13 April 2023
Discover the Best Rums of March 2023 | Monthly Review
What were the hottest new rum releases in the past month? Which rums received the highest scores from our community? And where did most of the tasting take place? We are back with our Monthly Recap and will give you the key stats on what happened in the RumX world in March 2023.
Side note: In case you are interested in seeing the full list for March, please open the RumX app, open the Explore tab, navigate to the Hot right now section and click on Explore - you’ll find the extended monthly lists as well as all the historical rankings over there.
Monthly charts
In the past month, the RumX community shared 6,817 tasting notes (a slight decrease from February’s 7,184 tastings) and added 6,709 bottles to their collections (February: 6,170). Moreover, with the help of the community, 265 new rums (another record number) were added to the database.
Opposed to the development from January to February, this time we see a slight decrease in the number of tastings added while in turn the number of bottles added to collections and our database went up a bit. Keeping in mind that February has less days than March, it seems fair to say that we see a stagnation in numbers. Maybe our next sample set lottery for April will get a few more tastings in - or the spring season entices our dear community to pull a sample or bottle of rum out of their bars a few more times.
Most tasted rums of March 2023
Jumping over to our stats we see a hat-trick scored by the Haitian rums - for the third month in a row, the most tasted rum comes from Haiti. Velier’s 3 year old Providence from 2019 again was the most tasted rum in March, just as in February (24 new tastings added in March). As was to be expected, we also find the February winner of our “Most added to collection” ranking in this list - Foursquare’s 2010 vintage release from their Exceptional Cask Selection Series ended up as a close second in this month’s most tasted rums with still over 20 new tastings added (22). We continue with what we’d like to call an evergreen in our dear list - as far as we may call it so after securing a top slot for four months in a row: Hampden’s Great House 2022 Edition continuously ended up in the top 10 since December and jumps to the podium again in March. Right now it is at 86 tastings recorded - will we crack the 100th tasting in April? We are curious!
Speaking of overall number of tastings, this is not the highest value of our most tasted rums in March though - even closer to the three digit marque is Velier’s Long Pond Cambridge STCE 2010 that landed on fifth place with 16 new tastings entered in March, which now sums up to 95 tasting notes in total. Will we maybe even see two rums cracking the 100 tastings in April? Well, we dare to ask: Challenge accepted, RumX community?
While getting enthusiastic about the number of tastings for these two rums let us not forget about rank four though. This one goes to Hampden again - however, the ester level significantly increases compared to the Great House. Habitation Velier’s Hampden DOK 2017 again landed in the top 10, climbing up 6 ranks from the 10th spot in February.
Looking at the remaining slots we can derive a view other interesting insights:
- For the first time in our ranking we see three rums from Haiti in the top 10 most tasted rums in a month.
- Jamaica maintains its status as a clear darling of our community - in 2023 we continuously saw at least three rums from Jamaica in our monthly top 10 (with Hampden being the most frequent representative).
- While quality levels remain undisputedly high, we start to miss a bit of variety among the bottlers and distilleries behind the top tasted releases. We already spoke about the popularity of certain bottlers like Velier or Spirit of Rum in the February review and we absolutely agree that they deserve attention as well as their high ratings. It seems difficult to break through their dominance - but let’s see, as you know we recently introduced our monthly tasting lotteries and in April are distributing a fairly big number of samples from Scottish bottler Decadent Drinks, probably better known under their “Rum Sponge” label - we look forward to those samples sets hitting the community and resulting in many new tasting impressions of new rums as well.
- We see a certain range of rums that prove to be “must tastes” for the community and thus remain on our top lists for quite some time - again, we look at the likes of Foursquare’s 2010 vintage release, the recent Habitation Velier expressions or the Hampden Great House editions. Lots of well deserved attention, but probably also a sign that other releases stay under the radar
- To be fair though: We repeatedly see different rather exotic rums jumping to the list as well: This month we find Mhoba’s 2017 release for LMDW’s Antipodes selection as well as Spirit of Rum’s Koloa 2017 rum in the top 10. Both South Africa and Hawaii are not among the most popular rum producing countries (yet) - So yes, we have some exotic countries there as well, but only occasionally.
