The Grammys Of Rum?

R.L. Seale 12 Year Old Rum, voted my Best Aged Rum For Cocktails. If you don’t agree with me, make your own damn list. (Photo by Brandon Cummins/Altamar Brands)

Writing “best-of” round-up articles is always fraught with peril. If you’re not getting grief from the “I can’t believe you actually like that garbage” crowd, you’re getting it from the “I can’t believe you didn’t include X, Y or Z” crowd. In both cases, the opinion forms that the author of the list is a know-nothing with rotten taste, and if only the aggrieved reader of said list had been allowed to make it, it would have been far superior. I’m willing to endure the online catcalls for the opportunity to show some love to, in this case, more than a dozen of my favorite rums in the pages (or pixels) of Robb Report.

But before I give you the link to read the article, a bit of a caveat. I was not given entirely free rein to make my picks. The rums I chose to write up had to be available at one or more of a dozen or so online retailers selected by Robb Report. I have no problem with that — it can be frustrating to read a glowing review of something and then not be able to find it. But it definitely made the article a lot different from what I’d originally intended. I wound up eliminating a lot of categories and adding others, and while I stand proudly behind every one of my choices, there are rums with limited distribution that I was heartbroken to have to exclude.

So before you burn me in effigy, think of this as something akin to the Grammys of rum. An underground masterpiece that was only released on a small indie label likely isn’t going to get the nod. But a game-changing album on a major label that scored a couple of hit singles is surely going to get some attention. These are, for the most part, the major label rums. You won’t find Bacardi or Malibu included in my list — in rum as in music, popularity doesn’t always equal quality — but you’ll surely recognize some of the names here. And best of all, you’ll actually be able to find a bottle of each rum if your interest is piqued.

With that in mind, here’s the link! Read, enjoy, and I prefer rotten fruit being thrown at me to rotten eggs!