Damoiseau Vintage 2009 42° version

2009 was a sunny year, resulting in a sugar-rich cane harvest.

This rum is first aged for a minimum of 7 years in 220-liter ex-bourbon American oak barrels, before being bottled after a reduction to 42°.

Nico's tasting notes

The nose opens with a very roasted agricultural rum, with extreme toasted oak that sends out smoky notes. Beneath the ashes, ripe, cooked oranges. Their peel is candied in sugar and cane juice, with a few sweet spices macerated in it.

In the end, Damoiseau's Guadeloupean delicacy shines through, with candied fruit and blond tobacco. But it's the roasted flavors that we've chosen to emphasize in this vintage, with the roasted walnuts and hazelnuts redoubling their power.

On the palate, the attack is spicy but also very greedy. It embroiders a generous, rounded woodiness, as if enveloped in vanilla and full-bodied blond tobacco. This bourbon cask character brings us closer to traditional English rums, but the heart is very much agricultural. The fruit juices and pepper take us back to the butterfly island. Decidedly, this wood is much more tender than it appeared on the nose, and the toasting finally gave us access to its innards.

The finish returns to the greediness of the wood, with vanilla, tobacco and sweet spices.

"A well-roasted farmhouse that melts the wood on the palate..."