The Kirk and Sweeney was a wooden schooner caught rum-running off the New Jersey coast in 1924, with 12,000 bottles of illicit rum aboard — a genuine piece of Prohibition history, and the reason the brand's vintage-shaped bottle looks like something pulled from a smuggler's hold. The rum inside is Dominican, produced at the Bermúdez distillery, one of the Caribbean's longest-operating rum houses, from hand-harvested sugarcane processed into grade three blackstrap molasses and aged in a combination of American and French oak barrels, with the distiller dumping, blending, and re-barreling through the years to build depth. The brand is owned by 3 Badge Beverage, the Sonoma-based company run by the Sebastiani family. Around 2020 Kirk and Sweeney relaunched its lineup, replacing the beloved age-stated 12, 18, and 23 Year bottlings with a tiered range: Reserva, a blend of 3 to 14 year rums (91 points, Wine Enthusiast); Gran Reserva, 5 to 20 years (93 points); and Gran Reserva Superior, 6 to 25 years, which earned 94 from Wine Enthusiast and 97 from The Tasting Panel. Alongside them sits Burning Mast, a genuinely novel release finishing a portion of Reserva in red pepper barrels for a sweet, building heat. Longtime fans still debate the change from age statements, but the house style remains: rich caramel, toffee, brown sugar, and baking spice, built for sipping.

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