Rum Fest!

This is a busy time over here at the Boy Drinks World global headquarters, from trying to launch my bitters to traveling to Miami to attend the Miami Rum Renaissance festival.  I love going to events like this and so far I haven’t been disappointed.  After hitting up VIP events all week we are narrowing in on the weekend where we will attend the grand tasting.  Grand might be an understatement with over 160 rums to taste, all while surrounded by the most knowledgable rum people in the world.  Distillers, master blenders, brand ambassadors, tikiphiles and the RumXPs all attend and drink and share their rum knowledge. You can imagine how much I appreciated the honor of being invited to participate in the blind tasting as a guest rum judge.  The hugeness of this is hard to convey and the opportunity was not wasted.  I gave it my all and was rewarded by tasting a great many fantastic rums.  I found several new favorites, and a few rums that surprised me with how much I liked them.

Tasting rum like this is more challenging than you might think.  In most cases each session consisted of about twenty to twenty-five rums in a variety of categories.   For three days we blind tasted and judged in two sessions each day untill we had tasted well over a hundred rums.  The categories of rums that are flavored or spiced were particularly difficult to judge.

I learned an enormous amount and was very pleased  to be given this opportunity.  If I ever considered myself an expert on rum before, I may have just learned how little I really knew.

I don’t want to give anything away – the results of the tasting will be announced in a few hours and I am sworn to secrecy.  I will post a complete list of my new personal favorites soon.  In the mean time get yourself to Miami this weekend for Rum Fest!

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