Zafra Master Reserve 21 Year Rum

Zafra 21 was created by Don Pancho Fernández — the Cuban-born former minister of rum who's the most revered blender in Central America — and it's a rum that, in Inu A Kena's words, looks great in the glass and smells like Ron Burgundy's leather-bound books and rich mahogany. Zafra is Spanish for the cane harvest; the rum is made in Panama from molasses, column-distilled, aged a minimum of twenty-one years in used bourbon casks in the Panamanian heat, and bottled at 40% ABV in a tall bottle with a rough-edged, embossed label. Inu A Kena found a lovely mahogany color, tasted a bit like a great port, and concluded that while it wouldn't become a go-to sipper it would be high on the list for cocktails demanding quality ingredients — a Palmetto, perhaps — wondering if a cask other than bourbon might lift it. A commenter called it completely innocuous in the best sense, not nearly as sweet as Zaya, the cream soda of rums, with a lingering sweet tingle. Expect a nose of leather, oak, caramel, dried fruit, and vanilla, opening into a smooth, rounded, gently sweet palate of toffee, raisin, and baking spice with twenty-one years of bourbon oak, finishing long and soft. Honest note: it's a soft, sweet-leaning, 40% Spanish-style sipper — Don Pancho's polish rather than pot-still punch — and a bargain for the age. For a cigar, a Rum Manhattan, or neat over one cube, it's two decades of Panama.

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