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Ron Barcelo Imperial Premium Blend 30th Anniversary Rum

Booze Hound: Stuart Streuli is sniffing out the good stuff.
Ron Barcelo Imperial Premimum Blend 30th Anniversary Rum

Ron Barcelo Imperial Premimum Blend 30th Anniversary Rum

My father has a theory about wine: The quality of wine, in general, does not rise in lock step with the price. While a $100 bottle of wine is almost always better than a $10 bottle, the difference in quality is marginal rather than exponential and usually appreciated only by those with an exquisite palate or a habit of leaving the price tag on the bottle.

Well, the theory applies to Ron Barcelo’s Imperial Premimum Blend 30th Anniversary Rum, too, which retails for the rather stratospheric price of $120 a bottle (750 ml). In short: Better? Absolutely. Worth it? Up for debate.

Perhaps my expectations were simply too high. Perhaps I was expecting more of a spiced rum than a traditional straight rum. Whatever the case, I didn’t immediately fall in love. It is a fine rum. It has more bite than I anticipated, and that tended to overwhelm the more complex flavors (vanilla among them) that were not as forward as I would’ve liked.

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I’m sure there are some out there that would say this is merely proof that I’m not qualified to be sipping $120 rum, that I should stick to Malibu and OJ or some other junior varsity rum concoction. I can’t argue that. I like rum, and I like the rums I like (Malibu isn’t on the list). This Ron Barcelo rum is on the list, near the top, but it’s surrounded by a handful of less expensive spirits.

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