I fondly remember the first Long Pond rums I had chanced upon during my initial foray into this rabbit hole of mine - Plantation’s (or now Planteray) Extreme No.3, both the ITP and HJC marques, of which I preferred the former given my preferences for low-ester rums that tend to have a softer, more coherent profile. However those rums were quite an anomaly then, having spent 21 years aging in tropical Jamaica, in comparison to most independently-bottled rums released during that time which would’ve been very much continentally-aged, aside from course Velier.

And that leads me very nicely to the rum I have today, a continentally aged Long Pond from the year 2001 bottled by @preciousliquors, with a label and typesetting that unmistakably points towards a co-bottling for @theauldalliance. There is scant information on the label itself, except that it had spent majority of its 21 years in continental Europe, bottled in June 2022 from presumably a single cask given its outturn of only 268 bottles, and at an abv of 51%. I was unable to find any information on its marque either, but if I were to hazard a guess based on the tasting below, I’d say it would’ve spanned the range from a VRW (Vale Royal Wedderburn, 150-250 g/hl AA) to a STCE (Simon Thompson Cambridge Estate, 550-700 g/hl AA).

The nose was quintessentially Jamaican, packed with lots and lots of funk and fruitiness, although unlikely to be one of those extreme high ester types. That said, there was a softness to it too, raisin sweetness, and that heavy doses of varnish, and tropical fruits, much like nearly-ripe mangoes, bright acidity, and little bits of banana too. It was a tad medicinal too, and yet very interestingly a slight hint of candy floss, which made for a peculiar mash of flavours in the glass.

Image Courtesy of @weixiang_liu