Cadenhead‘s Clarendon Green Label Jamaican Rum 2005

Cadenhead's Clarendon Green Label Jamaican Rum 2005 is a 17 year old Clarendon bottled by Cadenhead's, Scotland's oldest independent bottler, under its long-running Green Label rum range. Clarendon is a workhorse Jamaican distillery, and this expression leans toward a dry, restrained reading of the island rather than a funk-heavy one.

Matured in ex-bourbon oak, it opens with currants, dried fruit, honey and oak, smelling dry and grassy with a subtle floral underlay. The palate keeps the currant-and-oak theme with vanilla, leading into a finish of roasted nuts, herbs and honeyed dried fruit. Bottled at 46% in the whisky-house style, with dosage not declared, it shows the more elegant, continental side of aged Clarendon, a measured and food-friendly Jamaican for drinkers who favour dry, fruit-and-oak maturity over solvent intensity.