Appleton Estate 12 Year Rare Casks

 

Appleton Estate 12 Year Rare Casks


    This evening's review will be the first of many full revisits that occur over the lifetime of this blog. There's many reasons to revisit reviews, for example when I first reviewed this rum, I was still doing these reviews entirely on Twitter, leaving me with a 240 character limit. In addition to the character limit, my palate has also grown tremendously in that amount of time, and I should be able to appreciate finer details now. With that being said, as I revisit older reviews, if I'm not proud of the older ones, I'll likely be reverting them to draft on blogger, so they're no longer available here. If they were published on twitter, and you're in my twitter circle, you should be able to find them there.
    Rich and sweet nose, I get maple, walnut, a little bit of dark chocolate, and a whiff of ethanol, but it's small. The mouthfeel is almost deceptively thin, the flavor is incredibly full, but rounded with aging, making the thin texture almost feel wrong. I get a bit of alcohol forward, and a subtly funky bitter note, in a weird way, the bitter note reminds me of kale, not in a bad way, just, that's what I'm getting. The forward notes give to rounded, developed, mature oak aged notes, so wonderfully even and sophisticated. Oak gives to a warm caramel finish, with cinnamon and other baking spice notes present as well. I originally gave this a rating of 9.5/10, I would raise that slightly to 9.6/10. Still one of my favorites, still sees use in mixing, still divine.


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