Velier Caroni 30th Release Heavy Trinidad Rum HTR 1996

Wow, well this one knocked my socks off! I'm very impressed, an amazing roasted nose, rubber and spice. On the palate there is more rubber, tar, vanilla, wood with a touch of sweet caramel. So perfectly balanced to me, complex. A long finish.

Tasted at Catawiki at the 1st German Armagnac Festival. Really very tasty. I'll probably never be able to afford a bottle - but it's still very cool to taste it straight from the bottle and not from the sample bottle. Tasted extremely good. Nice and dirty on the nose and palate, caramel sweetness and also a great freshness with a great mouthfeel. Really very cool. Not at all woody.

Epic Velier Caroni Tasting 2023: Beautiful Caroni with the classic sweetness of the '96 vintage. Relatively dry on the palate, the tannins dry out the mouth directly and prepare the ground for tar and rubber, wood, pepper, aniseed and coffee as well as the obligatory heavy 96 caramel sweetness. The alcohol content is also noticeable and provides some fire. All in all, a strong but nevertheless well-rounded profile and a worthy 96 Caroni that grows on me a little more with every new tasting. A great release.

Heavenly nose. Great roasted and chocolate notes on the palate. Excellent tropical aged Caroni!

Tried it for the first time at the Catawiki stand at the 1st GAF in Stuttgart and only gave a quick trade fair review there. Now found another sample and tried it again. The score remains the same. Very great 96 "sweet and tasty" Caroni. A further comparison with others of its vintage is still pending.

A Caroni in line with what the '96 vintage has to offer: a nose with intense oak and swirling spices (pepper, chili, cinnamon, vanilla), but also an unsuspected sweetness of caramel, chocolate, coffee and toffee that counterbalances the profile. Dried fruit and toastiness stand out, but the hydrocarbon notes are relatively discreet. The result is a very fragrant and pleasant olfactory profile. On the palate, Caroni's DNA is more demonstrative: rubber and tar combine with spices, oak, mocha coffee, chocolate, caramel, toffee and cookie for an optimal sweetness/potency balance. It's extremely easy-drinking and extremely drinkable. The alcohol is superbly well integrated. The finish is very long and tasty, halfway between menthol and hydrocarbon and caramelized sweetness. There's a high proportion of rather gourmand spices, accompanied by milk chocolate, cappuccino and hazelnut on a lightly smoky, roasted bed. It leaves a very pleasant imprint on the palate. A superb Caroni of great mastery, deep, intense but very gentle in its approach.

This is a lovely Caroni and I'd love to have a bottle on the shelf but that wasn't going to be 😊 Love the tar and rubber mixed with the smoky wood, light fruit and chocolate. The chocolate really comes out after a while in the empty glass. Love it, just love it 😍

Today a Caroni from 1996, which is also more on the spicy side with a pleasant sweetness. The over 60℅ are perfectly integrated and give it plenty of steam. The finish is long and warm. For me personally, it could be a little fruitier. Nevertheless, very tasty, even if it is somewhat atypical Caroni.

Impressive rum which gathers every single thing I love about Caroni : perfect alcohol integration, complexity, balance, sweetness but also a little touch of funkyness. 1996 is a hell of a vintage ... I love it ! 😍

One of the more balanced and „sweeter“ bottling compared to some of his Velier brothers. Amazing stuff. Cheers to Jakob for the sample 🙂

Extremely palatable caroni and atypically little smoky and rather very spicy. Definitely a lot of fun! 💯👌😍 I wouldn't blindly classify it as caroni, it's almost too mild and not as dirty, smoky as we know it. But definitely extremely tasty! By the way, it was a bottlekill on site 😃

Excellenter Caroni mit klassischen nicht übertriebenen Aromen. Fast schon ein angenehmer Abend-Sipper