Cask No. 66.238

Oooh-aaargh – Captain Blackbeard’s cheroot-slavered, rum-soaked whiskers shook as canons fired from the ship’s deck – quick, fetch the apothecary! Battle over – time for barbecued prawns on the beach. The palate gave us sugar-coated fennel seeds, jellied liquorice, banana fritters, cough sweets and "drinking piña colada from a farmer’s welly boot" – only distant memories of gunpowder. The reduced nose had engine oil, putty, vanilla fudge and "wiping up spilled rum with a chamois cloth". The eminently quaffable palate now combined garibaldis and brown sugar with sweet smoke, tar and ash. After eight years in ex-bourbon wood we transferred this into a refill Trinidad rum barrel.

USA allocation: 60 bottles