Back Shelf Treasures: Golden Devil Dark Overproof Rum

One of the things I told K&L I wanted to write about was some of their stuff that I love but that seems to fly under the radar. In a world where everyone seems to be angling for hard to get items, there is a surprising amount of great booze that's there for the taking.

One of my favorite things to drink lately is the Golden Devil Dark Overproof Rum. When this came out last year, they underplayed it as a tiki drink ingredient and put it at the bottom of their list of new rums. At the time, I grabbed one almost as an afterthought, then I got home and was pretty damn surprised when I tasted it. Maybe it is good in tiki drinks; I don't know – I just drink it neat.

Golden Devil Dark Overproof Rum, 57% abv ($19.99)

This is a blend of rums from Jamaica and Guyana. The Guyana rum is obviously from DDL since it's the only distillery there, but the company won't disclose the Jamaican.

The funky Jamaican rum is apparent on the nose which also has brown sugar and Valencia oranges. The palate has a light funk with sweet vanilla and burnt sugar – a nice balance between Guyanese and Jamaican styles. On the finish it has a nice tangy note – maybe lemon rind, along with some underlying sweetness. This stuff doesn't have the aggressive funk of a Hampden, but it's got great balance and feeds both my cravings for funky and sweeter rums. It's great stuff, and at $20 (cheaper than frickin' Bulleit), this stuff is a no-brainer for me.

- Sku

From the Author...

Hello K&L Spirits Journal readers. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Sku. I used to be a whiskey blogger, but I retired. Well, it turns out that the blogger retirement benefits are much less generous than I had been led to believe, so when the good people of K&L asked if they could pay me for something I did for free for ten years, I sold out faster than a bottle of Kentucky Owl (and with just as much integrity).

In all seriousness though, K&L has long been my go-to liquor store, and I'm thrilled to be able to write for them. I've been a customer since they opened the Hollywood store which is an unhealthily short drive from my house, and I've long counted a number of the staff as friends.

Of course, my writing here will be different from my old blog. I'm a guest here, and while I have no intention of going full Driscoll (I don't know any famous people and have really uncool taste in music), this is a liquor store blog, and what I write about will reflect that to some extent (sorry, no dim sum reviews). That being said, the folks who gave me this gig didn't tell me what they wanted me to write about, so my intention is to write about what I want to in a way that I hope will be interesting to the K&L readership, and they can publish it or not.

So let's give this a try and see how it goes.