Sherry Cask Finish Rum

Rum with such a heavy Sherry influence is a rare and beautiful thing. That’s why on tasting the latest limited-edition expression from the Philippines-based Don Papa, Harvey Nichols secured everything we could exclusively for our customers in the UK.

The Philippines has a noble history of sugar cane production. Their rich, sweet, much-prized molasses is packed with fruity flavours, earning it the local nickname “Black Gold”. For this Sherry Cask Finish Rum, Don Papa have distilled that molasses in a column still and filled the resulting new-make spirit into ex-Bourbon casks. Here it has remained in the humid foothills of Mount Kanlaon for four years. In those steamy conditions, the rum matures rapidly, which is why Don Papa’s rums always taste so complex and so much older than their age suggests. After four years, the rum is filled into four kinds of Sherry cask – Fino, Pedro Ximénez, Cream and Palo Cortado – where it remains for 18 months. Here it picks up lots of deeply festive flavours: moist Christmas cake, prunes soaked in Madeira, mince pies and Sherry, Port and figs, cherry liqueur dark chocolates, plums stewed with star anise, roasted almond marzipan, pomander, unctuous caramel and spiced nuts.

This gift from three continents – rum from Asia combined with Sherry casks from Europe and Bourbon barrels from North America – is a present you won’t find anywhere else, a perfect yuletide tot and a winter warmer supreme. And just in case you were wondering, the guy on the bottle with slug balanced on his lip and the reptilian monocle is Dionisio Magbuelas, better known as Papa Isio. He was one of the heroes in the Philippines’ fight for independence from Spain in the 1890s, only surrendering to the Americans in 1907. So it’s nice that these three nations have patched up their differences to create Don Papa Sherry Cask Finish Rum.