Rumporter’s Second Cuvée: Vatted Rum #1 with the Iconic Scheer

Dear readers, it is my honour to present our second exclusive bottling. After the Thailand Cuvée, here is Vatted Rum #1: a Guyana and a Jamaica that I had the chance to marry hand in hand with Carsten E. Vlierboom, Chief Rum Officer of E&A Scheer, for the opening act of our “Carte Blanche” series. I dreamed of a rum that was both powerful and full of story. Here it is, in the bottle — and I can’t wait to share it with you.

An exclusive Rumporter bottling, to me, is a simple idea taken all the way: extending the magazine’s editorial spirit into the glass. Choosing rums I want to champion, marrying them or letting them speak for themselves, and sharing them with a community of readers who love to understand what they drink. The first, the Thailand Cuvée, set the tone: a 12-year-old single cask finished in a white Pineau des Charentes barrel, crowned No. 1 of the 76 Thai rums rated on RumX, the community app and database that has become the reference for enthusiasts cataloguing and rating the world’s rums. It needed a worthy sequel. Here it is.

The dream of an old admiral

The starting point is an image dear to me. Picture the creation of an exclusive bottling for a Royal Navy officer, a little over a century ago: a dark, powerful rum, built for the sea, where the depth of a Guyanese Demerara met the brightness of a high-ester Jamaican. It is this dialogue of styles that long shaped the taste of “navy” rum. Vatted Rum #1 does not copy those old blends; I wanted to recapture their spirit with two exceptional casks. And as luck would have it: bottled at its natural strength, 57.5%, it lands right next to the famous navy strength — the proof at which, so the story goes, gunpowder moistened with rum would still catch fire.

Three centuries of know-how, two exceptional casks

To compose this dreamed-up bottling, I handed a true carte blanche to one of the finest palates in the trade. Carsten E. Vlierboom is the Chief Rum Officer of E&A Scheer, a house founded in Amsterdam in 1712 — more than three centuries of history — and today the world’s largest rum blender. Scheer sources from more than sixty distilleries across over forty countries, and holds one of the deepest aged-rum stocks on the planet: enough to compose a rum of almost any age, style or origin.

Our two casks come from its British subsidiary, The Main Rum Company, in Liverpool — and that choice is no accident. The great Demerara rums once passed through the docks of Liverpool, and The Main Rum Company was one of their historic agents: a specialist in British-style rum for generations, which over the decades has become the keeper of one of the finest collections of rare and aged casks in the world. To follow our partners’ news and latest selections, their websites are well worth a visit. Suffice to say it is in a genuine treasure trove that everything came together.

We did not draw from the everyday stock, the one meant for large volumes. Carsten went looking for haute couture: two rare single casks, which we married together. On one side, a Guyana 2011 from the Demerara (mark MDB2), a blend of three legendary stills kept at the Diamond distillery — the Port Mourant double wooden pot still, the Enmore wooden Coffey still (the last of its kind in the world) and the French Savalle column. First aged under the tropics, in Guyana, it then continued a long continental maturation in Liverpool: fourteen years of age in all. On the other, a Jamaica 2015 from the Clarendon distillery, in the Wedderburn style, brimming with esters, matured for about ten years in the English climate. Two schools, two shores, a single balance — at natural strength, without chill filtration or added sugar.

“From our collection, we selected two casks made to be married, to create a completely new profile: that is the principle of vatted rum. And this is only the first of the series.” — Carsten E. Vlierboom, Chief Rum Officer of E&A Scheer

Vatted Rum #1 (70 cl, 57.5% ABV) is a limited edition of 385 bottles, a vatting of roughly 55% Guyana and 45% Jamaica, aged exclusively in American oak. It is offered at €139 and available to order now from passion-rhum.com, excellence-rhum.com and chai27.com. Full details on both rums — origins, stills, maturation — and the tasting note can be found at the end of this article.

A community around exceptional bottlings

This second bottling is not an end, it is a beginning. The “Carte Blanche” series was born from a collaboration with Carsten E. Vlierboom — and there will be more: other casks, other origins, other unprecedented profiles. In the coming weeks, I will open the doors of the blending room with him: how to read a cask, how to marry two origins, what the trade sees coming before everyone else. Enough to turn a bottle into a real tasting lesson.

Above all, I want to make this collection a shared project, attuned to our community. Because our partners are also our readers — those who buy these bottlings — and our retailers, without whom none of this would be possible. Regular polls will feed the next editions — origins, styles, strengths, finishes: it’s up to you to tell me what you would like to see in the next glass signed Rumporter. Magazine, bottlings, interviews, polls, partner retailers: so many threads of one community, bound by the love of fine rum. Vatted Rum #1 is, I hope, its first shared sip. Thank you for following me on this adventure.

by Alexandre Vingtier

Appendix — The two rums in detail

Officially, Vatted Rum #1 is the vatting of two exclusive casks — two origins, two vintages — selected and married by the Chief Rum Officer of E&A Scheer from casks of The Main Rum Company. The split: about 55.4% Guyana and 44.6% Jamaica. In the trade, every rum reads like a score: a mark — a code of a few letters — designates the distillery, the still and the profile sought. Here is the identity card of our two casks, maturation included.

Guyana 2011 — mark MDB2 (cask M0135), 14 years. Distilled on 15 August 2011 at the Diamond distillery (Demerara Distillers Ltd). MDB2 is a blend of three Demerara marks: PM, from the Port Mourant double wooden pot still; EHP, from the Enmore wooden Coffey still — the last of its kind in the world; and SWR, from the French Savalle column. Maturation: nearly five years of tropical ageing in Guyana (in oak casks that had previously held rum), transfer to the United Kingdom in early 2016, then re-racking into American oak barrels (ex-whisky) on 27 May 2016 and continental ageing in The Main Rum Company’s Liverpool warehouses.

Jamaica 2015 — mark JMM (cask M0302), 10 and a half years. Distilled on 1 September 2015 at the Clarendon distillery. JMM is an in-house mark of E&A Scheer; the original mark is MMW, a Jamaican Wedderburn-style profile, very rich in esters (285.5 g/hL). Maturation: transferred into tank and shipped to Europe after distillation, then filled into a barrel (1990s ex-bourbon, American oak) on 14 November 2016 in Liverpool, where it continued ageing — about ten years in an essentially continental climate.

Appendix — Official tasting note

Vatted Rum #1 opens the series with the inaugural dialogue between two of rum’s most characterful origins. The brooding depth of Guyana 2011 — molasses, dried fig, cocoa and toasted oak — meets the bright, ester-driven exuberance of Jamaica 2015 — ripe banana, pineapple and an unmistakable tropical funk.

The profile of each component, for good measure: the Guyana MDB2 brings a woody, spicy structure, rich with the complexity born of blending three still styles; the Jamaica JMM, very high ester (285.5 g/hL), signs a powerful fruitiness typical of the Wedderburn mark. The whole, aged exclusively in American oak, seeks the balance between the woody richness of Guyana and the ester-driven exuberance of Jamaica.