Clairin Sajous 29 Month Sherry Cask Rum

Clairin is Haiti's wild cane spirit — fresh sugarcane juice, spontaneously fermented with the yeasts in the air, pot-distilled in the villages, unaged and unfiltered — and Sajous is the one from Michel Sajous's distillery in Saint-Michel-de-l'Attalaye, in the mountains of the north, made from the Cristalline cane variety on a small pot still and a six-plate copper column. Ansyen ("old" in Kreyol) is what happens when Velier, the Italian importer that brought clairin to the world, puts it in a barrel. This is a single cask of Sajous aged 29 months in a sherry cask and bottled at cask strength; check your label for the harvest year, cask number, exact ABV, and outturn. Sajous is the most aromatic of the core clairins — Difford's lists the unaged version at 56.5% and VinePair once called Haitian clairin a spirits geek's dream, grassy, vegetal, stone-fruited, with an alluring scent of gasoline — and the sherry cask meets it rather than covering it: expect Sajous's floral, herbal, olive-and-stone-fruit intensity layered with dried fig, walnut, and the nutty oxidation of the wood, the tannin adding grip, the proof carrying it, finishing very long. Rum Ratings' drinkers who feared oak would tame clairin's wildness found, with the sister Vaval cask, that it enhanced it. Honest note: a rare, cask-strength connoisseur's bottle for drinkers who've had unaged Sajous and want the aged answer. Neat, with a drop of water. One cask only.

Buy Clairin Sajous 29 Month Sherry Cask Rum online with fast shipping right to your door.