Velier Caroni Heavy Rum (Eataly) HTR 2000

Caroni stood on the Trinidad plain from 1918 until production ceased around 2003, and this bottling comes from the finite tranche of casks Luca Gargano of Velier rescued from the abandoned warehouse and championed through tropical ageing. Distilled in 2000 and held seventeen years at origin, it is a single cask from one of the heavy marks collectors prize, a selection bottled for Eataly.

The profile is the archetypal industrial Caroni, tar, burnt rubber and machine oil over leather, with butterscotch and vanilla underneath and a salty, vegetal, banana-tinged finish. Matured in ex-bourbon oak and bottled at a towering 68.4% from molasses distillate, it carries real density and a touch too much dryness to read as gentle, the alcohol well woven but uncompromising. A few drops of water open the oily heart. This is collector territory, savoured slowly by those who want Caroni at full intensity.