Destileria Carupano Ron Añejo Reserve 1996

Destileria Carupano Ron Anejo Reserve 1996 is a single vintage Venezuelan with nearly a quarter century of ageing behind it, from a distillery on the country's Caribbean coast. Venezuela's DOC rums are built for smoothness, and this long aged release leans fully into that dessert like character.

Distilled from molasses and matured in Ex-Bourbon oak, it offers vanilla, candied fruit, caramel and gingerbread on the nose, then a creamy, syrupy palate of wood and vanilla, finishing on leather, roast and cream toffee. The texture is round and buttery, the kind of soft, sweet profile that long tropical ageing in this style produces. Its sugar status is undisclosed and the sweetness here may owe something to dosage as well as oak, so it sits comfortably at the rounded, after dinner end of the spectrum rather than the dry, structured one.