Cinders and Smoke – LMDR Colombie

Through this year’s Tropical Month my faith in rum was “somewhat” restored. In the months or even years before that, I was a bit bored by all the sweetened rum out there. Sure, there were trends in the opposite direction, but a lot of them tasted similar. Now, I have to admit that the La Maison du Rhum Colombie also has a Dosage of 10,5 g / l, but in this case I am making an exception.

So, while it might seem hypocritical, I can give you a reason why you should check this rum out anyway: The column distilled rum from the Hacienda Coloma in Colombia is finished in coffee liqueur barrels. At least for me this is a first when it comes to rum and it absolutely makes sense to add some coffee flavours to a molasses based rum. Sure, I probably would have enjoyed the rum even more without the Dosage, but I have to admit that the little residual sugar makes the rum very approachable. Additionally, the rum ages most of its twelve-years in bourbon barrels in the tropical climate. In the end, the rum is bottled at a drinking strength of 46 % ABV.

A hint of coffee

I do not know how long the La Maison du Rhum Colombie is finished in the coffee liqueur barrels. The Hacienda Coloma 15-Year-Old Rum spends six to eight weeks in those casks. However, what I can tell you is that the Colombie really has additional roasted flavours you can detect in the taste. Additionally, the rum is flavourful with typical molasses rum notes. Those are accompanied by a noticeable, but not overwhelming sweetness and quite a lot of spice notes. As mentioned above, the rum is a very nice sipping rum and should be seen as a possibility to convert sweet rum drinkers to a dryer style.

Coffee and light smoke

Since I had some Lapsang Souchong tea standing around, I decide to combine it with the LMDR Colombie Rum. Yet, I wanted to keep the drink in the close range of an Old-Fashioned. This is why I made a syrup from the smoky tea and just added some cacao liqueur to further enhance the roasted flavours. Apart from that, I also needed some bitters for the Old-Fashioned template and chose the Bittermen’s Burlesque Bitters. I cannot quite tell you why, but they seemed to work very well in the cocktail.

Similar to the rum itself, the “Cinder and Smoke” is a very smooth cocktail with an intriguing combination of roasted flavours. Obviously, the combination of rum with a hint of coffee and cacao notes is an excellent match. Despite, the Lapsang Souchong tea only lingers on in the back and does not overwhelm the other ingredients. Finally, the bitters bring some spicy complexity to the mix.

Even more smoke

When two of my fellow cocktail-bloggers write about the same drink at the same time, I just have to follow their lead. So, I mixed up the “100-Year-Old Cigar” cocktail using the La Maison du Rhum Columbie, too. The drink was created by Maksym Pazuniak and also featured in the famous Beta Cocktails cocktail book. As always with Beta Cocktails drinks, the recipe is plain weird. The combination of rum and Cynar might just be the most common thing in it. Yet, the drink also features half an ounce of Benedictine, smoky Scotch and absinthe. For the latter, I chose the Paul Devoille Blanche de Fougerolles, an excellent high-quality absinthe with quite some anise notes, but also a balanced wormwood-flavour.

Weird, but intriguing

Well, I did not quite know what to expect from this drink. However, it pretty much tastes like the individual ingredients. While this might sound like the things thrown together her might not work, they actually do. The Benedictine / Cynar combination kind of forms the base similar to vermouth in a Rum Manhattan. The Islay whisky and the absinthe add a lot of additional complexity. Apart from that, I have to agree with Johann, the drink does not really need the absinthe. Nevertheless, it is an interesting tasting experience. All in all, the “100-Year-Old Cigar” will not become my favourite drink, but I can imagine mixing up a riff on it in the future.

*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. The rum was provided by Hanseatische Weinhandelsgesellschaft Bremen and the absinthe by Lion-Spirits.