Credits: Article and images by Ken Gargett @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2024/02/09/appleton-estate-21-year-old-one-of-the-worlds-great-rums/
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Fermentation is of diluted molasses. They use their own strain of yeast. Appleton has five large double retort pot stills, all made in Scotland from copper. They also have copper-lined stainless steel column stills. It is the copper pot stills that are used for the production of the rum to be blended into the 21-Year-Old.
The firm has around a quarter of a million casks maturing away, but these are distributed around several sites across Jamaica, just in case of a disaster befalling their precious liquid. Far better to lose only a portion, rather than everything.
Their rums work on the principle of ‘minimum aging’, so all of the components in the final blend of, for example, their 21-Year-Old, have been aged for at least twenty-one years. After blending, the 21-Year-Old rum is recasked and aged for a further two years. They are aged in what the team at Appleton call ‘Number One Select American oak barrels’.
Alcohol in the finished product is 43%. Presentation was upgraded to what the rum deserves around a decade ago. Just 12,000 bottles are produced each year.
I saw one review that suggested that the worst thing about the Appleton 21-Year-Old rum is that it is going to make a lot of lesser rums seem very uninteresting indeed.
The color is a glorious golden bronze. Spices, walnuts, a lovely orange rind note, caramel, hints of ginger and white chocolate, a little cocoa powder, vanilla, cinnamon, figs, a little Christmas cake, even a hint of coffee beans, but it is the gorgeous rolling notes of orange peel that stand out. The rum is finely balanced and wonderfully complex. Such length. This is one of the great rums.
It is undoubtedly a rum for sipping, rather than blending in cocktails or with cola or whatever. A lump of ice if that is what your preference is – and that might depend on location. Probably not that necessary mid-winter in northern Canada, but in the Caribbean, or indeed, Queensland, it is welcome.
Don’t miss this rum.
For more information, please visit https://appletonestate.com/en/
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Credits: Article and images by Ken Gargett @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2024/02/09/appleton-estate-21-year-old-one-of-the-worlds-great-rums/