Rum is a phenomenal spirit; one that speaks to both the ingenuity of distillation techniques and the thrill of drinking something powerful (‘kill-devil’ was an early colloquial term for the stuff).
Sugarcane-derived spirits have existed for nigh-on millennia, but the ‘modern’ understanding of the stuff hails from the 17th-century Caribbean – and, in large part, Jamaica.
A potted history
Jamaica was once home to over 100 distinct distilleries but today only six remain. Though Jamaican distillers number relatively few today, there’s still a colossal market for them. Between the prolific efforts of major estates and the international rum-blending scene, incomparable bottles are being produced.
Jamaica’s rum story has resulted in a truly unique island flavour profile, typified by two key terms: ‘pot still’, and ‘funk’.
Copper pot stills are the traditional distillation method for Jamaican rums, and partially responsible for the fuller flavours that most enjoy over other Caribbean rums; the majority of those fuller flavours, though, come from the high ester content of funky, ‘hogo’ rums.
The use of dunder (the waste from prior distillation runs) and occasionally muck (the waste from that waste, combined with other organic matter and left to develop wild microbial life) together in the fermentation stage produce complex acids, which break down into fruity, sometimes rubbery esters – which then survive the distillation process, and give the finished rum a truly singular ‘oomph’.
A note on tasting spirits
Rums are often treated as a basis for mixed drinks, and many rums shine as part of a cocktail. However, this does a disservice to certain rums, whose complex character and depth of flavour can be compared to whiskies, and can be interpreted, understood and enjoyed neat just the same.
Indeed, there’s a little spirit-sniffing trick this writer likes to nick from the world of whisky-tasting, which can help unlock the true character of what’s in your glass. Where you might be used to sticking your nose in and giving it a honk, it’s good practice to place your nose over the glass and breathe in through your mouth instead.
Since your airways are connected, doing this draws a little air up your nose and over your taste buds, as opposed to a torrent of air when you breathe in nasally.
Where a great sniff will overpower your nose with boozy vapours, a trickle from breathing through the mouth will reveal more. By doing this, you can look forward to unlocking delicate and volatile flavours, which range especially widely in a good Jamaican rum.
Best Jamaican rums to buy at a glance
- Best overall: Hampden Estate 8 YO - £56, Malts & Spirits
- Best for topping off tiki cocktails: Wray & Nephew Overproof Rum - £30, Tesco
- Best for an entry-level sipping experience: Appleton Estate 12 Year Old Rare Casks - £44.99, Amazon
- Best for enjoying neat: Transcontinental Rum Line Jamaica 2016 - £62.25, The Whisky Exchange
- Best for delightfully bright daiquiris: Planteray Xaymaca Special Dry Rum - £37.50, The Whisky Exchange
- Best for white-rum sipping: East London Liquor Co. East London Rum - £28.50, East London Liquor Co.
- Best for maximalist funk-flavour: Hampden Estate HLCF Classic Overproof 60 per cent - £79.95, Master of Malt
- Best for making cocktails: Smith & Cross Rum - £43.75, The Whisky Exchange
- Best for single-estate Jamaican rum: Worthy Park Select Jamaica Rum - £36.20, Master of Malt
- Best for dark, sultry flavour: Myer’s Original Dark Rum - £23.95, House of Malt
How we tested
Each spirit is taste-tested neat on at least two occasions, to build an understanding of its flavour profile and to reduce the impact of disproportionate first impressions.
Where appropriate, further tastings are made in cocktails and mixed drinks according to each spirit’s strengths. This author’s extensive background in craft brewing and bartendership has informed their tasting nous, cocktail-making experience, and knowledge as to how each distillatory sausage is made.
Hampden Estate 8 YO
Best: overall
Hampden’s eight-year-old is aged in Jamaica, allowing the rum to benefit from the country’s climate on the ageing process.
The result is absurd smoothness that carries all the soft character of a quarter-century on wood. The nose is fruitily fruitful, with baked banana, apple and golden syrup forming the body around which lightly-spiced notes of sweet-flecked smoke.
On the palate, there’s more in the way of immediate spice, but this still dissolves fairly swiftly into a sweet, banana-bread-y puddle. Over time, the puddle regains some baking-spice zing, but the prevailing impression is one of smoothness and weight.
Right to the end, there’s a rewarding balance of sweet and sharp, leaving you with orange oil and dark sugar. This is a great sipping rum, but especially well-constructed for stirred cocktails; use this for your next rum negroni.
