Abuelo XV Tawny port Cask finish 40 %

Abuelo XV Tawny port

Scent: Here, the Tawny port is clear in the scent, along with vanilla and orange notes.
Taste: The port wine has given a spicy taste that mixes with classic Abuelo notes with tobacco, orange, vanilla and leather in a deliciously harmonious rum.
Aftertaste: Long creamy aftertaste, where the port wine and the rum alternate in waves.

Abuelo XV Tawny port rum is made by Varela Hermanos in Panama. Their history stretches back to 1908. Where Don José Varela Blanco, a young Spanish immigrant, set up the San Isidro sugar mill in the town of Pesé. The first sugar mill in the then newly created Republic of Panama.

Abuelo XV Tawny is one of 3 bottlings in the new XV Finish Collection. All 3 rums are 15 years old and have been aged (finish) in a cask that has previously been used to store other spirits.

The 3 rooms:

The name of the 3 rums not only reflects the character of the cask, but also the place that inspired the rum: Napoleon is Cognac from France, Oloroso is Sherry from Spain and Tawny is Port wine from Portugal.

The city of Pesé, itself founded in the mid-eighteenth century, is located in a fertile valley in central Panama. The main industry in this valley is now the cultivation of sugarcane, which employs many local farmers.

The moderate rainfall, the cold nights and humid days all play a role in the development and maturation of the rum. The greater the difference in temperature on the very hot days and the cold nights, the faster the rum matures and the more flavors and fragrances are developed. So the Abuelo rum factory is not located in this "butter hole" by chance.

The company:

Almost 10 years ago, Abuelo, via their owner Varela Hermanos, decided to expand and thereby become more dominant in the rum world. They started by buying Bacardi's distribution network in Panama and their bottling facility. They were already well acquainted with Bacardi, as they had supplied both raw and aged rum to Bacardi for many years. The new sales channels meant that sales multiplied from 3,000 to 500,000 cases of rum per year.

Such a massive increase in sales often causes concern in the space world, because how can production keep up in a quality-wise manner. This has been temporarily successful by having good reserves of rum in stock at the start. At the same time as expanding production and storage, so that we have been able to keep up with the demand for well-stocked rum.

A large part of the growth in Panama has been on white rum. Here, the emphasis has been on getting the stills to produce quality rum in slightly larger quantities, as it is only stored for a short time.

Despite the growth, Abuelo has maintained that their fields are harvested by hand. They employ over 500 local farmers harvesting sugar cane. There is also enough to look out for when there are a full 8 km2 densely planted with sugar cane. They thus grow their own sugarcane on their own fields. They distill the rum in their own column boilers and store the rum in their own warehouses. It is thus really a "Single estate rum".

The factory was founded in 1936 with the help of Cuban specialists, so the method comes from professional people with deep roots in serious rum production. They make 2 types of rum in their stills.