Bloomberg: Incredible Jamaican Rums That Truly Bring the Fruity Funk

Summer rummin’

Last month, I finally had the opportunity to check off a box on my spirits-pro bucket list: experiencing a Jamaican dunder pit.

A Jamaican what pit? In brief, it’s a giant, mucky vat used by some rum makers in which leftovers—fibrous bits of sugar cane, yeast residue and other solids and liquids remaining in the still—are dumped and allowed to slowly ferment with wild yeast, like a sourdough starter on steroids. Sour mash bourbons also use a portion of spent grains after distillation to jump-start a new fermentation process, so this may sound familiar to whiskey fans.

The Hampden distillery, operating since 1753, is a hit among high-end rum collectors.Source: Hampden Estate Rums

Yet the dunder pit takes it to whole new level. I can see how rumors start about bat heads and other animal remains tossed into the muck—though I’m assured these are just tall tales.

Frankly, it’s not cute. The murky, ominous-looking sludge bubbles and foams like a cauldron, and exudes a wildly funky, aged-cheese-and-molasses-y stench that could knock you right off your barstool. But it was an absolute delight.

If only this image was scratch ’n’ sniff: Hampden’s dunder pit.Photographer: Kara Newman

That aroma represents the magic that gives Jamaican rum its signature “funk,” that overripe-banana-like tone that distillers refer to as “hogo.” It’s also an essential step for creating esters, organic compounds that contribute to a rum’s aromas and flavors—and, many rum lovers say, the more the better.

Jamaican rums in particular are often described as “high-ester rum,” and while that’s not universally true, or even unique to Jamaica (you’ll find great examples in Barbados, Martinique, etc.), that high-ester punch is easy to recognize. If you want to learn more, Cocktail Wonk’s Matt Pietrek has a great deep-dive explainer.

Because spirits can be presented in shiny bottles, it’s easy to forget that they’re agricultural products. But driving past Jamaica’s vast sugarcane fields and experiencing a dunder pit up close reminded me how important rum and sugar cane are to the island’s cultural and agricultural heritage as well as to its economy.

Right now, Jamaica is in the throes of an ongoing dispute about what can and cannot be called “Jamaican rum.” Of note, last year Jamaica’s Intellectual Property Office approved an amendment to the geographical indication (GI) designation, stating that rum distilled in Jamaica but aged elsewhere is no longer eligible to be recognized as Jamaican rum. However, parties who want to age Jamaican rum outside Jamaica are pushing back, and the legal battle continues.

Much of the furor boils down to transparency, explained Peppie Grant, manager of Hampden Estate, as he guided a tour of the distillery. His view: “As long as they’re not trying to claim that the flavor comes from aging outside Jamaica, it’s OK,” he said. After visiting the relatively small Hampden as well as rum giant Appleton Estate, and sampling countless other Jamaica rums, I can understand why producers would be so protective of one of their key cultural exports.

Returning home to New York after getting dunder-struck, I looked around and more fully felt the Caribbean-inspired cocktail moment we’re in. From the lauded daiquiris at Momofuku’s Bar Kabawa (celebrating all of the Caribbean, with a special hug to Barbados from chef Paul Carmichael) to the new Red Bar within the Printemps department store (focusing on Gregory Gourdet’s Haitian heritage and Caribbean/French spirits broadly) to Afro-Caribbean drinks at Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi (where Bloomberg’s food editor is still dreaming about the mushrooms), it's exciting to see ingredients such as sorel and clairin—not to mention lots of Caribbean rum—claiming a long-overdue spotlight.

Jamaica’s rum inevitably finds a place among these drink menus, just as it’s finding a place among the cabinets of high-end spirits collectors. And when summer hits, it feels doubly right to pour.

So here are a few key bottles for those who want to experience a bit of hogo without hovering over an odoriferous dunder pit (unless that’s your kind of thing, of course—you’ll find no funk-shaming here). These rums are fruity and approachable, with just a whisper of Voldemort funk-that-shall-not-be-named.

Hampden Estate Great House 2024 ($131)

It’s unabashedly intense and funky, with tons of tropical fruit (think coconut, mango) on nose and palate. Aging in emptied bourbon casks adds a fleeting hint of dark chocolate. While visiting the distillery, I had a chance to sample the forthcoming vintage 2025 bottling, which was newly pulled from the barrel. It tasted like bananas foster, but crisp and bone-dry. I’m looking forward to the day it makes its way stateside.

