Dos Maderas 5 + 3 Gold Rum

Dos Maderas means "two woods," and the name is the method: Caribbean rum aged in American oak, then shipped to Jerez and aged again in Spanish oak that held sherry for twenty years. Williams & Humbert — the sherry house founded in 1877, maker of Dry Sack and Dos Cortados — sources five-year-old rum from Guyana and Barbados, ships it to its bodega in Jerez de la Frontera, and gives it three more years in a solera of casks that aged Dos Cortados, its twenty-year Palo Cortado sherry, before bottling at 40% ABV. The 5+3 is the drier, lighter member of the family. Rum Ratings' tasters, working through a Dos Maderas sample kit, found the Guyanese Demerara character clear in the base — probably a good part Port Mourant — and the three years in Palo Cortado wood leaving a clear, drying footprint. Expect a nose of caramel, dried fruit, walnut, and the nutty, saline oxidation of Palo Cortado over a molasses-and-wood Demerara core, opening into a medium-bodied palate of toffee, raisin, and gentle spice with a dryness the PX version doesn't have, finishing moderately long. Honest note: enthusiasts generally steer spenders toward the richer PX 5+5, and the 5+3 is the lighter sibling — which also makes it the better mixer. For a sherry-cask Rum Old Fashioned, a Manhattan riff, or neat for a Palo Cortado drinker curious about rum, it's the two-woods introduction.

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