Jungle – Plantation Panama 12 Years Single Cask Collection 2018

The third instalment in the 2018 Single Casks Collection from Plantation is a 12-year-old rum from Panama. After its initial ageing process in its home-country and Plantation’s obligatory stay in cognac casks, the Panama 12 Years Rum gets a rare single malt cask finish. So, this should be rather interesting to see if there is a difference in aroma and taste. On top of that, the finish sounds like an ideal reason to mix up Manhattan-style cocktails.

As with the other two Plantation Single Cask Collection 2018 Rums I have reviewed here and here, you get all the relevant information you could ask for. The Plantation Panama 12 Years is distilled from molasses at the Alcoholes Del Istmo distillery after a fermentation of three days. The distillation takes place on column-stills and the rum is then aged for nine and a half years in 200 litre casks with previously held bourbon. After the transportation to France the rums spends another year in a 350 litre Ferrand Cognac cask, before being finished in an Arran Single Malt barrel for one and a half years. The rum is bottled at 46,2 %, has a dosage of 6 g/l, 59 g/hl AA esters and volatile compounds of 193 g/hl AA.

Typical rum and a hint of charcoal

The Panama 12 Years starts of as a typical middle American rum: There are some esters, but not in the Jamaica rum range, vanilla, ripe fruits, molasses and caramel. The special thing about this specific bottle is a certain raspberry note and hints of charcoal and an only so slight smoke flavour. It is relatively smooth with almost no menthol note and this shows that you can make high quality rum with almost no addition of sugar.

Did someone say bananas?

As mentioned above, I wanted to create a (Rum) Manhattan-style drink. However, to underline the rum’s prominent banana notes, I decided to add a little bit of banana liqueur to the mix. Since the drink probably would have become too sweet I replaced the red vermouth with Tawny port wine. For the bitters I followed a tip from my fellow blogger Sepo and used the very unique Dr. Sours #16 Papá Moi Bitters. The bitters use Mexican tobacco from the San Andres Tuxtla region of Veracruz in Mexico and go especially well with dark spirits and vermouth.

The goal with this drink is, that the banana notes are just lingering in the back. They should not overwhelm the drink, which is rather on the dry side of the flavour spectrum. If they drink should be too dry for you, add a little bit of simple syrup instead of increasing the amount of banana liqueur. The Plantation Rum blends in almost too well with the other ingredients. Apart from that, the bitters do a fine job of adding a slight smoke note and interesting spice notes to the cocktail. The “Jungle” drink is an interesting flavour combination for the days where a normal Rum Manhattan just seems to boring!

*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product.