Blackwell Fine Jamaican Rum

Chris Blackwell founded Island Records, signed Bob Marley, and brought reggae to the world — and rum runs in his blood. He was raised in Jamaica, and his mother's family, the Lindos, once owned J. Wray & Nephew and Appleton Estate. In 2008 he and advertising entrepreneur Richard Kirshenbaum launched Blackwell Fine Jamaican Rum, marketed as Black Gold, distilled, blended, and bottled by J. Wray & Nephew from pot and column still molasses rums. It carries no age statement deliberately — Blackwell says it isn't an old rum, in order to stay true to the dark rum style — and it's bottled at 40% ABV. Difford's Guide found pungent tropical fruit and passion fruit with toffee, treacle, mocha coffee, and roast almond on the nose, then a woody, toasty coconut and mocha palate with toffee syrup, finishing on barbecue charcoal, dry spiced oak, and burnt toast — a very characterful Jamaican dark rum with distinctive oaky, coconut, and coffee flavors. Rum Runner Labs picked up strong caramel and chocolate with vanilla, brown sugar, and molasses. Honest note: it's sweetened and colored in the dark-rum tradition, so purists chasing raw Jamaican funk should look elsewhere. As a mixing rum it's superb — Blackwell's own serve is with ginger beer, and it makes a rich rum and cola, Dark 'n' Stormy, or Jamaican rum punch. The 1625 on the label marks the year the Blackwell family arrived on the island.

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