Samai Kampot Pepper

Samai is a distillery working with column still molasses rum, and Kampot Pepper is its overtly flavoured release, infused with prized Kampot pepper and sweetened with honey. This is firmly a spiced, flavoured rum rather than a straight aged spirit, and it is honest about that, the pepper and honey are the whole point rather than a subtle seasoning.

The profile leads with big peppery heat and red pepper spice, lifted by honey, floral notes and a little citrus, and finishes sweet and lingering with a tingling pepper bite. The sweetness is at dessert level, so this drinks closer to a spiced liqueur than to a clean, dry rum, and it sits comfortably in cocktails where its pepper and honey can lift a drink rather than in long neat sessions. For adventurous drinkers who enjoy sweet spiced rum or pepper and honey liqueurs it is a genuinely fun and distinctive twist. Anyone chasing clean, unsweetened cane spirit will find it too sweet and too flavoured, and it makes no claim otherwise.