Ok so a side by side of these rums,
Bottling;
No nonsense bottles, men’s bottles! Not bottles for wankers in suits smoking over priced shitty Cuban cigars. They couldn't put these bottles in a titanium lined davidoff glass cabinet and impress Nigel the commodities broker from next door. I would only say that at 75.5% the Lemon Hart 151 NEEDS a cork. The angels will be helping themselves to more than their share, the alcoholic little bastards....
Colour,
ALL of these rums have caramel added for colouring, what is interesting is the amounts.
First a pic of S&C
Second is the Pusser's
and finally the LH151
So as you can see it seems that S&C has the least and LH151 the most. When I measured and poured the three drams it seemed that the S&C had less in the glass because of it's light colour and LH looks like it's port.
So I had a nose of each glass before adding any water to them. The SC is mellowed ripe apricots and nuts, sort of like Christmas cake still wrapped in wax paper. The Pusser's was vanilla with all old things behind it like a hint of tobacco a bit of furniture polish and the smell of timber floors in old houses. The LH151 was cigars half smoked, empty well used pipes and old leather.
So now I added water to them:
The Pusser's and LH received 20 ml to their 30 ml's bringing them down to about 42%. The S&C was 10ml to again bring it down to 42%. Nosed again:
The S&C reacts well with water and the aromas are really let go with everything you can smell in the pure form being fluffed out and becoming richer and easier to breathe in without assault of the nose. It's a fruit orchard with a nut processing plant operating upwind. S&C watered would have to be one of the best smelling rums that I know.
The Pusser's changed a bit with water, the polish disappeared and out came sawdust, damp rich earth, nice fresh tobacco and rich vanilla. A very unique aroma that when written seems awful but it's not at all. It's pleasant and can be described as a hearty aroma that makes you want to watch football or sail a yacht or invade a small island, I'm not sure what but whatever that smell is suggesting the police or green peace probably wouldn't approve.
The Lemon Hart 151 also changed it was all empty tobacco pipes, toffee hints of cocoa and maybe seawater or sea weed there is something there that I can't quite put my finger on.
So after all that crap I decided I might drink some.
The S&C is wonderful it is as lovely on the tongue as it is on the nose, it screams POT STILL at you whilst thrashing your tongue with fruit backed up by mild sweetness and vanilla. It is pungent and has an all senses filling capability when sipped. It has quite a dry finish for such a pungent and flavourful rum with a hint of brine to say adios!
The Pusser's is beautiful, it is such a well made rum. It's it's mild but flavourful with the taste notes of earth and fresh hardwood sawdust matching the aroma notes but with added hints of green apple, caramel, a very slight brine taste. I can see how this is often described as the scotch of rum. As I sip and breathe in I get tobacco as well, I am sure I can smell the deck of the Endeavour just before she bumped into Australia. It doesn't have the pungency that the S&C has and is so finely distilled that I could easily be tricked into thinking that this was column stilled or a blend of column and pot similar to the ElD's. The finish lingers a little longer than the S&C and waves slowly goodbye as the fluid pulls out from the harbour of your tongue to into the bay of your stomach
So now to the Lemon Hart 151, Toffee, leather and cocoa a nutty after-taste. This again is a fine rum and stands alone having significant enough differences to negate being compared against the first two except in perhaps the drinkers preferences and since a reader of reviews shouldn't really give a fat rats nut about the the author's preferences on 3 differing and unique styles of rum I won't go deeper into that right now. So, I digressed, this rum is a a fairground with candied nuts and caramel, toffee apples (where you just pick the toffee off) but the toffee is burnt. Maybe this is all the colouring that has been dumped into it as it definitely has the burnt sugar notes. It's a pleasure to drink, would be great in a cocktail and I say thumbs up, BUT it doesn't make me want to be a pirate like the Pusser's does.
No scores.
Just a recommendation to buy them all. They are all very good, worth your money and deserve a reserved spot in a collection.
Tschüss
*edited to add text that I somehow missed when copying this from office to forum.