Kahlúa

Rating: 10/23 I didn't expect to be writing more about this so soon, but I'm really trying to nail down ratings for Kahlúa Especial and the ~30 year old bottle of Kahlúa that I found at my parents' house. N: Sweet, roasted, spicy. There's a little bit of rum toffee and funk as well. The roasted spices are actually really nice though, like smelling some nicely roasted arabica coffee beans. P: It's a chocolatey coffee flavor that is quite sweet, has hints of rum, and is plagued by this rough, confectioner's sugar chalkiness. It actually tastes OK, but that chalkiness is pretty unpleasant. F: There's definitely some of that chalky, rough sweetness sticking around. There's some spiciness left and a tad of roasted flavor, along with a hint of rum, but mostly it's just sweet chalkiness. This would be a lot better if they'd just cut back the sugar and cranked up the coffee a bit. It's actually pretty good mixed with Appleton Estate 12 in a 1:1 ratio because the mature, bitter rum flavor is very well balanced with the coffee, chocolate, and sweetness. Adding more alcohol helps to hide the chalkiness and makes this a lot more drinkable. Using vodka instead, the coffee shows through more, but it does taste watered down. Still, the chalkiness is diminished substantially at a 1:1 ratio and is even less apparent at 1:2. If just a dash of coffee liqueur is needed, I wouldn't worry about using this because of the confectioner's sugar element, but I would be hesitant because of its general sweetness. For something like a tiramisu, this should be totally fine. Although this has issues with its sugar, it at least generally tastes like sweetened dark roast coffee. That isn't true of Kahlúa Especial. The allegedly more premium line of Kahlúa trades a huge reduction in the rough sugar for a big increase in rum flavor. I could see why this might be considered an improvement if the rum were good, but unfortunately, it isn't. The rum has the rough youthfulness of Plantation Xaymaca without the intriguing complexity - and it's a poor match for a coffee liqueur either way. Whereas regular Kahlúa tastes like coffee augmented with rum (and way too much sugar for sipping), Kahlúa Especial tastes like (bad) rum augmented with coffee liqueur. In comparing the two, what it comes down to for me is that one tastes enough like coffee that I can fairly easily use it as a coffee liqueur, whereas the other tastes more like cheap, young rum. For this reason, I have to rate regular Kahlúa above Kahlúa Especial. Neither, however, is at all on the same level as that ancient bottle I unearthed at my parents' house. That bottle is more complex and less aggressively sweet than a modern bottle of regular Kahlúa (due to a combination of age and a higher ABV, I imagine). It still has some of that rough chalkiness, but it isn't nearly as bad as in regular Kahlúa and I can forgive it to a fair extent because of its better flavor. The old Kahlúa tastes more like light or medium roast coffee and it has this syrupy richness that is sweet, astringent, and bitter in a way that reminds me of Kavalan Soloist Port. I wouldn't call it a really excellent bottle and it doesn't really taste as much like coffee as regular Kahlúa does, but it's the only Kahlúa that I feel like I could sip on a cool winter evening. OK, so the summary here is this: ~ 30 year old Kahlúa >> regular Kahlúa > Kahlúa Especial I think I'll be going with a 10 for this, but I can imagine dropping it to a 9 or raising it to an 11. That chalkiness is a real problem, so it won't be getting a 12, but it is still sweet enough to use in certain applications, but I have to imagine that I can buy better coffee liqueur from another producer. Kahlúa Especial is at least a point behind it because it is harder to find an application for since the low quality rum flavor shows through so strongly. It could be 2 points behind, so expect a 7 to 9 for that one. The excavated bottle is more like a 16, though it might be less generally useful as a coffee liqueur given its strange flavor and subtlety.

Rating: 9/23 N: Nice and rich with a spicy, roasty note that suggests chocolate and coffee. A clear step up from some of the off-brand coffee liquors, but not a massive leap. It smells sweet but not too sweet and crucially smells entirely natural. There's some funk going on here with vegetal notes from the rum, but there are some sulfur notes in here as well. I smell a bit of mineral that I suspect is the confectioner's sugar. P: OK, it tastes quite sweet, then some milk chocolate comes in, then in morphs into semi-sweet chocolate, then into coffee. Then, it doesn't become all that complex, but some spiciness comes out and the balance is maintained. The only real problem here is that the confectioner's sugar comes out and the coffee is still kind of mild. Aside from that, it's a rich and balanced palate. It's sweet, but not as sweet as some of the off-brand ones. I do get decent complexity out of it. The confectioner's sugar and high presence of chocolate relative to coffee are both problems, with the former making it seem lighter and cooler than it could otherwise have been. F: The confectioner's sugar chalkiness is strong and it lingers along with a slight unpleasant cola flavor. The chocolate and coffee hang out for a while as well, but these flaws really jump out because they become more pronounced and even are joined by a hint of an artificial note. Still, this is better than the generic brands, so I am torn between 9 and 10. Ultimately, it is too sweet with too much confectioner's sugar, so I think a 9 is most appropriate.

Sweet