Buy now £56.00, Malts & Spirits
East London Liquor Co. East London Rum
Best for: white-rum sipping
This is an intriguing one, being a blend of Jamaican rums found in a distinctly Cockney bottle. The East London Liquor Company’s London Rum is a white rum, featuring a blend of three medium- to high-ester rums; the funk in this comes from a pot-still rum, and smacks you roundly in the face when you pour it and take a whiff. This is a well-blended affair, showcasing the best of the funk without the astringency that can often come with it. It’s a blooming of sweetness and overripe fruit-bowl, as opposed to a poking.
There aren’t many white rums that are enjoyable neat, but the East London Rum is a delightful bucking of this trend. It’s devoid of harshness, instead blooming again on the tongue with immediate sweetness and soft, developed licks of banana and black olive. There’s a spritz of oil, but the finish is dry and bright. It’ll mix well, but is a pleasant surprise for a sipper.
Buy now £28.50, East London Liquor Co.
Wray & Nephew Overproof Rum
Best for: topping off tiki cocktails
You’ve heard of Wray and Nephew before. This rum is, in a word, iconic.
Wray and Nephew Overproof has been winning awards since before the existence of the London Underground – and, though the circumstances of the company and of this rum’s blending have changed in the intervening 150-odd years, the quintessential tastiness of this white Jamaican rum hasn’t.
It's an unmistakable nose and an unmistakable flavour, the former starting with big, rounded and almost meaty funk before grabbing a swift hold of your nasal hair via that 63 per cent ABV. Though high-ABV and highly flavourful, it’s not a recommended sipping rum; this is big on funk to start, but then powerfully boozy through to the end.
That booze carries the complexities of the body through any number of adjuncts in any number of cocktails, where springy tropical fruits, cooked demerara and petrol-soaked banana are revealed. This is an indispensable cocktail-making rum, rife with flavour and sure to cut the noise.
Buy now £30.00, Tesco
Appleton Estate 12 Year Old Rare Casks
Best for: an entry-level sipping experience
Appleton Estate is Jamaica’s oldest for sugar-cane; the brand has used this pedigree to cultivate a powerhouse trio of dark Jamaican rums, from the young Appleton Estate Signature to this – the 12 Year Old Rare Casks. Twelve years of local ageing make for a supremely soft, rounded and woody pour, that fills the nose with all manner of baked, toasted and otherwise brown-ish flavours. The sweetness is vanilla-tipped, and a touch of orange zest brings balance.
The palate is similarly rounded, but with more bitterness towards the finish. At the start, though, there’s some trademark Appleton Estate butterscotch notes, bolstered by oak, hazelnut, and even a touch of dark-roasted coffee bean. This is an excellent entry-level sipping rum for the new rum fan, being low in sometimes-divisive funk but high in aged complexity elsewhere.
Buy now £44.97, Amazon
Transcontinental Rum Line Jamaica 2016
Best for: enjoying neat
This bottle hails from the Transcontinental Rum Line, an independent label from La Maison du Whisky. It was distilled in 2016 and bottled in 2021, the intervening years seeing (funnily enough) trans-continental maturation – first American oak barrels in Jamaica, then Maison Ferrand barrels in France. What a journey!
This rum’s nose is loud, bouncing from the glass the moment its poured. It’s a buttery-smooth nose, too, with butterscotch, burnt caramel and cedar body and a lick of volatility – foreshadowing for the lively palate to come. There’s vanilla and oak if you go digging, from the bourbon cask ageing way back in its life, but the overarching impression is warmth, sweetness, and the bounce of green wood. This is a welcoming nose, a testament to the years this rum’s spent mellowing.
In tasting, the Jamaica 2016 reveals a bright woody sweetness, followed shortly by an explosion of boozy spice and tingle. Despite the extended time this rum has had to sit in barrels and think about what it’s done, it still has all the hair and heat of a younger spirit. As the flavour mellows, the spices get a little easier to read – cinnamon, peppercorn, allspice, mace. Baked fruit skins add a complex sweetness, which endures overall.
This rum is a surprising sipper, and an exceedingly accessible exploration of ageing.
Buy now £62.25, The Whisky Exchange
Planteray Xaymaca Special Dry Rum
Best for: delightfully bright daiquiris
Planteray’s Xaymaca Special Dry is a 100 per cent pot-still Jamaican rum blended from Clarendon and Long Pond rums. The Xaymaca is honey-sweet on the nose, with a rounded body that leans towards maple sap. We start with the floral brightness of those sugary gloops and drill down into cedar woody body. It’s simple, but undeniably appealing.
