TCRL 2015 (Line #23)

Transcontinental Rum Line is La Maison du Whisky's globe-spanning rum label, bottling single origins with a transparency about ageing location and strength. This 2015 Panamanian is column-distilled molasses rum aged six years in ex-bourbon and bottled unsweetened at 43%, and it turns out to be a distinctly off-piste example of its origin.

The nose promises a conventional soft Panamanian: vanilla, baking spice, pastry and burnt sugar. The palate then veers somewhere stranger, thin in body and dominated by medicinal, iodine notes with a hazelnut edge, the finish carrying that same medicinal, faintly bitter character. It is an atypical, polarising bottle rather than the mellow vanilla pour the nose suggests, closer to a coastal, briny profile than the usual Spanish-style softness. One for the curious drinker who enjoys a rum that defies its label, bottled honestly without sugar to let those oddities show.