Balcones Dark Texas Rum

Balcones is Texas's most decorated whisky distillery, and this is what happens when it makes rum the way it makes whisky. Molasses is fermented slowly with the house yeast, double distilled in the Waco distillery's hand-built copper pot stills, then aged through Balcones's signature cooperage program — bespoke barrels of American, French, and European oak with custom toast and char profiles, blended and re-barreled the way the distillery treats its Texas Single Malt — and bottled at cask strength with no dilution. Proof runs high and varies by release: batches have landed anywhere from around 117 to nearly 128 proof, so check the label. The result is unlike Caribbean rum, and reviewers say so. Thirty-One Whiskey found vanilla, caramel, black cherry, and dark chocolate — barrel notes first, molasses second — and called it chocolatey and delicious once past the heat; RumRatings tasters note that in a blind tasting they'd guess bourbon almost every time. Balcones's own notes run rock candy, pancake syrup, tanned leather, violets, burnt marshmallow, prune, and roasted nuts on the nose, then a lush, coating palate of cacao nibs, hazelnut syrup, char, tart cherry skin, and caramel, finishing on raw sugar, candied beets, tawny port, and abundant tannin. Honest note: rum purists find it too much like whisky. Whisky drinkers find that the whole point. Add water, and take your time.

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