Plantation Rum Showdown!

Why have multiple bottles of rum from the same brand anyways?

    While this might be a trivial question to some of the members of my reader audience, if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'd like to explain my reasoning for this, and go into what rum is a little bit as well. If you'd just like to see my reviews of the bottles today, there will be another section further down where the text is once again emboldened.
    So, why have multiple bottles of rum? Well, lets start with a bit about rum production in general and compare it to some other spirits. Rum is at it's core, a distillate product made from sugarcane or sugarcane byproducts. But, that leaves a lot of room for interpretation, for example, you might have a Rhum Agricole made from sugarcane juice from a single harvest of sugarcane in a single country, that's distilled in column stills, not aged, and bottled at 40% ABV. Or you might have a jamaican rum, made from molasses from multiple harvests, distilled in pot stills with "dunder" (an ingredient in funkier rums, that is either leftover distillate from a previous batch that gets re-distilled, or even some distillate made from rotting fruit), aged for 15 years in multiple different climates, and then mixed with other rums as well before being bottled at 60% ABV. There's a lot of variance in how rum can be made while still being called a rum, because there's no single authority on what rum is, unlike with a cognac, bourbon, rye, tequila, mezcal, vodka, liqueurs, etc.

    So how different can rum be? Well... it's complicated, because of the lack of a single authority deciding if a bottle is rum or not, some peoples definitions of rum can be very different. For example, Cachaça is a spirit distilled in brazil made from fresh pressed sugar cane juice. I have a review of a bottle on my blog linked here it's very grassy and earthy, in ways that you might even see from a wine, where you can taste the land where the sugar was grown. But some people would say Cachaça is it's own thing, and not a rum, and some people would argue it is a rum. There's countless examples of these edge cases where the definitions get fuzzy, and people get angry. So what if we stick to your typical "traditional" rums that anyone can find. Even then, you run the gamut on everything from what you're distilling from, what type of still you're using, where it's being distilled, how long its going to be aged, what it's being aged in, and what proof its being bottled at. It's a lot of factors to look at. So if you're buying a new bottle of rum, you might want to know what you're looking for, and what you are buying.

Tonight's bottles!

    Now that all the details are out of the way, what are we trying this evening? Tonight we have 2 bottles from the same brand "Plantation Original Dark" and "Plantation 3 star" both are blended rums, both are made from molasses, both feature rum from Jamaica AND Barbados, however the 3 star also contains rum from Trinidad. They're both made with a mixture of column and pot stills. And both have some aging involved. So, again, how different can we get? Well, immediately obvious, the original dark is... dark, and the 3 star is crystal clear. How can that be? Most likely it's a mixture of the fact that the original dark is aged for longer, and the plantation 3 star is probably filtered after aging slightly to remove some color. But enough about the details, taste the rum Sam!!!

    
    The Original Dark: Brown sugar nose, maybe a faint bit of corn, if I really dig deep, I get a little bit of prune as well. In the mouth its smooth, maybe a bit thinner. Immediately I get pineapple, but it's soft, not overstated, gives to a little banana, a little bit of very mellow corn, gives to brown sugar and soft baking spices. Very agreeable rum, plenty of mixing potential, easy enough sipping, inoffensive. 8/10

    The 3 Star: The nose is so much less, maybe a tiny bit of honey, it's mildly sweet smelling, perhaps some vanilla? But I'm reaching, it's just less of a nose than the dark. The mouth feel is a little less smooth, and thinner. Initial tastes are a much more prevalent alcohol note, it's almost a bit chemically. Then I get white sugar, a bit bready, maybe a tiny bit yeasty? There's something funky in there, but it's not much. All and all, it's a bit punchier than the original dark, but the flavors its punching with are a bit less suited to what I personally enjoy in a sipping rum. Still perfectly fine for mixing, especially in a drink where you don't want to upset the color of the beverage, it would be excellent! Still relatively agreeable, and no complaints. 7/10

    So, as we can see from this review, even rums from the same places, and the same company, can vary quite a bit, and really you have to do a lot of tasting to learn what all is out there. However, if I had to recommend a bottle between these two, it would be the original dark. Especially if you're just getting into rum, as it's just a bit easier to get along with than the 3 star.


    If you have any recommendations for things I should review, or how I could make my reviews better, PLEASE let me know in the comments, or DM me if you know me personally!