Dark Jamaican: Myers vs Coruba

jokeiii - what a beautiful score! I'm surprised you didn't clear them out at that price! The last place I found Coruba Dark on the shelf was in some scuzzy liquor store in south Miami - four 750ml bottles to be precise. My heart literally skipped a beat when I saw them; the labels were all weathered from the sun and the bottles themselves were covered in dust. I believe I paid $16.99 a bottle. Regarding that Marathon location you discovered, I might have to plan a dawn raid upon that liquor store - that is, if they have any bottles left! It is not so easy to find Coruba Dark on the shelf. Roy's is the only other liquor store in the entire state that is currently known to stock it - and for a pretty penny too!

Mike - good point about comparing both blends. I have all the formulations at home, however, I can't quite bring myself to crack them all open to do the comparison. If I find duplicate bottles of the 1980s and 1990s bottlings, I'll be sure to do so.

Good news, RumScrummager...
This is at the Marathon Deli & Liquor Store in Marathon, FL, not an hour ago. AFTER I loaded up, they still had +/-20 bottles on the shelf and six cases that I could see. Also, really good prices on other desirable rums.

I did a blind taste test and found Coruba and Myers's to be essentially similar with a slight preference to Coruba. I actually preferred Blackwell over both, though in this specific case there appears to be added sugar in Blackwell that may have clouded the test in a Planter's Punch.

Blind Taste Test of Dark Jamaican Rum

Coruba has a great reputation among tikiphiles, and generally speaking Myers’s is often looked upon as Bacardi’s darker but still not so stellar brother. I’ve personally found Myers’s to be pretty good, especially at bars where my other rum options are Malibu and Bacardi. I’ve acquired a bottle of Blackwell Jamaican rum and decided to do a blind taste test of the three dark Jamaican rums. All are lightly aged (2-4 years).

To do the test I selected the Stephen Remsberg Planter’s Punch recipe, from Beachbum Berry Remixed and the Total Tiki App. This is basically a Dark Jamaican Rum Daiquiri served in crushed ice.
3/4 oz Lime Juice
1 oz Simple Syrup
3 oz Dark Jamaican Rum (Remsberg’s recipe calls for Coruba specifically)
3 dashes Angostura Bitters
Swizzle with crushed ice.

All three of these are great drinks. I really love this Planter’s Punch recipe. Very flavorful and refreshing with the chilled glass and crushed ice.
In terms of the blind taste test, there was one that was just a bit more flavorful than the others, with caramel notes that had great mouthfeel and a sweet taste that complimented the lime and ice. Believe it or not, the rum I preferred here wasn’t Coruba, the cult favorite. I really preferred the Blackwell Black Gold! This rum is produced by J. Wray and Nephew and brand founder Chris Blackwell has a family history with the Wray and Appleton distilleries. At the end of the day I felt like Coruba was better than Myers’s by a hair but that these two were essentially similar in this particular cocktail.

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Kevin Crossman

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[ Edited by: kevincrossman 2018-08-05 13:10 ]

Sadly Southern Wine and Spirits has discontinued Coruba here in my state. I hunted down the last bottles in the state, which are all gone now. Looks like I'll be using doctored Myers moving forward.