Barikenn Madeira single cask 2016 53.4°

Barikenn Madeira single cask 2016 is a pure cane juice rum produced on the volcanic island of Madeira, Portugal.

Distilled in spring 2016 in a small, century-old copper column at the Engenho Novo distillery, this rum was then aged for 6 years on site in Port casks. Independent Breton bottler Barikenn carried out the bottling by hand in March 2022.

This is a unique cask that has issued a total of 284 numbered copies worldwide.

Nico's tasting notes

The nose is very concentrated and typical of a port cask (one might also think of a Madeira cask), with roasted but melted tannins, very dark, chocolatey and cereal-like. A slight hint of sulfur hovers over all this, but it's caught in a grenadine syrup that gradually bewitches the rum.

Aeration really reveals the rum's fat, mellow side, with tannins that evoke the thick fiber of a well-buttered, braided brioche. The cane juice is reduced to a gently vegetal syrup, particularly gourmand.

The palate is mellow and honeyed, as you'd expect, perhaps even a little more so. The toasted tannins deliver a cocoa that's utterly delicious, mellow like a malted cereal, and melted into a vanilla cream. The just-peppered cane juice is just as round, and above all very tasty, as if impregnated with candied mint.

The finish is long and delicious, like a tender lump of cane sugar still laden with molasses.

"A candy cane supported by generous wood, very typical of Madeira Island...".