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Cockspur Old Gold Rum
The Cockspur brand of rums is the second one in this review from the Barbados, the other being Mount Gay Extra Old. Of course the Barbados may very well be the birthplace of rum, many hundreds of years ago, but Cockspur has only been around since 1884. It was started by Valdemar Hanschell who ran a supply store in the Barbados, and since this Caribbean Island was a main hub for shipping in the 1800's, selling rum was a must. Eventually the rum became the main product and with a merger with another producer rum producer and the company became Hanschell Inniss. They continue to produce Cockspur rum in three varieties, the five star, the Old Gold and the VSOR. The Cockspur Old Gold is the rum of choice for this review.
Cockspur is a blended rum containing pot still spirits and column distilled spirits. Obviously, the pot still provides the flavour component to this rum and gives it some unique characteristics, where as the column still provides the base for the flavour. The other unique thing about this rum is that it is aged in single use bourbon barrels. The Cockspur Old Gold is aged for at least 5 years before being bottled, so it puts it in the same class as the Cruzan Estate Diamond rum.
Cockspur Old Gold Rum
Appearance: Light goldish orange colour.
Nose: Starts alcoholic but fades with time to a mild rum aroma. This rum needs time to open up at which point the aroma becomes sweet molasses with dry fruit.
Taste: Start with lots of woodiness and some sweetness. Definitely some heat as it goes down the pipe. Slightly reminiscent of bourbon. Spicy finish with a mild sweetness.
When you think of rum, Cockspur Old Gold may be the classic definition. It isn’t as refined as other rums, like Mount Gay Extra Old or the Flora De Cana, but it is still a good rum. It has some of that rum heat that most people expect, or at least previously did. In the modern drinking world, everything is moving to the ultra smooth, can’t taste the alcohol, approach. This is good, but sometimes you want your bourbon to burn and your rum to reflect the “kill devil” moniker. Cockspur Old Gold sits in the classic rum category, not the modern “too smooth” category. That is a good thing though.
This concludes my list of rums I’m reviewing. I was going to review Gosling’s Black Seal but decided to save it for another day and compare it to other dark rums, instead of the amber rums I’ve been reviewing. In the future I want to look at white rums also, but I don’t have as big of a collection so it will have to wait until I buy some more white rum. In a day or so I’ll write up a summary on the rums I’ve looked at and rate my favorites.
Other News:
I’ve been spending a fair amount of time writing up the vodka research project. A couple of days ago I sent the samples to the GC/MS at the University of Western Ontario for analysis and hopefully I should get the results back within a week. Once those are in hand I can finish the write up. The great thing about this scientific approach to vodka tasting is that it is opening up a whole lot of questions, which will lead to further studies. For now, the results of this study may surprise some and may not surprise others. But it does shed a lot of light on the subject.
11 Comments on Cockspur Old Gold Rum
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It's a shame you're done with the rum reviews, I enjoyed them all. I've got a pretty large collection of premium rums, but somehow very little overlap with your reviews. I took a look at the LCBO website for rums, I'd suggest the Pampero Aniversario and Pyrat XO. They're the only two on that website that I've tasted and you have not reviewed. The Pampero is smooth, with a mild/moderate oak flavor. Also from Nicaragua I believe, so may be similar to the Flor de Cana. The Pyrat has a unique orange flavor, and is fairly sweet, similar to Zacapa 23. For what it's worth, if you can find a bottle of Ron del Barrilito or Cruzan Single Barrel, give them a shot. The Barrilito is my favorite, oaky, smooth, and delicious, though hard to find. The Cruzan Single Barrel is very similar to Mt Gay Extra Old. I drink those two most often, but only because I can replace an empty bottle without much trouble.