All in all, the top five list of March again rather brought some reshuffling among the usual suspects rather than real surprises - but hey, winter’s over, spring is coming, and with that we are sure to find plenty of new releases coming our way. We can’t wait for the hot(ter) seasons with all the big rum festivals and tasting sessions to kick in again!
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Curious which other rums ended up in our Top 10 in March or simply look for more details on the rums mentioned? Just head over to our app and check out the monthly recap history in the “Explore” section!
Would you like to actively participate in the April Top List? We are currently running our tasting lottery where you can win an exclusive sample set from Rum Sponge. All you have to do is share some tasting impressions in the app - find out more here:
Join the lottery nowMost added to the collection in March 2023
Let’s continue with our most added to the collection aka “most purchased bottles” category. Also here we find the same rum on the top spot as in the February list - Foursquare’s 2010 vintage expression in their Exceptional Cask Selection series proves its standing as a true crowd pleaser and given the open rate of 12% and the 44 tasting notes added until end of March it seems that the 173 bottles in the community actually find their ways into some glasses as well.
Ranks 3 to 5 were already discussed fairly extensively in our monthly recaps - Hampden’s Great House Edition 2022, the Long Pond Cambridge STCE 2010 as well as the Papalin from Haiti all hail from big names in the rum industry that typically don’t fail to deliver on both quality and market pull. With close to 600 bottles added to the collection of our community members to date, these three expressions definitely were highly sought after.
This month’s second rank cannot keep up with these totals, but it still shows the interest of the community in new and exceptional expressions. Swell de Spirits’ limited edition of a blend of unaged Jamaican rums bottled at a breath-taking 75% is definitely not your usual cup of tea, pardon me, glass of rum - but it sparks the interest of rum lovers, obviously. We look forward to seeing your tasting impressions coming in!
If you feel you missed out on any of the rums, maybe you want to check our forum - here the RumX community shares exciting finds every day. And don’t forget to check out our new Buyer's Guide in the app.
Most popular tasting locations in March 2023
Last not least, as you know it, we’ll have a look at the top tasting locations of our community in March. Besides the obvious top ranks for Denmark (we just checked the Wikipedia entry for Kolding, they definitely forgot to mention that they are the world’s home of rum tastings… call to our Danish members: this has to change!), Paris and Stuttgart we this time also find some noteworthy places on our list. Let’s start off with Martinique on rank 5 - great to see tastings coming in from one of the origins of our beloved liquid. And a great proof that tasting rum can definitely spice up your vacations in the right way. Getting bored in the hotel room? Better come prepared and get some nice samples from our bottle split section in the RumX community forum!
Too late? No need to worry - just find some nice local shops or bars nearby, just as our community does. We are happy to see two new tasting hot spots in our March list: First one is the “Raisin & Bulles” shop in Bordeaux. We have not been there ourselves, but they seem to have quite a range of rums available. If you’re in the area - give it a try and let us know how you liked it! Same goes for the “Ginger & Fred” in Freudenstadt. Okay, okay, it seems they do some solid quality control of their offerings themselves (well, who wouldn’t?) and thus landed on rank 10 this months. But we had a look at their offerings and while did not make it to Freudenstadt yet, we definitely found a good reason to do so in future. Have a look at their offerings and again, if you are in town, give them a visit or attend one of their tasting events. But promise to share your impressions with us!
Comments
Stagnation seems to be the term of the hour: Seems like we are in a period where the tendency rather goes to buying only well-known bottlers and distilleries or simply drink some of the bottles we already have on our shelves. Accordingly, the newly added tasting notes stay on the same levels as in the past months and the bottle purchases mostly focus on getting more of the most recent top sellers. Occasionally, some new things drop in, but first and foremost a lot of well-known representatives circulating in our tasting glasses. This leads us to the question: Is there anything you miss in the rum world these days? Or is it just the calm before the storm and everyone can’t wait for the new releases coming in spring and summer 2023?