Kaniche: best buy or bullshit?

[Capn Jimbo]

Kicking things off...


Due to circumstances my forays to our terrific south Florida spirits vendors have been limited, but I did make a couple and picked up a bottle of Plantation/Ferrand's Kaniche.

Let's be honest. Plantation was one of those few new marketing efforts that did succeed - to a point. Like Zee-23 Ferrand has managed to find a use for worn out sherry barrels, and create a marketing story that is delicious - even if the rums fall short. There are actually monkeys who consider the releases collectible. Good grief.

The facts are these: the rums are not described, short of country of origin. We really don't know how they are made, how long they are aged, or whether they contain suspected additives. These are simply smaller bulk purchases of rum, aged in situ and then - Holy Monkeys, Batman! - transported to yup, France, to be transferred to a worn out sherry barrel for perhaps a month or two - hardly a second aging.

Still, the Zee-trained monkeys lapped this up and Plantation garnered an unearned reputation as some kind of special and valuable artisanal creations. There is really no comparison to the honest works of Richard Seale whose Doorly's XO blend is aged for 6 to 12 year, with second "maturing" in sherry barrels. A superior rum at one-third the price. But as before, I digress...


Kaniche. Best buy or bullshit?

Way back when (perhaps 6 or 7 years ago) and even before Plantation had achieved their marketing goals, their P-rums were even then overpriced and VERY hard to find. On a of couple lucky trips we found a few Barbadian issues and liked them. At about the same time we also found their "Grande Reserva 5 Year" (one of their few age statements), and determined it to be anything but worthy, and actually rather modified. Would the real Plantation please stand up?

Not likely.

After the GR experience, confirmed by our own esteemed JaRiMi, we really moved away from the Pee-rums. Still, it is fair to say that anything made in Barbados can and should be purchased for their innate quality of Bajan rum. So when I spotted a bottle of "Kaniche" bottled by Ferrand and being sold for a mere $16.95 (and also labeled "Artisanal Rum" and also "distilled in Barbados") I thought another try was in order. To our surprise and pleasure our first touch and taste - before an actual review - was quite impressive.

Best buy? Maybe. But then Sue Sea and I did an actual tasting and found the aromatics extremely enticing, but - but - was something off? Were those aromatics authentic and pure? Had any other pure rum ever produced anything like this creation? Was this "Kaniche" bullshit? Or not?


Enter Doorly's XO...

When in doubt - and even when not - it is ALWAYS wise to bring out a reference rum, in this case Doorly's XO. This is a perfect comparison because (a) it is a pure Barbadian blend and - huzzah! - (b) it really IS finished in sherry barrels (long before Plantation even thought of it). Thus one would expect some reasonable similarities. Were there?

Not really. But if nothing else, Sue Sea especially tries to be fair and insisted we wait a week and try this one again to be sure. Best Buy or Bullshit? Stay tuned...

[Hassouni]

Bullshit or dogshit? Kaniche (with a c, "caniche") is French for poodle...




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Capn's Log: Good stuff Hass - I'm always intrigued by how marketing monkeys come to choose a name, but even the net translators couldn't come up with an English meaning. Apparently this name was chosen simply because it sounds intriguing. Unfortunately for them, you have created a nickname to which they will now be leashed forever...

"Woof, woof..."

[Capn Jimbo]

Nailed! A word from the hammer...


Truth be told palate and tasting can at times be a bit dodgy. The issues remain these: first, that some reviewers gain a reputation from using remote and sophisticated sounding but entirely inaccessible descriptors. Another group of faux reviewers seem to believe that a review is simply a long list of factors with even longer lists of descriptors. Are we to be impressed? Hardly.

The true experts are mercifully brief, do not slice and dice their reviews and provide a single overall score and impression, usually in a very short paragraph.


How about here?

The Rum Project was established on the basis that the average rum drinker needs reviews that are simple, accessible and educational. For example descriptors need to be relatively commonplace in their life experience. They must be accurate and meaningful. But inevitably Sue Sea and I have different desciptors for the same sensation - for example my "tar" is her oakum (which is a tarry rope used to seal cabins). There are others.


As for Kaniche...

...we were presented with what we both found an unusual, inauthentic and unreal kind of perfumey aromatic. However pleasant and extremely enticing we couldn't quite put our noses on it. Years ago something like this happened to me with Angostura 1919 which had likewise had a unique aromatic presentation that defied description. Then one day - bang!- it came to me in a flash! "Banana's Foster". This realization was so right on that everyone we had taste 1919 got it and agreed. Thereafer 1919 became the "Banana's Foster Rum" and our way of labeling our reviews.

In the case of Kaniche it happened again. I'd poured a dram just for fun and actually forgot what I had in the glass. Of a sudden - bang - it too came to me. Cinnamon. Yup, cinnanmon. This Kaniche is actually a cinnamon bomb. It has so much of it, it was so unreal that we perceived it as an otherworldly, mysteriously unnatural something.

Cinnamon. Yup, that's it and I can now safely say Kaniche has been significantly altered by good old faux-collectors-item Plantation, aka the Ferrand Factory of Spirits. Carry on...




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Special Note: Most good rums have a hint of spice which often include pepper (white, black or jalapeno), ginger and cinnamon) but especially in the case of cinnamon this is just a note, a hint, a tone - and not hard to distinguish. OTOH when cinnamon is added it can become so dominant that it gives another impression indeed, in this case an aromatic and sense of perfume.

[Hassouni]

Why is Ferrand doing this? Their cognac is actually quite good, they even make a a special version aimed at the vintage cocktail crowd, the Ferrand "1840" release, which is higher proof and more bold tasting - a welcome change from the 40% saccharine nonsense that most cognac is.




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Capn's Log: Thanks for this, and a good question. Most rum producers don't use French oak due to the amazing difference in cost from used American, while Ferrand no doubt has some very used French barrels available. Perhaps rum is just an easy sideline for a spirit they don't even have to distill - just buy some bulk, give it a quick dip in old French oak for its marketing cachet and you have an apparently saleable proposition.

I hate to say it but creating a "new" rum product is way too easy. Ask the Preacher. All you need is some bulk rum and a good story.

[alice]

All the Caroni indy-bottlers have bottled recently is coming from the same source more or less, and none have been bad. Price is good, considering this is a dead distillery never to produce again.