2011 Chairman's Reserve 9 Year Old "Master's Selection" K&L Exclusive Barrel Vendome Pot Still Single Barrel St-Lucia Rum

2011 Chairman's Reserve 9 Year Old "Master's Selection" K&L Exclusive Barrel Vendome Pot Still Single Barrel St-Lucia Rum (750ml)

The incredible St. Lucia Distillery, home of Chairman's Reserve, is the rum world's best-kept secret. This stupendous distillery is like a mini-Demarara Distillers Limited, insomuch as the distillery features a wide variety of stills and offers a huge array of different styles based on still type, substrate, fermentation times, and barrel types. To be precise, they have four stills making eight different styles of varying ester levels and cane base types. We've been incredibly lucky to have our pick of the litter with their recently created single-barrel program. Considering the prices that hip, high ester Jamaican single casks are fetching, these rums are an absolute steal. This exquisite barrel was distilled on the phenomenal Vendome still, an unusual hybrid pot-to-column that was purchased from another distillery in the early 2000s. This particular rum was distilled from molasses in 2011 and aged for 9 years in ex-bourbon barrels. This style is used in only incredible small quantities in the distillery's standard blends. Powerful and complex, full of deep tropical fruit, bold spice, and a unique fresh rubber quality that gives it an almost smoky character. This is easily one of the most exciting rums that no one is talking about, and if it were up to the rum geeks, we wouldn't be talking about it either.