When I saw that Harvey Nichols was putting on a rum fair I couldn’t resist buying a ticket. At £25 it seemed a great price for exploring some new brands and it certainly was.
The fair took place at the Fourth Floor Foodmarket in Harvey Nichols here in Edinburgh and there were 11 stands with samples as well as a welcome drink from The Cocktail Mafia included. I went for the Green tea and Kiwi Mojito made with Dead Mans Fingers Spiced Rum which was a lovely sipper for walking around browsing the different options. You would think 2.5 hours would be plenty to explore 11 different stands, but unfortunately I ended up not having time to chat to either Pusser’s or Plantation during the night or Fever Tree, which I’m quite sad about because I really like Fever Trees products as well as Plantation. But hopefully I’ll come across them another time. Previously my favourite rums have included a Plantation and Diplomatico so it was fun to expand my rum portfolio and find some new favourites.
It’s always so much fun chatting to people who are passionate about spirits and I met some really lovely and fascinating people on the night and tried some cool products. I’ve listed my standouts here below but my absolute favourite on the night was Hattiers Rum !
Some standouts
Hattiers Rum
Hattiers Rum is a blending company based in Devon focusing on flavour with a sustainable and clean approach where each of the three products I tried really suited my own flavour preferences. It was the founder, Philip, who was behind the stand and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to his story about his brand. The brand is named after his eldest daughter and the rums have been created after his own rum preferences. There’s three products – the Eminence, the Egremont and the Resolute and they retail between £37.50 – £56. Eminence is a white blended rum, Egremont is a blended aged premium reserve and the Resolute is blended aged navy strength. On their website, as well as on the bottle, they show you exactly what goes in to each rum and they stay away from additives, chill filtration or colouring.
Compañero Ron Panama Extra Añejo
If you like chocolate – this is the rum for you. The 12 year old rum from Panama has been matured in ex-bourbon casks which have been toasted with cocoa beans inside them before the rum returns to the casks for additional maturation. The result is a rich chocolate tone, although I found the balance between the wood influence, the 54% spirit and the chocolate to go together really nicely.
Ron La Progresiva 13
A wonderful Cuban rum with balance and complexity through the traditional yet fascinating flavours.
Chairmans Reserve
This range of whiskies is created at St Lucia Distillers and I had the pleasure of trying the Original, Legacy and 2009 Vintage. The Original was my favourite with it’s sweet vanilla ice cream tones that I absolutely love finding in a rum. The Legacy was also quite fascinating as it is a blend of both sugarcane and molasses based rum and the distillery also uses pot still and column stills for their distillation, which are both featured in this blend. Slightly less sweet then the Chairmans Reserve with more dry wood – an elegant sipper when you don’t have too much of a sweet tooth.
Ninefold Spiced with orange juice over ice
I haven’t tried anything from Ninefold before – a Scottish rum company based in Dumfries & Galloway. Their spiced rum is made from their unaged rum but is flavoured with nutmeg, aniseed and allspice and also sweetened with a little bit of sugar. The colour comes from caramel colouring. I’ve never tried orange juice along with rum before but over ice this turned out to be a great serve that I’ll definitely try again!
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