Habitation Velier Renegade 2020 Pure Single Rum

Habitation Velier Renegade 2020 Pure Single Rum is part of the highly anticipated release from VELIER. In 2016 VELIER launched the Habitation Velier range, being the world’s only range of Pure Single Rums acting as a reference point to the type of rum produced by each distillery’s unique pot still.

The term ‘Pure Single Rum’ defines a rum from a single distillery, distilled exclusively in pot stills. Pot still rums are more complex and typically more suitable to long ageing. The vintage Pure Single Rums are entirely aged in the tropics, ensuring a natural, accelerated aging compared to European ageing, at the expense of higher angels share.

Given the great friendship between Mark Reynier, the man behind Renegade Rum, and Velier’s chief Luca Gargano, Mark had mentioned that it was Luca who first recognised Renegade as a full fledged rum distillery, the newest and largest in the Caribbeans in over a decade. And thus he had wanted Velier to have the honour of being the first ever to independently bottle (or co-bottle which is Velier’s preferred lingo) Renegade’s rums.

To call this memorable would be a huge understatement – this was not only distinctive, it was incredibly powerful! There’s all this fascinating complexity in what can only be described as an umami-bomb, this is a real bouillon cube of a rum, and on top of that it does this little magic trick of contrasting a great thicker texture with those multi-dimensional sweet, umami and savoury notes. 

At every leg of the tasting, I found myself delightfully greeted with (positive) surprises, each adding more nuance and complexity, with the utmost intensity that you wouldn’t believe can still remain cohesive. It’s a wonder how this stays so balanced and also friendly and approachable on the palate.

What a stellar, stellar expression! This is one that is going to be remembered for a long time!

Tasting Notes

Nose: Super savoury and umami! Lots of black olives, well-aged parmesan, more earthy baked mozzarella and mushroom duxelle – incredibly intense. There’s also alittle bit of sweat, that animalic farmhouse quality.

Taste: Ooh this is surprisingly mellow – the savouriness and umami flavours are still present and accounted for, but here it’s alittle more tannic, but it still throws us some spiced honey alongside the olives, baked cheese and mushrooms. Little bit of dark chocolate. The tannins tense up more to give it quite a fair bit of dryness into the finish.

Finish: Yet another twist! Here it’s more of a herbal jelly, rather grassy and of herbal dried roots, spiced honey and then it’s back to the oaky tannic dryness.