English Harbour 5 Year Old Antigua Gold Rum 70 cl

Product Information

English Harbour rum is, safe to say, one of the well-liked rum brands that seems to fly under the radar. Despite the recent rum boom, Antigua is often forgotten when it comes to rum destinations and/or rum producers. Even the rum geeks I’m well acquainted with can be guilty of this. The core of this rum is the Cavalier 1981 rum made by the same company. In 2014 I asked a brand rep about it and he admitted that they had underestimated how good the Cavalier was – when they did, they had enough left for the 5712 bottles that made up this rum. The Port Casks in question are 200 year old Port Barrels from the Royal Oporto Company of Porto, Portugal. Antigua Distillery Limited was formed in 1932 when a number of rum shop owners on the island joined forces. In those early days the company sold two kinds of rum - un-aged and aged rums under the brand name Caballero. Later, in the 1950s, Cavalier Rum was introduced and remains a successful brand on the island today. The English Harbour brand was introduced in the 1990s.

The molasses-based rums (named for the body of water and village at Antigua’s southernmost extremity) are produced by Antigua Distillery, the same company that also makes Antigua and Barbuda’s most popular dark rum, Cavalier, as well as Nut Power—a peanut-flavored rum cream made with the tree bark (and reputed sexual stimulant) known as bois bande. Unlike those products, the reserves and 1981 Vintage are exported to the US, UK, and elsewhere. English Harbour Rum at the 2013 Miami Rum Renaissance Festival | Credit: Erik Ebright, LargeUp.com The Antiguan climate, together with its exceptionally low rainfall, is another key influence on the character of English Harbour rum. I would say this has less coconut and vanilla than that rum and is every so slightly heavier on the Port on the nose. This is more “old” Port where Foursquare’s Port Cask Finish seemed a little “younger”. This is just a touch or two less vibrant. Less well defined.Editor’s Note: Uncommon Caribbean has long been a fixture at the annual Miami Rum Renaissance Festival, for obvious reasons, but this year we missed all the rum fun in favor of a return visit home to St. Croix. Thankfully, though, our rum-loving friend Jesse Serwer, editor of LargeUp.com, was more than happy to fill in for us. In the coming weeks, Jesse will share his observations and critiques on a bunch of fine blends that caught his attention during the show. First up, Antigua’s English Harbour Rum… Until a vintage 25 year old “ 1981” bottling was released in 2006, the only way to try some output from the Antigua Distillery in the UK, was to get a bottle of English Harbour Aged 5 Years. To be honest I didn’t think either bottling was great. Solid, but nothing spectacular. In all honesty I felt some of the fanfare English Harbour were getting was a little outdated compared to some of the more recent rums I had tried. Which is where I kind of fall out of love with English Harbour 1981. Despite 25 years ageing I can’t help feeling I should be getting a little more rum for my money. A little more “oomph” to really excite me. This is a tasty, reasonably complex rum but overall its just a little bit too soft for my liking. It doesn’t have that extra bit of “oomph” that I so enjoy. When I’m sipping a 40% spirit I really don’t expect it go down almost like a liqueur. Their original still was a Four-Column Savalle when they started in 1933. This Savalle Still is speculated to be similar to the one still being used in Guyana’s Diamond Distillery. Roger also said that part of the Savalle still was integrated into the current John Dore still, and that the Savalle was replaced for economic reasons. This is totally irrelevant but in 2011 I snagged four more of these babies because a local shop mislabelled them at the price of the 5-Year Old. I can virtuously claim to have shared three of those bottles with others over the years.

This was for me, for many years, one of the top five commercially available rums in the world. Not to be missed, even for the price. Four stars, triple A, I don’t care what you call it, this thing is simply awesome.English Harbour 1981 reminds me a little of Barbancourt in its overall delivery – it exhibits an almost cognac like smoothness and has sweet almost wine like notes. It is super smooth and there is virtually no burn on the finish. Today there’s only one remaining distillery in Antigua which is the Antigua Distillery Ltd (ADL). It was founded when some local rum shop owners got together in 1929 mainly to streamline purchasing and management of the molasses and to get better control over the production, and three years later the company saw the light of day. they moved to the new built distillery on Rat Island in St. John. Then they had a 4-column copper Savalle Still. At that time the molasses was bought locally. Forgetting about Antigua is an understandable fault, though. This is largely due to the makers of English Harbour, Antigua Distillery Limited (ADL), being the only rum distillery left in Antigua. Plus, other Caribbean islands or countries like Barbados, Martinique, Guyana, Cuba and Jamaica seem to get most of the attention. In addition to being the only rum distillery left in Antigua, their production isn’t large. They currently only have one still, which they bought in 1991. It’s an all-copper column still from John Dore. According to the UK Importer and respected rum enthusiast, Roger Barnes, “Two of the columns were cut in half so it could fit under the roof. This technically makes their John Dore a three-column still.” This leads me to think that the John Dore originally had five columns. Update March 2013: This rum has, of course, been superceded in my affections and appreciation of quality, which was inevitable given how many rums I’ve tried and written about. I still think, though, that if one was to make any list of the top five rums in the world, this one should be somewhere on that list.

The aroma is nice and I recognize vanilla, oak and some fruits. In the mouth and palate I recognize the same flavors but there are also some smokiness and spices. The finish which is medium long goes the same way. So what do we have here then? Well a lot of information is provided on the bottle and box the rum is housed in. This is a small batch, non chill filtered rum. It is a limited release of 5 Year Old rum finished in Port Cask. Highly, highly recommended if you can afford it (it runs into the El Dorado Problem, unfortunately, but in a pinch, the English Harbour 5-year isn’t half bad either at one-eighth the cost – I’ve got the review here as well). If only to apprise one’s palate of what rums can be at the top of the scale, buying this 25 year old is something a rum-lover should do at least once in his life.The included rum is aged in former bourbon and Tennessee whiskey barrels between five and eight years before blended and bottled at ABV 40%. If you’re surprised that Antigua has Portuguese immigrants, you’re not alone. Having never been to the Caribbean, I was surprised, too. This Taste Trinbago article was really informative, as it shed a light on how Portuguese immigrants moved to the Caribbean from Madeira starting from the mid-1800s. The presence of Portuguese culture and ancestry in the Caribbean, plus ADL’s use of only column stills, adds as well to the argument that the Colonial Classification should be forgotten. This classification disregards the presence and history of other cultures and ethnicities in the Caribbean.