Mana’o Amphore 2021

Mana'o makes organic agricole-style rum in French Polynesia from fresh-pressed sugar-cane juice, well outside the French AOC and IGP zones, so it carries the cane-juice spirit without the protected name. The Amphore is its distinctive bottling, rested for around eighteen months in clay amphorae rather than wood, an unusual choice that lends the rum its signature stamp.

Bottled at 54.2% with sweetening undisclosed, it opens with litchi, sugar cane and banana over a clear mineral streak, the palate echoing that tropical-floral fruit with the same stony, faintly saline lift that the amphora resting seems to bring. The finish runs vegetal, earthy and peppery with a fruit-schnapps note. Fuller of florals and minerality than the classic Mana'o, it sits among the more individual island whites and is best appreciated neat, where the amphora character and high-toned fruit have room to show.