Years ago, this was the first sipping rum I ever tried courtesy of a friend (and seminary roommate). His sister was involved with a healthcare initiative in Haiti; they were literally selling bottles of this on the tarmac in Port-au-Prince to passengers boarding departing flights...so she picked up a bottle for everyone in the family, and her brother was generous enough to share. That was almost a decade ago, though, and back in the days when standard bottling Maker's Mark was "the good stuff" for me...so how does it stack up now? Pretty good, as it turns out. This is a slightly more lean and austere style of rum - if you're a wine drinker, this is a Chablis (a real one from France), not an oaky California chardonnay. The nose features sea salt, gasoline (in a good kind of way), and wet slate, plus grassy sugar cane (like a rhum agricole), caramel, and barrel char. The palate is medium bodied, with an initial attack of sugar cane (again, like rhum agricole), green grassiness, with a hint of grilled pineapple; the mineral notes roll in toward the finish with just a little bit of alcohol warmth. For a $30-ish bottle of rum, there's a lot to enjoy here, and it's memorably unique. This wouldn't be a bad entry point into rum for a whiskey drinker looking to branch out, especially for a fan of maritime-influenced single malts.