Rum Runner Foursquare MBFS 2005

Rum Runner has selected a single 2005 cask of Foursquare, the Barbados distillery whose no-additives, single-blended style sets the island benchmark. Bottled at a full 58.3 percent, this carries the marque code MBFS and shows the textbook Foursquare character across 15 years of ageing.

The nose is exactly what admirers expect, coconut, vanilla and chocolate over wood with a caramel and toasted backbone, and the palate stays round and balanced with caramel, vanilla and white chocolate. The finish runs on caramel, vanilla, coconut and gentle spice. Distilled from molasses on Foursquare's double-retort pot and twin-column stills and matured in ex-bourbon oak, it is dry and additive-free in the island style. Some find it classic to the point of being conventional, which is rather the appeal, a well-integrated cask-strength Bajan with nothing to hide.