Sex Love And Rum - The Story Of Atlantico Reserva

Atlantico Reserva Rum, produced in the Dominican Republic, is a super smooth hand crafted premium rum that's championed by Enrique Inglesias; you can't really get much smoother than that! The brand is realtively new, with its debut release in 2008, but has already met with critical acclaim and has been awarded with the honour of being voted the Best Solera Rum In The World at the 2010 Golden Barrel Awards. At the helm of Atlantico are Aleco Azqueta and Brandon Lieb and their CVs include managing top brands like Grey Goose and Bacardi. Enrique Inglesias liked the rum so much that he went to meet the pair and was so impressed with their drive and vision that he officially came on board.

The process for creating the rum is very detailed and complex. Firstly, the finest aged small batch rums from around the Dominican Republic are gathered and blended together to form what I like to think of as a 'super rum'. This is then aged for one to two years in small ex bourbon barrels. After the rum has had a chance to fuse together into something greater than the sum of its parts, it is then placed in a solera system and aged for another 15 to 25 years. For a proper solera aging process, barrels of rum of different ages are stacked on top of each other, the oldest on the bottom, and the youngest on the top. When it is time to bottle, only a small percentage of the bottom (the oldest) barrels’ volume will be used. The empty space created by this drawing-off will be filled with rum from the level above, and those barrels will be filled with the level above them, and onward and upwards, while the barrels on the top level will be topped up with new rum. The rum is then bottled by hand before being individually inspected and installed. As you can probably ascertain from the time and effort involved in making Atlantico, this is a pretty serious rum indeed. Suffice to say it tastes delicious; it's sweet in the initial instance but that soon turns to a lovely caramel flavour that's oh so smooth. The rum is viscous and clings to the inside of your mouth, coating it in a sweet vanilla and herb blanket that adds complexity to the finish. If you are serious about rum then you need this in your life, like seriously, right now.