Rest & Be Thankful Micro Batch #01 Jamaican Rum 13 Year
Reviewer: Tashtego
Distillery: Blend of 4 Jamaican distilleries: New Yarmouth, Long Pond, Clarendon & Worthy Park
Origin: Jamaica
Bottle Size: 700ml
Bottle Count: 1,182
ABV: 58.7%
Distilled: Oldest rum distilled 2005
Base Material: Molasses
Still: Pot & column
Aging specs: Includes rums from: Clarendon Estate 2007 column & pot 14 year old, Long Pond 2005 pot still 16 year old, New Yarmouth 2005 pot still 16 year old, Worthy Park 2008 pot still 13 year old
Bottled: August 2022
Nose: Pineapple rind, caramel, truffle
Palate: Pineapple liqueur, mango syrup, cake batter, butterscotch, lemon custard
Finish: Tropical fruits, vanilla
How sweet can you make a rum without actually adding sugar? Scottish indie bottler Rest & Be Thankful aims to find out with this blend of 4 Jamaican rums in their Micro Batch #01. Rest & Be Thankful is named for a mountain road in Scotland, and for a hill in Jamaica, which works out nicely for a Scottish bottler of Jamaican spirits. While they have very limited distribution in the States - if you’re lucky you may see one pop up in an independent bottle shop now and again - these bottles can easily be ordered from European retailers and shipped in.
Let’s dig in to this one. The nose is not overpowering - there’s some Jamaican presence in the form of pineapple and some familiar esters, and a faint savory truffle note. Once you sip it, it’s an explosion of sweet fruit. Think syrups and fruit candy, as opposed to the grilled or overripe fruits of higher-ester bottlings. It’s so much pineapple, which is funny because this bottle includes rums from 4 of the 6 rum distilleries in Jamaica but not from Hampden Estate, whose calling card is pineapple. There are a lot of desserts here - it’s an easy drinking rum, fairly impressive for its nearly 59% ABV. The finish is pleasant with more tropical fruit and some baked goods.
This rum’s a crowd-pleaser that doesn’t necessarily make as complex a blend as you’d think given its remarkable Jamaican components. Beyond the sweet fruit and a hint of Jamaican character (and I’d stop short of calling it “funk”), there’s not a whole lot more to say. For Taste, I’ll give this a 4 for the sheer deliciousness, but honestly it’s missing some of the more challenging aspects of what I like from revered distilleries like New Yarmouth, Long Pond and Worthy Park. For Haste - well, we’ve once again reviewed a rum you can’t really get in the US without making an expensive European order. This one is €125 at Paris’ Excellence Rhum, linked above. For a blended, non-single-cask rum, you’d like it to be a little more attainable. We’ll still give it a 3 on Haste since it’s a unique bottling that makes a lovely sipper if you want to dream about the tropics and bask in a world of ripe fruits, tiki syrups and bright pineapple desserts.
Taste/Haste Scale: 4 / 3
