Portsmouth Distillery 1812 3 Year Old Aged Rum 43%

Description

The Portsmouth Distillery 1812 3 Year Old Aged Rum is the first aged rum to be released by Portsmouth Distillery. It is a single cask bottling of pot still rum aged for 3 years at the cellars at Fort Cumberland. Bottled at 43% ABV. 

The Portsmouth Distillery, is located at Fort Cumberland, Eastney Point at the entrance to Langstone Harbour. It was established in 2018 by ex Naval officers Vince Noyce and Giles Collighan and wine trade veteran Dich Oatley. Vince and Giles had always shared a mutual love of rum and the distillery was founded with the aim of making a Portsmouth Rum. Along the way they have detoured into gin with the Fort Gin and Tudor Gin (and hand sanitiser!). This will be their fourth rum after the 1968 White Rum, the Forum “Garden Rum” and the Cinnabar Spiced Rum.

Portsmouth Distillery rums are made using powdered sugar cane juice imported from Costa Rica. This is then rehydrated at the distillery and the resultant sugar cane syrup is then fermented. This is a long, slow fermentation (their very first fermentation took 4 weeks or so) after which the ferment is distilled through the distillery’s two stills, a 500 litre pot still (nicknamed Sophie Wu) and a 4 plate column still. Using sugar cane syrup instead of molasses as a base produces a more aromatic, herbaceous style of rum. Production began in 2019 and the cask of rum have been quietly laid down to age in ex Bourbon casks in the casemates of Fort Cumberland, some 100m from the Solent.

Each bottling will be a single cask bottling for the time being, so there will be some variation between bottlings. From the distillery, “each bottling will potentially have its very own characteristics, behind which are intense notes of caramel and citrus peel alongside tropical fruits and layers of toffee and pear drops, it is incredibly soft and smooth with a burst of over ripe bananas, finishing with just the right amount of bite from the alcohol.”