Velier Foursquare Raconteur 2006

Raconteur is a Velier and Foursquare collaboration, a seventeen year old Barbados single blend that takes the distillery's coconut and vanilla signature and deepens it with an Oloroso sherry influence. As ever with Foursquare, it is a marriage of pot and column still rum from Richard Seale's distillery, bottled at full proof with no added sugar, colour or flavouring.

The extra age and the sherry cask push the profile toward toasted oak, roasted nuts and dried fruit, layered over the familiar coconut, vanilla and caramel, with a spicy, roasted finish. All seventeen years were spent in the Caribbean, where the heat drives faster oak extraction and a heavier annual loss, concentrating the spirit and giving it real depth. At 61% it is intense and completely dry, so the richness comes from barrel and time rather than dosage. A serious sipper that benefits from rest in the glass and, for some, a drop of water.