Old Monk The Legend Rum

The Rum Howler scored Old Monk The Legend 86.5 — the top of a range from India's most beloved rum house. Old Monk was for years the best-selling dark rum in the world without a single advertisement: Mohan Meakin, the Ghaziabad brewery founded as Dyer's in 1855, launched it in 1954 under Ved Rattan Mohan, and it became a national institution by word of mouth alone. The Legend is the flagship: molasses rum blended in the vat and aged in oak, bottled at 42.8% ABV in a bottle shaped like the bust of the monk himself — the friar's head and shoulders in relief, the most collectible bottle in the range. The Rum Howler found it smoother and lighter than the 7 Year, with a less overt molasses push and a muted cinnamon-and-clove spice, a mixture of orange and banana peel with wood spice, vanilla, and caramel butterscotch — and noted that up the Old Monk ladder each rum leans less on caramel and more on the barrel. Expect the house signature refined: vanilla and butterscotch on the nose with a soft citrus-peel lift, opening into a smooth, medium-bodied, gently sweet palate of caramel, oak spice, and banana with a cleaner finish than the 7. Honest note: it's still Old Monk — sweet-leaning and mysterious about its production, per The Lone Caner — and the bust bottle is a large part of the appeal. For a cigar, a neat pour that shows what the house can do, an Old Monk and Coke worthy of the name, or the collector's shelf. The Legend, in bust form.

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