Professional reviews
Serge Valentin (88)
Ten Cane Distillery 11 yo 2008/2019 (63%, The Duchess, Trinidad, cask #80, 232 bottles) Four stars and a half I’m extremely far from being a rum expert (I’m sure Mike Pence knows more) but I had just never heard of Ten Cane Distillery before. How bad is that? Apparently, it was a brand (or an actual distillery?) launched by LVMH in the early 2000s that never took off and that subsequently got shut down for good, in true Darwinian-capitalist fashion. You learn something new every day, don’t you! Colour: deep amber. Nose: hey! Have they tried to emulate Caroni? Olives, honey sauce, tar and liquorice, soot, gasoline, tarmac… and 63% vol. Caroni, really. So, with water: seawater, tarry nets, and the largest bag of Dutch liquorice ever. Quite some Swedish snuff too. Mouth (neat): did I say Caroni? Thick liquorice, salty bits of dried fish, concentrated caramel, brown sauce, corn syrup, bananas flambéed, menthol, tar… With water: a saltiness appearing. The craziest salted liquorice ever – at least to me as a Frenchman, I’m sure our dear friends up there in the north will find this as light as the feathers of a baby sparrow. Finish: long. Salted liquorice, Douglas fir liqueur, orange cordial and mint cream. That’s relatively heavy. Comments: good, I think this is excellent. What happened LVMH? Too soon? Too impatient? Perhaps the name? I mean, Ten Cane…
Gal Granov (90)
Two new Rums were recently released by the Duchess (in their Hummingbird series of Rums), which have bottled quite a few very good Rums in the past. The first one I am about to review is the 11-year-old ‘Ten Cane’. Ten Cane is a closed distillery located in Trinidad. This rum was aged for 7 years in tropical weather then 4 more years in non-tropical, and bottled at a nice 63% !!! from cask #80.
I must confess I’ve not heard about Ten Cane distillery until now. They were introduced in 2005 by Moet Hennesey (LVMH). The distillery took a classic artisanal approach to its production process, making use of French pot stills and tropical aging. However, the rums never sold well…
Nose: big with lots of wax, shoe polish, cane juice, rubber, mocha, banana, ginger, vanilla ice and clove, lovely polished oak, and cane sugar, kerosene.
Palate: boom! Spicy, hot with chili, pepper, sugar, leather, prune juice, oak shavings, more banana, and some grassy notes as well that balance all the fruity stuff that’s going on here. Lovely.
Finish: More sugar cane, funk, wax, and more of the ‘dirty’ so to speak, fruit.
Conclusion : While this is no Caroni, it does share some similarities, but it’s quite different in a good way. Highly interesting stuff, I think I am in love. Yet again the Duchess have demonstrated they know how to pick a cask!
BOW (90)
7 Years Tropical Aging.
They used to work as artisanal as possible using fresh cane juice, double-distilled in small batches in French pot stills.
