Old Man Guavaberry Republic 5-Year

Zo'n aparte smaak. Erg lekker uit onze gemeente Sint Maarten. Aanrader.

Been a long time since I've tried, but I remember vanilla and sippability. A step up from the bottom shelf Bacardi mixers that I had first been exposed to as rhum. Wish I could get it in Texas.

Weird because should be a sugar cane base but taste like molasses
Very sweet and easy taste straight

Rhum correct qui sort de l'ordinaire, pas commun aux autres rhums

A few months ago, I saw this new arrival appear on the bottom shelf of several fine liquor stores. Subtle hints like this are made to warn their best customers. Like a fool, I bought it because I love guava and the nice old gentleman on the label reminded me of the very nice folks in St. Maarten when I visited the Dutch side almost 30 years ago.

When I brought this puppy home, it tasted nothing at all like guava, but just a lot of nastiness. I later found out from their website that the pungent guavaberry has absolutely nothing to do with the lovable guava. These are small berries that grow very slowly on trees up in the hills and it takes a LOT of berries just to make one bottle. These berries are more related to eucalyptus and cloves, which is a far cry from guava. This island has the most of any of these tropical trees and there is even one tree in a Florida State Park (my guess would be Bahia Honda). As for their rum that is added to this berry juice, I have no idea where it came from and sugar cane is very hard to grow on the very arid St. Maarten. Just like the coral island of Grand Cayman, their rum has to come from somewhere else.

It took me several weeks to finally finish off this nasty bottle and swear to never buy another one. And each time I drank it, it did a number on my system the next day. It will clean you out of more than your money!

This is a nice rum which has a nice orange flavor, similar to Pyrat. Enjoyable neat or mixed. The nice price tag for the 5 year is a nice selling point whereas I have seen other rums aged less that cost a lot more.
This is not one of the more popular rums and very few stores carry it down here in Florida. Total Wine and ABC carry either their the Guavaberry liquor or the 5 but not both and I haven’t seen the 8 year since being in the Caribbean last year.

Tried out the Old Man Guavaberry 5 year in St Maartin and this is not an aged rum, it is an sugar overload syrup masked as a rum for the tourists. There is zero flavors left from a traditional aged rum. Buy this bottle at your own peril! No real difference between the 5 and the 8 year old other than price.

Pretty good. Sweet, a little astringent, would drink again.

This dude has a bitter stringent taste. It's more like a tonic from the Wild West than a rum. Very burney. Not useful for anything.