Mount Gay's Newest Rum is a Study in French Oak

Each year, Barbados-based rum distillery Mount Gay releases a new expression in its Master Blender Collection. These rums are usually intended to show off some experimental process that deviates from the distillery’s style, often featuring some production method like Coffey still distillation or interesting cask finishes like Andean oak, madeira, or PX. But for this year’s batch, Mount Gay did something different by spotlighting cognac casks—a key ingredient used in its other rums, but one that has never before been able to shine on its own.

Bridging the Gap

For master blender Trudiann Branker, this expression has been a long time coming. When she became master blender in 2019 following the departure of longtime blender Allen Smith, one of Branker’s first tasks was to rework the recipe for Mount Gay’s classic XO expression. She adjusted a few things, including adding some older liquid to the blend, but the most widely noted change was the inclusion of cognac casks alongside the traditional bourbon and American whiskey barrels. It was a somewhat controversial move at the time, with rum devotees preferring the original blend over the rechristened XO Triple Cask, but Branker stood by the decision.

The reformulated XO blend gave Branker the idea to showcase cognac casks on their own, and that concept materialized as Master Blender Collection No. 8. The newcomer was aged for 4 years in Limousin French oak casks that previously held Rémy Martin cognac. (Both brands are owned by French multinational Rémy Cointreau.) Mount Gay distills both column and pot still rums, and likes to blend the two for some of its aged releases. But No. 8 is composed entirely of column-distilled rums, specifically selected by Branker for their generally fruitier profile.

Batch No. 8 is the largest release yet from Mount Gay’s Master Blender Collection, yielding 6,276 bottles. The rum is currently available at select retailers worldwide, with a suggested retail price of $210.

Tasting Notes: French Oak Shines Through

No. 8 smells fairly sweet at first, starting with vanilla and rancio which is reminiscent of a well-aged brandy. Over time, pleasant aromas of orange peel, cinnamon, oaky spice, and chocolate chips take over. The palate is generally sweet but spicy, full of brown sugar, dried fruits, caramel, and rum raisin ice cream; all undercut by pronounced oaky spice and tannins. Overripe bananas, dark chocolate, raisins, and vanilla make an appearance on the finish that gradually veers into the spicier end of the pool with cinnamon powder, nutmeg, and wood spice.

One might expect a cognac cask-aged rum to be dominated by funky fruit flavors, but that isn’t the case here. No. 8 is surprisingly oaky and spicy, drawing in flavors from the wood itself rather than the cognac. That can sometimes happen with cognac casks—most of which are constructed from the generally spicy and tannic Limousin French oak—but in this case, a big part of it comes down to the condition of the casks Mount Gay used for this expression. Branker notes that when the cognac casks arrived in Barbados from France, they were fairly dry without much cognac left inside. That might seem like a trivial detail, but it made a world of difference in the rum’s flavor profile.

When focusing on a particular spirit or wine barrels, most distillers prefer to work with freshly dumped “wet” casks, which are often unrinsed and sometimes have a decent amount of leftover liquid inside. The idea is that more of the original contents’ flavors will be trapped in the barrel, making it more likely for them to be imparted onto the new liquid as it ages. Drier casks tend to work in the opposite way, pushing the barrel’s wood into the spotlight while allowing the prior contents to play more of a background role. Based on the French oak-forward profile and accompanying rancio flavors we found while tasting it, that’s exactly what happened with this release.