Review: Flor De Cana Centenario Gold 18 Year Old Rum

Posted by Arctic Wolf on October 6, 2012

I published my original review of the Flor De Cana Centenario Gold 18 Year Old Rum almost three years ago, and as part of that review I published what I feel is one of my very best cocktails, the El Padrino. (My friend forrest helped me with the cocktail.) As I do sometimes, I recently re-visited the Flor de Cana 18 Year Old to see if my opinion had changed any over three years. The result was perhaps a more rounded review with a slight difference in the scoring, although my overall opinion did not really change.

Flor de Caña has a history of rum production which is dated to 1890 at the San Antonio Sugar Mill, in Chichigalpa, Nicaragua. The company was founded by Francisco Alfredo Pellas and today, over 120 years later, the company is still headed by the fifth generation of the Pellas family. It has grown to be not only one of Central America’s leading brands of rum, it is also one of the most recognized rum brands in the world.

According to the company website all of the Flor de Caña rum is produced with molasses from sugar cane harvested in fields adjacent to the distillery in Chichigalpa. It is distilled in a continuous column still process, and then laid down to age in small American white oak barrels in traditional aging warehouses built without air conditioning in an undisturbed environment.

Here is an excerpt from the review;

“… The immediate nose is full of oak and baking spices, some zesty orange peel, vanilla, and dry fruit. The spicy oak makes the nose seem lightly harsh, and as the rum breathes, I begin to sense glimmers of toasted hazelnut and pecans wafting into the air. The oak builds bringing even more spice into the breezes above the glass… “

Here is a link to my re-visited review: