A new segment here on RumCask, I’ll be reviewing the rums that are available to the general public in supermarkets. Hopefully these will showcase some of the qualities of rum and may lead onto more people enjoying the basics and deciding to look deeper into the sugarcane spirit.
Bacardi is the name synonymous with rum. Almost every person I have spoken to who doesn’t know anything about rum will mention Bacardi when I say rum. It goes a long way to show how well their marketing team has done over the years. The Bacardi brothers purchased a distillery in Cuba in 1862 and made a smoother version of the local rum of the time via different methods of filtering the rum. However, Bacardi left Cuba when Fidel Castro planned to nationalise all private property and moved to Puerto Rico to continue their production. This Superior White is a direct descendent of that particular blend. Although it has been refined and production methods have changed, they still age the rum for up to a couple of years and filter through charcoal. For more on the history of Bacardi and their logo especially, here is a link to an article I wrote earlier.
The Bacardi Superior bottle is clean and elegant. Everybody knows what it looks like and when presented, the rum looks perfectly clear in the bottle. It is obviously very economical as it is mass produced. But everybody knows what the bottle looks like. It is in almost every bar and is the standard rum that is served with any rum drink unless specified otherwise. This particular flagship offering from Bacardi is meant to be the superior mixing rum and is not meant to be drunk neat.
To get the basic notes of the rum I will taste the rum neat. This will hopefully give me a better explanation as to the particular ways I would personally mix the rum to get the most from it for you. On the nose it is quite grassy and pungently raw with a fruity finish creating quite an intense nose. On my first sip neat I find the rum very harsh. It is quite dry and I can taste hints of nut and grass. I think I can taste some lemon zest alongside some apple and pear. In the throat afterwards the grassy notes seems to linger the most but in general this is not rum I would purposefully sip neat again. It is too much of a rough and raw ride for me.
My personal opinion on which cocktails work best with Bacardi has always been the classic Mojito. Having tried it again for the first time in a while I have to say it still works well. I have tried better, but with more expensive rum. The fruity notes are complimented well and it creates a fresh very drinkable Mojito. It is easy to see why this is a commonly used spirit in mixers. It is cheaper than most and the flavouring really adds to basic cocktails.
The other cocktail I have been told to try this rum with is the Cuba Libre. Basically Bacardi mixed with coke and a dash of lime. This didn’t work for me. I found the drink too sweet and the flavours didn’t match well. Nothing really inspired me to have this again. I would prefer a dark rum such as Lambs or Captain Morgan as the mixer here for this cocktail.
Overall, at this price point I don’t think a more commonly found white rum can compete with Bacardi when it comes to mixing white rum. Potentially the Captain Morgan White but that is it. Bacardi is an excellent economical mixing rum that can be found anywhere that produces a very drinkable cocktail.
