These are the tastings of less interest often: those tastings of store picks where you can get them in one place and one place only, so that, even if they’re good, if you live outside that area you’re never going to find one? High West does a great many and they’re relatively inexpensive. They also move quickly. If you’re not locked onto them, you miss out, and this is the first time I’ve been quick enough to nab one: rum finished Double Rye. I believe in a previous review I’ve talked about how I’d had the Double Rye right before High West moved from using older stock from MGP to mixing in their own distillate where according to all of you the quality went downhill. I trust the people I follow here, so I’m not questioning that. The only reason I write, “according to all of you,” is that I never went back to the well of High West Double Rye after that, mainly because I was more interested in exploring other options. There’s no doubt, however, that High Rye retains an allure to me. The bottle design alone is amazing. I like the image they present, and I was always going to come back at some point, especially if I could get my hands on one of the coveted store picks that brought something extra on top of the Double Rye. Last one I saw was a sherry finish, I believe, and I missed that one. It wasn’t in any of the FW&GS stores near me, and I wasn’t going to travel for it while this one, the Rum Finish, showed up in a store about 4 miles away. And the day it hit shelves, I drove over and got the first bottle. (My dad once asked, do you check the site every day to make sure you’re on top of getting these things? Yes, dad, I said, I check the site every day). There was also a High West “American Bourbon” that was finished in Sherry, but I passed. In any case, I don’t regret my decision to pick this up. It was $55, which seemed decent for a store pick with a finishing, and the proof is 98.9, which puts it in a respectable realm. And after all, I’ve had other rum finished whiskies: the Tully XO, the Glenlivet Caribbean, and they always please, even if they don’t necessarily wow. And this is a pleaser but not a wow-er, too. The nose is essentially dominate by the rum, with the molasses spices coming through. The rye is ultimately subsumed, but that’s not necessarily a drawback. Would I like a bit more balance? Could I imagine this with a little more, say, cola or anise or hot rye spice, yes. But it’s not a deal breaker. The funny thing here, beyond the rum nose, is the palate, which might be more familiar if I’d had the regular Double Rye after the move to more High West Distillate, but again, there’s not much rye here. There’s a little bit of pepper, but oddly, the palate is full of tropical fruit. There’s molasses from the rum, but there’s also a lot of mango, which again, seems to me to mean the rye is being subsumed. The finish is decent and peppery and lingers, and is really the only place with this whisky where I get any rye notes. It’s actually a lot like the Glenlivet Caribbean in many ways in that the rum becomes prominent, perhaps because the foundational spirit in the mix isn’t well-aged and can’t hold its own against the barrel finishing. I’m certainly going to finish the bottle, but I’m also glad I didn’t have to travel far to get this. While it isn’t a letdown, it’s certainly nothing to instantly write your friends about and post on social media that they have to find this. Recently, I complained of rising prices, and because of rising prices, I often ask myself, before I spend, what else can I get for the equivalent amount that might be better? For a few dollars more I could have gotten Pikesville. For an equivalent price, actually a little less, I could have gtten the Jack Daniels Single Barrel Rye. If I went bourbon, I could have secured Wild Turkey Rare Breed Bourbon or the Old Forester Prohibition. So no, I don’t regret buying this necessarily. But there are better bottles in the price range, which means I won’t be returning to this particular well anytime soon. In the end, if I wanted a rum, I could have bought a rum and a better one to boot. Plantation 5 year goes for $25 a bottle. The whole reason you get a whisky finished in rum casks is to see who the two play off each other, and there's isn't much playing here. Not bad, just cost more than what it's worth.