Transcontinental Rum Line: Jamaica 2016 ($66)

I tried this bottling, which is part of a lineup of world rums from independent bottler La Maison & Velier, at last year’s New York Rum Fest, and it put me in mind of caramelized banana and grilled pineapple with lots of fresh-ground black pepper. The seafaring graphics on the label definitely inspire a bit of wanderlust, but also speak to how it’s made on two continents: distilled and aged for four years in Jamaica, then matured one more year in Europe. Wherever it lands on the “Is it or isn’t it Jamaican?” GI-designation battle, it’s a memorable sip worth seeking out.

Bloomberg: The 15 Best New Bottles I Tried in 2024, From $26 to $26,000

Season’s greetings, spirits sippers! It’s Brad Japhe, the resident expert on the subject, reporting for duty. As is customary this time of year, I’m presenting my annual list of the absolute best bottles I encountered over the past 12 months. The stable of contenders was crowded in 2024: Of some 322 new expressions sampled, I counted no less than three dozen deserving of effusive praise. Sadly, some of those offerings are just so painfully pricey and/or excruciatingly allocated that I couldn’t, in good conscience, include them here.

Instead, my choices embody a wide variety of liquid across all categories and price points. Make no mistake, you will see bottles fetching four- or even five-figure sums—entries are organized in order of increasing cost—but it’s all relatively available for purchase. You won’t need an estate planner to broker acquisition.

But before we get to the big reveal, let’s recap the year’s major headlines. Beyond spotlighting the shape of the industry in 2024, these news items hint at where we’re headed in the months ahead.

For one thing, people aren’t paying as much for rare whiskey. A recent report from the financial advisory firm Noble & Co. indicated that the value of auctioned scotch cratered by 40% in 2024. But that hasn’t slowed the trend of formerly shuttered “ghost” distilleries rising from the grave across the Scottish landscape, as I reported this summer.

Tariffs proposed by the incoming administration mean your favorite tequila could effectively become 25% more expensive in the year ahead. And a separate trade war with the UK could persuade domestic scotch consumers to experiment with single malts from emerging markets such as India or New Zealand.

Or, perhaps they’ll start exploring American single malt, since the category is finally going to be recognized by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, after more than eight years of lobbying efforts.

But enough speculating about what’s coming. Here are my best bottles of 2024.

Alambique Serrano Rum Blend #5 — $70.Source: Vendor

Alambique Serrano Rum Blend #5

There’s more than just mezcal coming out of the highlands of Oaxaca. This artisanal brand from the steep hillsides of Santa María Tlalixtac specializes in world-class rum. In fact, you’ll be hard-pressed to find sugarcane distillate anywhere drenched in as much complexity as this 65.9%-ABV spiced-banana bomb. It’s a 50-50 blend of column spirit, aged for 27 months in ex-bourbon casks, with pot still spirit aged for 19 months in new French oak. Cut it with a splash of water to extend a tobacco and toasted almond-toned finish. Or knock it back neat, if you dare. ($70)

Hampden Great House 2024 Jamaican Rum — $130.Source: Vendor

Jamaica’s holy house of funk never disappoints when it comes to full-bodied expressions, brimming with over-ripened fruit. Although the exact recipe of this annual limited release shifts each year, it invariably involves a blend of rums that epitomize the brand’s signature style. This time around it finds form in a 57%-ABV sipper that wows with an initial wave of marmalade and cranberry relish, revealing more tropical fruit undertones as it warms in the dram. ($130)

Bloomberg: Your Next Investment Bourbon Should Be a Brandy

Illustration by Nico H. Brausch

By Christopher Ross

June 18, 2024 at 6:27 AM UTC

Bourbon collectors, I feel your pain. What was once a niche hobby for booze geeks has become a forbiddingly expensive and competitive endeavor, what with the annual Pappy Van Winkle lotteries (and heist) and secondary markets where a $2,000 bottle of 20-year Eagle Rare can leap to $14,000 in just five years.

Still, if you love the hunt for artisanal, rare spirits, have you considered pivoting from grains to grape? The warmth and woodsy flavors of single-barrel, full-strength cognac and Armagnac can closely resemble the taste of bourbon, at a more attainable price point.

“Folks who’ve had the opportunity to taste these bottles notice, wow, there’s that concentration, that similar profile of combining fruit and structure from the wood,” says Greg Faron, co-founder of new importer Bien Élevé in Washington, DC. Some vintage brandy can compare in flavor to glut-era bourbon, he says, referring to the 1970s-to-early-’90s period when distillers cleared out older, languishing whiskey stock under younger labels.

