Velier Chelo Clairin Vieux Sajous – Second Release 2017

This Vieux Sajous is a Velier clairin, an aged Haitian cane-juice rum from the Chelo distillery bottled at cask strength with no additives. Clairin is Haiti's raw, ancestral village rum, wild-fermented from fresh cane juice or syrup with nothing added, and Velier is the name that brought a handful of these single-producer clairins to wider attention as the purest expression of the category.

Unaged Sajous is a turbo-charged agricole funk of wild fermentation, and careful ageing here keeps that clairin soul while adding wood, spice and depth. Pot-distilled from cane juice and matured in ex-bourbon oak, it balances fresh sugarcane, florals and dried fruit against cedar, vanilla and herbs, a profile that reads as agricole meeting Jamaica. At 56.3% and unsweetened it is intense and complex, best given time to breathe and sipped neat, a serious cask-strength clairin for those who want to see what maturation adds to the wild original.