Zaya - Rum Good Enough to Drink Straight

 



 

Curveball - this week we're venturing into a place I rarely go: the world of rum.

As a younger man, I drank a fair amount of rum in a small variety of mixed drinks. As I aged and started drinking my spirits straight, or with a little water, rum became something I kept  on the bar for my friends who didn't like whiskey. It was a lonely bottle of either Ronrico or Bacardi, light, and lasted a long time, since it only got consumed by visitors.

Last year at our annual Solstice Party, though, a friend whose opinion on many things, including booze, I greatly respect, insisted I try a dram of this Zaya Grand Reserva dark rum he had brought.

With a little trepidation, I did. What a surprise.

It smelled of vanilla and caramel. It had a slightly heavy, but pleasant mouthfeel when taken neat.

And, oh my, the flavor. Sweet, so very sweet, with rich vanilla, caramel and chocolate notes. You can taste some alcohol, but there's almost no alcohol burn, which is simply stunning for an 80 proof (40% abv) spirit. It has a nice medium length finish, with maybe just a hint of oak towards the end.

Zaya Grand Reserva is a blended rum, made from a blend of different rums that have been aged in oak barrels for at least 12 years. It's also supposed to be quintuple distilled.

For those who have forgotten, rum is made from sugar cane. And while all drinking alcohol is produced by yeast eating sugar, the source of sugar the yeast consumes greatly affects the flavor of the alcohol created.

You could make mixed drinks with this, I guess, but stay away from mixing it with cola. Your tongue will go into a diabetic coma.

I recommend at least trying this as I take it: neat, at room temperature. It will have you seeing rum in a whole new light.

You can find this around the country, and even in North Carolina, for $30 - $35 a bottle, which is a decent price for an excellent 12-year-old spirit.

And, yes, my friend was kind enough to leave the bottle with me...

 

The Best Damn Rye - Willett Family Estate Single Barrel Rye, Rare Release

 

WIllet Family Estate Bottled Single Barrel Rye is simply the best rye whiskey I have tasted. All my whiskey-loving friends who like rye rave about it. Even those who don't like rye admit that it's the best rye they've ever had.

If you manage to find this, buy a bottle. It's not too pricey (around $35 a bottle in the US as I write this) and even if you don't like rye, it's a fantastic addition to your bar for your friends who do. It also makes an excellent gift to a rye whiskey drinker - I gave myself a bottle for my birthday, in fact. :-)

This is the whiskey that redeemed rye whiskey for me. My first taste of rye was horrid: astringent and unpleasant and completely off-putting. I was planning to give rye a complete miss, until a friend convinced me to try the Willet Family Estate Bottled Single Barrel Rye (hereafter referred to as Willett SBR).

That designation, detailed at length on the label, as a single barrel whiskey, makes this a rare bird in the marketplace. Most whiskies of all types (bourbon, scotch and so on) that are bottled are produced by mixing the contents of many, many barrels to produce the desired flavor and amount of product. This is necessary because different barrels of whiskey age differently, depending upon a host of factors, such as temperature, place in the warehouse, the wood of the barrel, variations in the quality of the grains in the mash and so on.

So, each individual barrel can have its own unique taste. However, successful branding requires a consistent product, and successful business minimizes waste.  So barrels are mixed to smooth out the variations and maximize utilization of the distilled spirit.

Willett SBR is one of a handful of whiskies on the market where the contents of the bottle came from a single barrel of whiskey: no mixing. Flavor consistency is maintained by the taste buds of the Master Distiller, which leads to an interesting phenomenon - WIllet SBR bottles don't carry a consistent age statement. I have bottles that were aged for 4 years, and bottles who had to spend another year in the cask to become "right".

This is also a cask-strength whiskey. The strength varies a little from cask-to-cask, but the bottles I've seen or drank have ranged from 109 proof to 116 proof ( 54.5% to 58% ABV).

In the glass, this has a rich reddish gold color. The aroma is of oak and alcohol and spice.

I occasionally sip this straight, which is frankly amazing for such a strong spirit, but I generally prefer it with a little water. That cuts the hefty alcohol content down and lets some of the other flavors come through.

WIllett SBR has a nice rich mouthfeel. I taste notes of mint and spice, maybe some oak, and a lovely sweetness that's not quite honey.

I think it's delightful. But rye, because of it's spicy notes, tends to divide folks more than a sweeter grain, such as barley, does when it is the primary ingredient in the mash. As an American Rye, WIllett SBR is legally required to have at least 51% of the mash grains be rye. I have found several places online claiming that the mash bill is actually 95% rye and 5% barley, but I haven't found what I consider to be an authoritative source for that information.

As I said at the beginning - if you can find it, buy it. If you don't like rye, buy it for your bar anyway. Trust me, you will find folks who do and will love you for introducing them to the Willet SBR.