Velier Caroni Paradise #5 2000

Caroni is the legendary closed distillery of Trinidad, established in 1918 on the Caroni plain with its own adjoining sugar factory and shut down in 2003. When Luca Gargano of Velier found thousands of forgotten casks in the abandoned bond, he bottled a finite tranche at or near cask strength and made it the most mythologised name in rum. This is a single cask from the Paradise series, a 2000 vintage held twenty years and tropically aged in the heat of origin.

Matured in ex-bourbon oak and bottled without added sugar, it shows a more polished face of the heavy Caroni style. The classic markers are all present, tar, rubber and a diesel edge, but the aroma also opens onto caramel, dark chocolate and toasted oak, and a minty eucalyptus lift runs through the palate alongside cappuccino and dried fruit. The finish stays tarry and toasted with chocolate and mint. It remains unmistakably the savoury, industrial Trinidad style, only unusually rounded and elegant, best in small neat pours with plenty of air at 67.5%.