A new rum from a French wine family. By Holly Graham.
What is it? Embargo is a new rum label from Jean Moueix and Alex Sirech. Moueix is part of the family that owns top-shelf Bordeaux wine Petrus (as well as negociant Duclot) while Sirech used to work for Bordeaux wine magnate Bernard Magrez and then Pernod Ricard. Together their new spirits company (Les Bienheureux) is also bottling Guatemalan rum and French whiskies. Even within the crazy, regulation-light world of rum, Embargo pushes the limits. The Anejo Blanco, for example, is a blend of five Caribbean rums – four light rums from Trinidad, Cuba and Guatemala, plus one from Martinique. Multi-nation rum blending is nothing new (think Plantation or Pyrat), but this one goes a stride further by marrying agricole and molasses spirits, bringing all the aromatic, fresh cane, ripe banana energy of agricole brilliantly into play with the brown sugar richness of molasses.
How does it taste? The “anejo” and “blanco” used together mean the blend’s aged components have had (most of) the colour stripped out by charcoal filtering, but this delivers a smooth profile, with gentle oak still on the finish, and plenty of character to make a rocking Daiquiri or Mojito.