Bien Élevé joins established importers PM Spirits and Charles Neal Selections—plus upstarts such as Bhakta Spirits, from the founder of WhistlePig whiskey—as part of an expanding network of bottlers and retailers working with aficionados to build a ground floor for collecting these complex liquors.

Their biggest obstacle? The French.

See, when it comes to investment bourbon, what’s most sought-after are single-vintage bottles, ideally single-barrel, bottled at cask strength—offering a premium of intensity and purity and rarity, traceable to a specific location and point in time. But that’s exactly the opposite of how French brandy is traditionally produced.

Distillers at major cognac houses such as Hennessy and Courvoisier believe the beauty of their craft lies in artful blending; they lock up eaux-de-vie (unaged spirit distilled from grapes) from hundreds of growers to do so. There are strict brandy-making rules around grape varietals, distillation and minimum aging time in oak barrels, but blending isn’t actually a prerequisite.

“I’m French, so I can say this: The French feel they are the guardians of a tradition, which makes them not innovate whatsoever,” says PM Spirits founder Nicolas Palazzi, one of the first importers to bring unblended, collector-bait brandy to the US.

The Cognac region, Palazzi says, is particularly disincentivized to put out the kind of artisanal spirits that US buyers are clamoring for. If a producer decides to set aside a barrel for aging as a vintage cognac, a member of the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (BNIC) must be present for its sealing. To open that cask for any reason, including if it’s leaking or damaged, they need to pay for another inspector to come out and oversee the breaking of the wax seal.

Moreover, Big Brandy doesn’t see much long-term strategy in single-barrel bottlings, as it’s only able to achieve its current sales volumes by blending spirit from different casks; the ultrapremium $4,000 Rémy Martin Louis XIII may contain as many as 1,200 eaux-de-vie, some as much as a century old. There are precious few growers in Cognac who don’t sell to the mass-market houses.

Steve Ury, a well-known former bourbon blogger, takes a cynical view of the Kentucky gold rush, so he turned his gaze toward France. He says his steadily growing Facebook group, Serious Brandy, now counts more than 3,000 members. He says American buyers have had to train smaller brandy producers to fill that desire gap between collectors and the conglomerates.

“Their first instinct was, you blend everything, you water it down to 40%—that’s what people want,” Ury says. “And we had to go and say, ‘No, that’s not what we want. We want to see those barrels. Just put ’em in a bottle. We don’t need you to do anything else.’ ”

There’s casks all over the place, all over France, sitting in garages and sheds.

Cognac houses Pasquet and Grosperrin are among producers that have gotten the memo, as well as L’Encantada Armagnac, he says, which can be “very bourbon-like. It’s dark and oaky because they don’t do as much treatment to it, they just sort of leave it in the barrel.”

Reid Bechtle, a collector in Virginia, agrees. He was so enchanted when first tasting L’Encantada’s Armagnacs in 2015 that he and fellow members of his private whiskey club—1789b, which buys whole barrels of spirits—foresaw the untapped demand and purchased three on the spot. Now, he says, L’Encantada’s fame has grown, and its small-batch, orange-wax-topped bottles command such a cult following that it’s often impossible to find at retail. “What we used to buy for $60 is now $300.”

For your own collection, this month PM Spirits is releasing a L’Encantada discovery box ($211) featuring 200‑milliliter independent bottlings of brandy distilled by three different domaines over three different decades: 1999, 2001, 2012. Dozens of years in barrel reveal beautiful tertiary aromas of dried citrus, tobacco and resin.

Cognac Frapin, a family-owned producer founded in 1270, focuses mostly on traditional aged blends, but it, too, is coming around, with help from Palazzi. A 1994 vintage released in May is a first for the maison: single-estate, single-cask, full-proof. Balancing the richness of the wood with subtle orchard fruit, vanilla and leather, it costs $265. Only 500 bottles were made.

Similarly, Bien Élevé imported a single-cask 1967 Cognac Lheraud Bons Bois ($640), perfumed with exotic spice and dried figs and elegantly rounded on the palate. “It’s become more of a focus in France, finally, for single-barrel picks,” says Faron, the Bien Élevé co-founder. Just a dozen of the 132 bottles of the Lheraud Bons Bois were allocated to the US.

I wouldn’t be surprised if major producers started earmarking exceptional casks as well, given that collectible, traditional blends have stalled. The compound annual growth rate by volume of ultrapremium-and-above French brandy was down 2% globally from 2018 to 2023, compared with ultrapremium bourbon’s 22% growth, according to IWSR, a global beverage alcohol data specialist.

