Cacique Añejo

Cacique is a long-standing Venezuelan brand from Destilerias Unidas, and this entry-level Anejo carries just a two year age statement, sitting at the budget, everyday end of the country's range. Venezuela can produce smooth, dessert-leaning rum, but this bottling is a simple young mixer rather than one of those refined sippers.

Distilled from molasses on a column still and briefly aged in ex-bourbon casks, it is light-bodied with a hot, alcoholic edge and a basic barrel note, short on the depth, vanilla and dried-fruit richness the country's better expressions deliver. At thirty seven and a half percent it is soft in strength but rough in character, the kind of rum that finds its place lengthened with cola or fruit juice, where its youth and heat matter far less than they do in a glass on their own.