Savanna Créol Straight 2022 Limited Edition 2021

Savanna Creol Straight is an unaged cane juice rum from Reunion, agricole in approach, drawn off the distillery's Savalle column and bottled brut de colonne at a towering 68.7%. Savanna makes several very different families of rum, and this Straight sits at the pure, raw end, a white captured at full still strength after a long rest in vat that rounds it without taming its intensity.

Distilled from fresh pressed sugar cane juice, it is emphatically vegetal: huge fresh cane, green olive and citrus, with white pepper and anise giving it a herbal, spicy lift, finishing on iodine and zest. What stands out is how well the enormous strength is carried, the spirit reading intense yet balanced rather than hot. This is a white for experienced drinkers who love powerful agricole, superb in a daiquiri or Ti' Punch and rewarding neat in small measures with water, where its sheer concentration of cane character shows.