour. Hard to smell anything beside that. The taste is alcoholic fiery, dry but sweet anyhow. There is also afterburn, but decent one. For 8 yrs, it should be better rounded and mellowed, more refined. 8 years or not, this one has qualities to be rather mixer than sipper. Altrough I very liek 12yrs and V/X Appletons, this one is little bit of dissapoitment for sipping. So better mix it up or mellow it down with ice/water.

Surprisingly very drinkable neat, but not really for deeply enjoying the taste. Taste seems little flat, on first little acidic/stingy, but with few sips it flows away to rather mild and sweet rum. It taste like white rum, bit spices (nutmeg-y) and honey, but you will not get more than that. It is nice mixer, but it will dissolve all it's taste in your cocktail pretty quickly. So I would recommend if you want to get tipsy on rum for nice price. It's place between being barbarian getting drunk on cheap Bacardi and wasting good rum on intensive sipping. Good bottle to take on party, if you wanna show bit class, bit not much.

With my hatred to Bacardí itself and it's inferior basic rums, I actually enjoyed this one, when it came to market. With price tag around up to 7 EUR for bottle, it was awesome spiced rum around. The sweet spicy nutmeg cinnamon taste was unbeatable then. But now, with tag 10 EUR and up you can get much better bottles. Not with that intense sweet taste, but with actually better rum. Sometimes I miss Oakenheart, on the rocks, or with cola. But not that much to go and buy a bottle. Still, if you want to get easy reachable spiced rum, and not burn your intestines with Morgan's, but you're still too much wuss to get at least Sailor Jerry, this is excellent choice.

This rum reminds me sour mash up to 5 year aged bourbons. The taste is flowery and all other tones are rather blend. The smell, I agree with others, is rather alcohol.

Sweet, with light burn in the middle, bit of banana taste (over ripe banana). On the other side of my taste (as whiskey enthusiast I like the complex taste).

This is nice rum. Both beginners and intermediate drinkers could appreciate the sweet vanilla-toffee smell and strong but sweet taste, the nice acidity and tardiness which bourbon barrel brings. But there is also sweetness of molasses and the specific alcohol rum taste. It looks like match in heaven, but sadly it is lacking. One glass is nice experiment, but with second one you start wondering why would you want to drink more. You can get the bourbony notes better with some nice bourbon and the same with rum notes. So Black Barrel worth keeping for taste exercises? No, but it's worth the try if you stumble upon a nice price.

This is very sweet rum. Very distinct smell of oranges/orange peel (and bit of toffee), the taste is sweet but bitter, the classic rum sweetness is overpowered by the taste very close to cointreau (the orange peels, sweetness, burn). It's very interesting taste for a rum, but for me it's bit sweet and most of all - it lacks the typical aged rum characteristics, which I'm looking for in good rum.

The aroma level is quite low, soft all around taste, hints of caramel, hints of spices (pepper?).

Very nice spiced rum, fragrant, smooth, mostly for cocktails or drinks, but it can also be enjoyable on the rocks. The price was nice before (8 EUR), but nowadays the price tag is just unreasonably high. I rather keep my 14 EUR for other bottles.

It tastes young and flat, but still there is bit of harshness. The smell is nice, even better diluted. Vanilla, fruits, nuts with strong freshness. The taste is smooth, but with brief harshness, which sublimes in... well into nothingness. I'm not saying it is not good sipper. It's mostly sipper, because I can't imagine it into mixers. Unless you're going for binge drinking. I actually like this one, because it is some kind of... outsider. There is no great taste, but it still have own specific personality. So if you're rum explorer, don't hesitate to taste. If you are rum purist... stay away.