The Holy Grail Of Rum Makes Its Long Awaited Return (For 1,500 Lucky Consumers)

Appleton Estate’s 17 Year Old Legend rum, and the cocktail that put it on the map (spoiler alert: it’s a Mai Tai) (Photo courtesy Campari)

There are certain articles I feel like I was born to write. In this case, someone else must have felt that way, too, because I had the good fortune to be able to break the news to the world (via Forbes) about a boozy white whale I’ve been hunting for almost as long as I’ve been writing about spirits and cocktails. The story of the original Mai Tai, conjured up by “Trader Vic” Bergeron in 1944, and the long-since discontinued rum he used to make it, has bewitched me since I first read about it, oh, fifteen years ago? Twenty? If I were to make a list of no-longer-made spirits I’d love to try (and let’s not kid ourselves, of course I’ve made lists like that) J. Wray & Nephew’s 17 Year Old rum would be number one with a bullet.

I suppose I technically had the opportunity to taste it back in 2008, when Belfast bartender Jack McGarry — who later opened the Dead Rabbit in NYC — had a Mai Tai on the menu that used a vintage bottle of the actual Wray & Nephew rum used by Trader Vic to make what I think of as the big bang of tropical cocktails. At the time, it was the most expensive cocktail in the world, running about $1,475 (that figure has since, in these decadent times, been passed many times over). And even in the middle of a worldwide financial meltdown, it still only took McGarry a year to go through the bottle. Not that I was anywhere near Belfast at the time, nor did I even find out about it until after the fact. But in theory, I suppose it COULD have happened.

Ever since word started getting around, last year, that Appleton Estate, which is owned by Wray & Nephew, was going to release a recreation of the original Mai Tai rum, I’ve been hounding publicists and employees of Wray & Nephew’s parent company, Campari, for any details about it, namely when it’s coming out and who would be stocking it. I was too obsessed with getting my hands on a bottle to think seriously about writing about it, although of course that too was a given. And now I’ve tasted it and written about it, and for more details than that, you’ll just have to read the damn article over at Forbes (link is -> HERE <-).

I can tell you that the news of this rum has caused a bit of a shitstorm in the rum community. It’s a very limited edition with a very large price tag, and a lot of people who would love to taste it are going to get shut out. Why doesn’t Appleton just mass-produce the damn thing? Read the article! How does it taste? Read the article! How closely does it match the flavor profile of the original 1940s rum? Alas, unless I get to taste the original and the recreation side by side, I’ll never know. But read the article anyway!