Hampden 8 Marks Aged 1 Year in Ex-Bourbon Tasting Collection

The 2024 8 Marks Collection puts a year of oak on Hampden's eight marques — the follow-up to the unaged 2022 set, and the one 88 Bamboo tasted side by side with the originals to see what a year in bourbon wood does. Hampden Estate in Trelawny Parish, Jamaica, is the funkiest distillery on earth, and its marques are the codes for its fermentation recipes: OWH, the lightest at 40 to 80 grams of esters per hectoliter; then LFCH, LROK, HLCF, <>H, HGML, C<>H, and DOK, the legendary top of the scale at up to 1,600 — the most ester-dense rum legally produced. Each is made the estate's way — wild fermentation in two-century-old vats, dunder and muck-pit additions, double-retort copper pot stills — and this collection presents all eight aged one year in ex-bourbon casks at the estate, in a set of small bottles in a maroon-pink box with a pamphlet that, 88 Bamboo notes, has doubled in size with even more chemical breakdowns and comparisons; check your label for the ABV. A year in Jamaican heat is not nothing: the oak adds vanilla and rounds the edges while the esters stay front and center, and tasting the OWH, HLCF, and DOK against their unaged 2022 twins is the most instructive Jamaican rum lesson available. Honest note: a collector's and educator's set, still intense — the DOK is not a casual pour. For the rum geek's tasting night, the bartender's training shelf, or the second half of the definitive Hampden education. Eight marks, one distillery, one year of oak.

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