Rhum Depaz Vieux Plantation

Vieux Plantation is Depaz's three-year rhum — the young vieux The Lone Caner calls really quite good and not to be dismissed. Depaz is the distillery at the foot of Mont Pelée in Saint-Pierre, Martinique: when the volcano erupted in 1902 and killed Victor Depaz's entire family, he came back, planted cane on its slopes, and rebuilt in 1917 on an estate founded in 1651 by the island's first governor; the house won medals at the Marseille expositions of 1922, 1927, and 1931, before French-island rhum was well known, and is now owned by La Martiniquaise alongside Dillon. Vieux Plantation is fresh cane juice from the volcanic fields, distilled on a copper Creole column, aged a minimum of three years in oak, and bottled at 45% ABV with nothing added under the AOC. The Lone Caner found sweet caramel, coconut shavings, vanilla, cane juice, pear, apple, very ripe cherry, and black grape right out of the gate — the young, frisky nature of the rhum coming through like a half-grown long-haired mutt not yet adjusted to its strength — with a sharpish, medium-long finish of citrus, herbs, toffee, and lemongrass. The Fat Rum Pirate found good blasts of sugarcane and toffee on the mid-palate and finish, less sweet than the nose suggests, at a very decent proof. RumX's 93 reviewers make it the community pick for cocktails and mixing. For a Ti' Punch vieux, a Planteur, a Rhum Old Fashioned, or a first aged agricole, it's the volcano, three years in.

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