The Xaymaca’s brightness is hiding in the flavour profile. Neat, it’s all zing and sharpness, with bitter dried oranges and fragrant top notes of fresh thyme skating over wood and a subtle banana-fritter sweetness. The Xaymaca feels a tad isolated when sipped neat, but comes to life when mixed; keep it simple, try it for your next daiquiri, and see what happens.
Buy now £37.50, The Whisky Exchange
Hampden Estate HLCF Classic Overproof 60 per cent
Best for: maximalist funk-flavour
Hampden Estate is one of the older rum-distilling estates in Jamaica. Over its 275-year history, it has carved out a process all of its own, and hence a flavour which no other distillery could ever replicate. Hampden’s rums are all high-ester affairs, benefitting from spontaneous fermentation in open vats.
The unique funk of Hampden rums is readily represented here, in the HLCF Classic Overproof 60 per cent (HLCF standing for Hampden Light Continental Flavour, a demarcation of high ester content). This is a rich, royal and rubbery rum on the nose, with big licks of funky depth. There’s no nostril-singeing brightness, this being a rounded nose of butter, banana and springy, oily funk. It smells of multitudes.
The first neat sip is a ride, as the high proof causes the liquid to almost immediately sublimate – leaving a sort-of-salty, oily and highly potent afterimage on the tongue. There’s so much here, from salted butter to overripe banana to grilled aubergine by way of charred oak and caramel. The finish is wet, warm and leafy – the perfect conditions for your next sip.
Buy now £79.95, Master of Malt
Smith & Cross Rum
Best for: making cocktails
Smith & Cross has come to be a dear bartender’s friend in recent years, as more and more of us have cottoned on to it as a dark horse of excellent Jamaican rum – and it’s immediately obvious why when poured. The nose is bright-fruity, as opposed to the aged baked-fruit qualities of many dark rums; it’s a fresh and funky tropical bowl, with a funk that makes itself more and more apparent over time. This is excellent punch-fodder already.
Sipped neat, it doesn’t have nearly the same immediacy as other dark rums either. It’s a slow burn, that starts sweet then unfurls that familiarly pineapple-y funkiness before letting loose with the zing; the end is, gratifyingly, all smoke and funk. This is a blended rum, and one which makes the most of the opportunity to create something practically emblematic of ‘hogo’ Jamaican rum.
This is an ideal cocktail-making rum that’ll do everything – though it’s perhaps wasted in a rum and coke.
Buy now £43.75, The Whisky Exchange
Worthy Park Select Jamaica Rum
Best for: single-estate Jamaican rum
Worthy Park distillery is actually amongst Jamaica’s youngest, having been built from scratch and opened in the early noughties (as opposed to re-opening the old, long-shuttered distillery on site).
This youth should not imply naivete, though – and the Worthy Park Select is an excellent example of why. This is a rare sight, being a single-estate, 100 per cent copper-pot-distilled rum with some excellent aged notes – all of which inform a bottle below £40 in price. The nose is rich and deep, with bright peach and stick cinnamon for bright and bite accordingly; the palate is big on spice and fire but mellows out fast via a quick shot of quintessential funk.
Buy now £36.20, Master of Malt
Myer’s Original Dark Rum
Best for: dark, sultry flavour
Myer’s Original is another classic Jamaican rum, and another beloved bottle on the discerning mixologist’s backbar. It’s a rich, molasses-thick dark rum blended from nine different Jamaican rums, all in service of providing the perfect deep-tasting cocktail base. The nose is big on molasses and treacle, with a hint of rubbery funk at the top. There’s also a decent wodge of woody notes from the four-or-so years spent ageing tropically in ex-Bourbon barrels.
Neat, Myer’s is understandably a little strong for some. It starts oily, but quickly takes a deep and complex form - treacle toffee, super-ripe banana with skin, dried and baking fruits abound, followed by a bizarrely tight bittersweet finish. There’s a boatload of fiery zing here, too, which could be enough to dissuade a fair few from giving it a go. That dark, developed sugar base is a phenomenal addition to the palette for mixed drinks, though, and a fascinatingly complex one at that.
Buy now £23.95, House of Malt
Verdict
Each of these rums has something different and incredible to offer, which makes picking any out a purely subjective thing here. The East London Liquor Co. East London Rum was a welcome surprise of a sippable white rum, with some fun funky flavour to dig into.
But the Hampden Estate 8 YO ultimately won our hearts, for its warm and inviting flavour profile and excellent cocktail-making potential.
