Cadenhead‘s Green Label

Cadenhead's, the long-running Scottish independent, has bottled this 11 year old Barbados rum under its Green Label, drawing on the island's classic molasses distillate. Bottled at 46 percent and unsweetened, it presents an aged Bajan in Cadenhead's characteristically natural, unadorned fashion.

The nose is light with coconut, apricot and an alcoholic lift, and the palate turns to roasted nuts, pencil shavings and pepper. The finish stays on pencil shavings with an alcoholic edge. Distilled from molasses and matured in ex-bourbon oak, it is dry and additive-free, the wood and spice given room without any dosage to round it off. This is a leaner, more spirit-forward and oak-driven reading of Barbados than the soft banana-and-toffee cliché, rewarding drinkers who want their island rum delivered straight and dry. A characterful, honest bottling from one of the trade's oldest names.