Flag Series Barbados 2011 Rum

At 64.6% ABV, this powerhouse deserves to be sipped neat or with a few drops of water to unlock its full complexity, though adventurous bartenders might deploy it in spirit-forward stirred cocktails where its rich, spicy character can shine. The warming notes of chocolate, ginger, and Cayenne pepper make it ideal for cooler evenings, pairing beautifully with dark chocolate desserts, aged cheeses, or rich barbecued meats that can stand up to its intensity.

Nose: Deep cocoa and dark chocolate hit first, backed by sharp vinegar-like notes that give it an edge. There's a medicinal quality—think iodine or band-aids—mixed with warming baking spices like clove and black pepper. As it opens up, you'll catch dried tobacco leaf and a hint of polished leather.

Palate: Raw sugar cane sweetness leads, followed by vanilla custard and floral geranium notes. The high proof brings noticeable heat—peppery and tingling on the tongue like cayenne. Mid-palate shifts to macerated cherries and apricots, with a honeyed richness similar to royal jelly. The texture is thick and coating.

Finish: Long and evolving. Starts with oxidized fruit flavors—dried plums and raisins that taste almost wine-like. Dark chocolate turns increasingly bitter, like 85% cacao. Praline sweetness emerges, then candied ginger and cinnamon bark spice linger. The warmth stays with you, peppery and dry at the very end.

This Barbadian rum showcases a unique double-distillation approach, blending spirits from both traditional column stills and characterful pot stills before embarking on an ambitious 14-year aging journey—eight years in ex-bourbon casks under Barbados' tropical heat, followed by six years of continental maturation in Europe, creating a complex interplay between accelerated tropical aging and the slower, more refined continental process.

• This rum spent 14 years growing up in two completely different climates—8 years lounging in tropical Barbados where the "angel's share" evaporates rapidly through the heat, then 6 more years maturing in Europe's cooler continental weather where aging slows to a crawl. This double-aging creates a personality you simply can't get from a single location, like raising a kid partly in Miami and partly in Scotland.
• At 64.6% alcohol, this is bottled at full cask strength with absolutely nothing added or taken away—no water to dilute it, no caramel coloring to make it look older, not even chill-filtration that strips out flavor compounds. What went into the barrel 14 years ago (minus what the angels drank) is exactly what's in your glass, making it as honest as rum gets.
• Only 235 bottles exist of this exact expression, drawn from a single cask that blended both column-distilled and pot-distilled rums before aging even began. That hybrid approach—marrying the clean, light character of column distillation with the heavy, funky personality of pot stills—is like having both a classical violinist and a jazz saxophonist play the same melody simultaneously.