Real McCoy 10 year rum. The Real McCoy is one of my favorite rum lines on the market and one I will easily recommend to anyone looking to venture into quality rum. All of their products are produced by the Barbados Foursquare Distillery, one of the most respected producers in the rum world.

What uniquely distinguishes this bottle is that it partially contains rum aged in virgin (aka new) oak casks, whereas the majority of aged rums are aged purely in casks previously used for bourbon (even when a rum doesn’t mention the barrel type used). One of the requirements for bourbon whiskey is that it must use *new* barrels, so once it’s been used for one batch, it can’t be reused for another. You end up with a lot of once-used barrels that still have life in em, so they’re often shipped off to Scotland for aging scotch whisky, and a lot also end up in the Caribbeans for rums.

So what does “virgin oak” taste like? It actually tastes a lot more similar to bourbon than bourbon-barrel aged rums (ironically enough). The chemical properties of charred oak wood naturally produce flavors of vanilla and caramel, which end up very prominent in bourbons as the fresh new barrels have maximum “wood flavor.” Hence, a lot of what we actually think of as “bourbon” is actually the flavor of charred oak. When the same type of barrel is used for rum, guess what, you end up with a very “bourbon-like” (aka charred oak-like) rum.

If you are a whiskey drinker looking to venture into the rum world, keep an eye out for this bottle. If you’re in California, you can still find this limited edition bottle at K&L.