Background
The C<>H 2007 phenomenon is rum geekdom at its finest. It simply isn’t enough to nerd out over our favorite distilleries, or even our favorite products from a single distillery. No, we must nerd out over different casks of the same distillate produced by the same distillery in the same month.
In case you haven’t heard, Hampden Estate in Jamaica distilled a bunch of high ester rum in November of 2007. They sold that rum to the Main Rum Company who aged it in their European warehouse. Once they thought it was old enough, they started selling casks of it to independent bottlers who then sold it to consumers.
High ester rum nerds love C<>H ’07 so much that it now has its own cult following. Some seek out as many bottlings as they can to compare the nuances between them. I’ve only had a few, but each has been pretty extraordinary.
This particular bottling is brought to us by the German IB Flensburg Rum Company. At fifteen years and nine-ish months, it’s currently the oldest available bottling of ’07 C<>H by virtue of the fact that it’s the most recent. At 66.2%, it’s also one of the highest proof bottlings we’ve seen.
Tasting
The first whiff is an olfactory assault. It opens with intense chemical notes like varnish, super glue, and gasoline. As I get adjusted to the aroma, I start to find pineapple rind, fermenting muscadine grapes, fruit-flavored Tootsie rolls, fresh hay, and briny seawater.
On the palate, it’s all fruit and fruit-adjacent foodstuffs. There’s pineapple, lemon-lime soda, watermelon Air Heads, and more of those fruit-flavored Tootsie Rolls. Super glue, varnish, and seawater persist, but they’re only toppings (albeit unusual ones) on this fruit and candy salad. Despite all the confectionary notes, I don’t get any butterscotch – many seem to find this note with this marque, but it’s never really resonated for me.
Verdict
Terrific! The longer aging doesn’t subdue any of the qualities I love about this. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s an improvement over its younger siblings, or even that they’re different enough for most people to bother trying multiple expressions. My C<>H sample size is admittedly small, and I’ll probably keep it that way, but I’m very glad to have tried this one. (9/10)