CoR Hampden No. 7 HLCF 1998

CoR Hampden No. 7 is a single cask from The Colours of Rum, the Warsaw purist bottler working cask strength with no additives. Distilled at Hampden in 1998 from the HLCF marque and bottled at twenty-three years old, it is a sibling release to other 1998 HLCF casks, aged the long, slow continental way in Europe.

Distilled on the double-retort pot stills from molasses and matured in ex-bourbon oak in the cooler European climate, the twenty-three years pull it toward dry, salty wood rather than tropical sweetness. The nose is ester, pineapple, fruit and a fermented lift; the palate carries tropical fruit, overripe notes, ester and banana, closing dry and salty with licorice and roasted oak. Unsweetened and bottled at near cask strength of 58.7%, it reads as a drier, more wood-led HLCF, complex and estery without going fully wild. A serious continental Hampden for experienced palates who like their funk dry and oak-driven, best sipped slowly.