Savanna Le Must is a blend of traditional molasses rums with great aromas, produced and aged on Reunion Island. The Savanna distillery has been located on the shores of the Indian Ocean, north of the commune of Saint-Paul, since 1992.
The rum is distilled in stills and aged for up to 9 years in French oak barrels. This is a "small batch": a few barrels are then selected by master blender Thierry Grondin to make each cuvée.
Nico's tasting notes
On the nose, the first impression is of a small fruit salad in syrup. At first, pear, mango and cherry are quite fresh and pale, protecting themselves in the shade of a small film of crunchy sugar.
With aeration, the lightness and freshness are retained, but the fruit is enveloped in a toasty woodiness, itself covered by a thin layer of sweet-spiced honey. This light patina tempers the toasty character of the oak, preserving the delicacy of the fruit.
The mouth is more complex than we could have imagined, and shows several facets in fractions of a second. Let's try slow motion to see what happens. First, the toasty woodiness sends up a small cloud of sweet spices, which come to rest on a bed of roasted, caramelized pecans. Then, the fruit salad encountered on the nose is baked, the fruit becomes stronger, more tropical, more caramelized, its pits resurfacing.
The finish is both roasted and pastry-like, with pits and red fruit tannins, followed by a layer of ripe exotic fruit that maintains the length.
"Tasting this rum helps us understand its baptismal name, so many different facets of Savanna are represented...".
