La Favorite Rhum Agricole Vieux

Vieux is the aged heart of La Favorite — one of the last family-owned distilleries in Martinique, founded in 1842 near Fort-de-France, run by the Dormoy family since 1905, still powered by a steam engine and two copper single-column stills, and distilling, aging, and bottling everything on site. Under the AOC Martinique, rhum vieux must spend at least three years in oak, and La Favorite's is fresh-cane-juice agricole from the estate's volcanic-soil fields, distilled on the copper Creole column and aged a minimum of three years in used bourbon barrels, bottled at 40% ABV with nothing added — the color entirely from the cask; check your label for the exact age of the current bottling. Rum Ratings' drinkers find a frank rhum with spice aromas and a handsome amber, the sugar not too present, from a producer whose older cuvées they call extraordinary; another found an ample nose of cane and coffee with an oily side, a clean attack, and a pleasant result. Three years in bourbon wood does what it does to Martinique cane: expect a nose of dried fruit, vanilla, toasted oak, and a faint coffee note over the grassy cane underneath, opening into a dry, medium-bodied palate of caramel, spice, and cane with the herbal edge of the white still audible, finishing warm and moderately long. Honest note: it's the estate's approachable aged rhum, not its rare old cuvées — a fair introduction to what oak does to agricole. For a Ti' Punch vieux, a Rhum Old Fashioned, or neat, it's the family's aged rhum.

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