Bacardi Tropical

Bacardi Tropical is a flavoured, sweetened release from Bacardi in Puerto Rico, built on the brand's familiar light column-still rum and pitched squarely at warm-weather mixing. At 32% and openly sweetened, it sits well outside dry rum territory, a fruit-forward drink designed for the glass with ice and a top-up rather than a spirit to be considered neat.

The character is essentially liquid pineapple, the nose and palate both dominated by tropical fruit, pineapple and mango, with a sour-sweet citrus edge running through the finish. There is no oak or aged depth here, and none is the aim, this is a soft, sweet, low-strength flavoured rum for spritzes and coolers. Honesty matters with a bottle like this, it is a pineapple-led mixer first and foremost, judged on how it brightens a tall drink rather than on rum-making depth.