Hamilton Saint Lucia 10 Year Cask Strength

One Rum Ratings reviewer called this a masterpiece — crazy funky, but not in a Jamaican sense, its own style dialed to ten, and one of the best rums they'd ever had. Ed Hamilton is the Ministry of Rum: the sailor, author, and importer who spent decades documenting Caribbean distilleries and then began bottling their rums unsweetened, honestly labeled, and with batch numbers that unlock full production details online. Between 2013 and 2015 he released a handful of cask-strength single casks from St. Lucia Distillers, the island's only distillery, and then stopped; nothing has been added since. The 10 Year came off SLD's 2,000-liter Vendome pot still in 2004, aged a decade in ex-bourbon oak on the island — the reviewer notes the label's arithmetic runs a year short of the distillation and bottling dates — and was bottled in 2015 with nothing added at 67.4% ABV. That reviewer was nearly floored by the heavy industrial funk on opening the bottle: equal parts industrial, savory, and dessert at full strength, ranked almost alongside Habitation Velier's Worthy Park 2005 and funkier than it. Expect the Saint Lucian signature — brine, meat, furniture wax, pine, pineapple, leather, and dark chocolate over molasses and a decade of oak — dense and enormous, opening with an ice ball or a splash of water. Honest note: this is the oldest and rarest of the Hamilton Saint Lucias, a collector's cask priced accordingly, and its funk is not for everyone. Neat, with water, over a very long evening.

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