Kirk and Sweeney 12 Year Rum

I am not by any means the most experienced rum drinker. I come from drinking Scotch, Irish, Japanese whisky and Bourbon. But for roughly $30 this is a great sipper. It’s very vanilla forward almost overpowering with vanilla extract sweetness. But buried underneath there’s toasted pecans, lemon zest, barrel char and earthy black tea notes. It’s not complex but for $30 and a 12 year age statement there’s really not much to complain about.

Nose: Vanilla and caramel. Flavor: Spicy orange peel...hint of caramel. Final: Just OK as a sipper, better as a mixer. Warms the mouth & throat nicely. Rating is based on neat sipping.

Nose is vanilla, honey, butterscotch. The taste is of oak, a bit of spice, citrus. Overall a good rum

Primarily been using this as a rum varietal for cocktails and figured I'd jot some notes before killing it off. Labeled as "12 year" not "12 reserva" , so precedes the NAS change. Attractive, unique, and eye-catching bottle design. Nostalgic un-headed cork stopper is quite cute but also annoyingly tedious to grip well enough to pry out - perhaps I should channel my inner Jack Sparrow and do so with my teeth to achieve maximum levels of nonchalant swagger. Neat. Glencairn. Attractive coppery honey color. A hint of oily body and very patient, slow legs. Pungent with a full aroma, but ultimately flat and uninteresting. Extremely strong vanilla, but little accompanying sweetness = vanilla extract. More ethanol than I would have expected for the low proof and (supposedly accurate) long aging. Little to no fruit. Maybe a molecule or two that never quite became spiced pear but had aspired to as adolescents? Lots more vanilla on the palate accented by citrus peel - orange, mostly, plus some grapefruit and lemon. A modest but nice and buttery mouthfeel. Sweeter than the nose, but still pleasantly on the drier side. A touch of bitter burnt sugar. Some "used-to-be-melon" notes disappointingly overrun by the vanilla. Tart/tangy lingers in the cheeks. Can't shake the "rummy" descriptor - in this instance, not a compliment (think Bacardi silver), but perhaps unsurprising for a Spanish-style rum. It's a little rougher than it should be for the price point, but the biggest knock is the bland and somewhat disjointed flavor profile. Drinkable, but uninspired and one-note. This isn't overoaked, but honestly i think I might have preferred less barrel time to discover some of the tropical fruits that I'm sure used to be there - many younger and cheaper rums will outperform this. Try Appleton 8 for affordable aged rum goodness.

I love the bottles that K&S use. This 12yr old has a great aroma and color. The initial taste is very flavorful with hints of vanilla and caramel. There is a mild, harsh bite at the end that’s not evident in its older, 23yr old cousin. Not a bad rum and the price is right but I definitely prefer the 23.

On the eye, this is lighter than most 12 year old rums. The nose is predominantly vanilla, with the slightest hint of spice. On the palate, the vanilla is still predominant and the hint is spice intensifies a bit. There is a stronger alcohol burn that feels slightly hotter than 80 proof. All in all, this is a pleasant sipper, but it lacks the a Jamaican “funk”. They really need to improve their cork. It is hard to remove, and I ended up with bits of the paper seal in the bottle.