1796 Rum

Venezuela’s Santa Teresa was founded in 1796. This bottling was first released in 1996 to celebrate their two centuries of rum making. Everyone fell in love with it – as demonstrated by gold medals at The Rum Masters and International Wine & Spirit Competition. Now it's become a staple in the range, not to mention within many a backbar and rum collection.

This old house takes column and pot still rum aged for between four and thirty-five years in Bourbon barrels, blends them together and then further matures it through a solera system, much like those employed in Sherry production. The solera system comprises a series of old barrels stacked on top of each other. Bottles are filled from the barrels at the bottom, which contain the oldest spirit. The space is then topped up from the row above, and so on and so on, with the new blend filled into the gap at the top. This constant mixing results in huge complexity and a wonderful balance between the leathery 35-year-old components and the fresher 4-year-old rum in the blend.

Santa Teresa 1796 makes a delicious Old Fashioned. But in our opinion, it’s best sipped neat to revel in its honey smoothness and rich flavours of prunes, praline, buttery shortbread, maple syrup, Madeira, flambéed banana, leather, baked apple, dried and spiced Christmas cake fruit, tobacco, vanilla and cigar smoke. Cheers to the next 200 years.