Black Frost Small Batch Rum

Reviewers: Pickwick and Tashtego

Distillery: Black Frost Distilling
Origin: New Ulm, Minnesota
Bottle Size: 750 ml
Bottle Count: Unstated
ABV: 46%
Distilled: Unstated
Base Material: Louisiana blackstrap molasses
Still: “Copper column and pot still”
Aging specs: No age statement; aged at the distillery “in a mix of new and used barrels”
Bottled: Unstated; purchased September 2026

Nose: Cherry cola, molasses, berries, tropical fruits
Palate: Cream soda, overripe fruit, minerals
Finish: Vanilla, oak barrel

Earlier this year, the fairly new American independent bottler Mainland Rum, whose mission statement involves bottling only American rum, put out their first unaged offering: a long-fermentation, high-ester, 125-proof beast from an unnamed distillery in Minnesota. Despite not naming anyone on the label, Mainland bottles include precise latitude and longitude coordinates of their contributing distilleries, and so it was no real challenge to find out that Black Frost Distilling, out of New Ulm in south-central Minnesota, was responsible for what was an absolutely fascinating bottling. At least when tasted on its own, the rum was distinctly reminiscent of the infamous Savanna HERR from Réunion Island - one might call it “HERRsatz” - and at just $36 for 750 ml, it presented as a relative steal.

So when we learned that Black Frost was not merely messing around but that they also had a standard aged rum release for only a few dollars more which promised, per the website, a “rich, tropical character,” it definitely seemed worth checking out. The bad news is, it’s hard to come by if you don’t live in Minnesota. The good news is, one of us sometimes visits Minnesota and was able to grab a bottle while there.

This bottle kind of presents the first real test of the Taste/Haste metric. By the standards of a random American distillery whose main focus is whiskey, this is pretty good rum; by overall rum standards, it is merely solid. In some ways, it falls almost directly on the line between a rum that can be sipped and a rum that can’t, with the 92 proof helping edge it over the line; either way, it is probably best used in cocktails (it could make a decent enough Planter’s Punch). It’s more interesting than one might expect to find if one were to select an American rum at random, and better than many we’ve had, but it is heavily defined by barrel influence over and above any complexity of the original liquid. There are some tropical hints that definitely add a character lacked by many otherwise comparable bottlings, but aged “HERRsatz” this certainly is not.

Yet it qualifies for a 3 on the Haste scale - “good value pickup at full price and worth owning” - when you consider that even if this is not the most interesting rum, it is still one of the more interesting American rums of this type, comparable to domestic winners like Chicago Cane Cooperative’s Solera Gold. If you’re already in the area, $42 is also a competitive price when lined up against more well known rums that are also around the cocktail-only/starter-sipper Mason-Dixon line, like El Dorado 8 and Angostura 1919. By that standard, it’s worth a pickup. It would make for a reasonable dram when you just want to settle down with a pleasant and uncomplicated rum, or as a decent palate primer before moving on to tasting higher-proof punchers on a flight night.

Taste/Haste Scale: 2 / 3