“With French brandy, the extraordinary and extensive histories—over 700 years for Armagnac alone—and the tremendous ageability of these spirits, arguably far greater than most whiskeys, should mean that the possibilities for finding great spirits are near endless,” says Nima Ansari, a buyer for Astor Wines & Spirits in New York who stocks about 20 bottles of boutique brandy. Cognac can age longer than bourbon or American rye because of a cooler climate and less char on what are usually older, larger barrels.

But the ultimate factor may be the love of the hunt. As in the early days of searching for bourbon “dusties” on liquor store shelves, there’s a sense of undiscovered treasure out there, if you know where to look and strike quickly when opportunities arise.

If a vineyard hasn’t presold all its grapes to a brandy house, some farmers might have their own spirits distilled for consumption among friends and family or as an investment. “Every farm is a potential producer,” Ury says. “There’s casks all over the place, all over France, sitting in garages and sheds.”

In other words, there’s a lot of potential boutique brandy out there—and it’s all rare. Consider: If an importer comes across the private stash of an elderly couple, buys it and releases 170 bottles, it might be all that family farm ever produces.

For collectors who get a thrill from acquiring a truly one-of-a-kind spirit, it’s tough to put a price on those bragging rights. At least for now, though, a couple hundred bucks ought to do it.

The World Cup of Luxury Spirits: Best Booze of 2022

It’s a global matchup for the titles in best new whiskey, gin, rum, nonalcoholic spirit, digestif and more.

By Brad Japhe
December 16, 2022 at 7:00 AM EST

The World Cup is nearing its end—as is 2022. In service of such, we’re taking a moment to memorialize the best booze of the year. What does liquor have in common with soccer, you may ask? Not a whole lot if you’re watching it live in Qatar. But under usual circumstances, well-crafted spirit, just like the Beautiful Game, is a truly global phenomenon. And just as it’s been a particularly big year for soccer, it’s been for spirits, too, with a plethora of new releases kicking around bottle shops as of late. Over the past 12 months, I sipped my way through more than 150 expressions hailing from roughly 40 different countries. For those keeping score, that’s eight more entries than the total number of national teams qualifying for the World Cup.

For fans of high-end whiskeys, rums, vodkas, gins and more, there’s almost too much to cheer; according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the US, luxury brands increased by 23% in Q2 over that same quarter of 2021. All this is to say, the field is increasingly crowded. Upon careful deliberation and review, I’ve managed to whittle it down to one-on-one matchups for every primary category of spirit, including some zero-proof entrants. But in each draw, it’s up to you to decide which side walks away with the trophy. Let’s get the ball rolling....

Group Gin: Procera Green Dot versus Three Cuts Distiller’s Release Bold Exotic.

Best Gin of 2022

Kenya versus Australia

Procera Green Dot ginWhereas most gins on the market today are made using dried juniper, this Nairobi-based distillery relies on fresh

berries from the native Juniperus procera. Its 94-proof Green Dot ($120) incorporates all parts of the treeincluding the foliage and bark. The resulting liquid offers a pine-forward nose, typical to the category, but itwarms the mouth with earthiness and a tickle of umami on the finish. It exists as that rarest of breeds: a sippinggin. Presented in a mouth-blown decanter of recycled glass, this gin exudes uniqueness inside and out.

Group Rum: Papalin Jamaica 7 Years Old versus Andrés Brugal.

Best Rum of 2022

Jamaica versus Dominican Republic

Papalin Jamaica 7 Years Old rumThis assertive banana-bomb from esteemed independent bottler Velier marks a melodious merger of twolegendary producers from opposite ends of the Caribbean island. High-ester rum from Hampden and Worthy

Park were pot-distilled and matured in their respective distilleries and warehouses before being combined into awhole greater than the sum of its parts, at about $60 a bottle. Ripened tropical fruit is on full display, and yet athoughtful balance to the blend precludes the finish from overplaying its funk.

Group Brandy: Pierre Frapin Cuvée Rabelais versus Suyo No. 1.

Best Brandy of 2022

France versus Peru

Pierre Frapin Cuvée Rabelais cognacThe Frapin family has been crafting cognac in the Charente Valley since the 13th century. Today their estateconsists of 600 acres worth of vines in the grande Champagne cru. Eau-de-vie distilled from this region is

especially well-suited for lengthy aging, as this collectible $13,000 release convincingly demonstrates. It containsliquids that are 100 years old, and yet the XO exerts a spry vitality, pirouetting across the tongue with brightcandied orange and stewed apricot. The mahogany liquid decants gracefully from a gold-necked vessel, craftedby the oldest glass manufacturer in France, Cristallerie Saint-Louis.