Clairin 2018 Sonson

Distilled: 2018
Raw material: cane syrup
Wild fermentation
100% pot still
53,2% abv
Village: Cabaret
Distiller: Stephan Kalil Saoud

Nose: Super strong nose as all clairins, white and green pepper, fermented peaches, tannic and acidic red wine notes, sweet and spicy bbq smoke and brine, some lightly caramelly toastiness too.
Palate: Very peppery sweetness with acidity and loads and loads of spicy bbq smoke, olives, slightly astringent tangy red wine notes and grass. Hint of floury red apple in taste and mouthfeel.
Finish: turns into ashy smoke and oiliness.
This clairin is in my opinion clearly the smokiest of them all with the smoke profile evolving from sweet spicy bbq smoke to campfire and then to ash.
This is more pungent and bit narrower in flavour profile than say Casimir but we'll worth trying out, still super interesting and distinctive from the rest of the clairins. Thank you for the Velier team and everyone who brought this wonderful rum to the market.

Wild and grassy like a supercharged agricole. Makes a fantastic Ti’ Punch. Can’t stop drinking it now I have finally got hold of a bottle.

If you love funk, you can’t go wrong with this. Overripe sugarcane, or the flavor you get when you actually bite one.

Quite hot and peppery... A little water or ice, which I don't usually use with clairin, opens it up a bit. Still not my favorite clairin, but the high-octane funk and sweetness make it an interesting first clairin for people new to the spirit, maybe?

mango, sugar cane, pepper, grapes and caramel in aroma, madeira cask, heatness and dry smoke in the body, pleasant burning in the tail.

This is the first clairin that I could enjoy a dram neat, and it really shows up the difference a pot still does for depth and complexity of flavour.
Smell is briny, sour, perhaps almost vinegar or sweetly decomposed. I know that sounds terrible but it's more intriguing than offputting, though it wouldn't really say it was inviting!

Taste is on a different planet to an agricole blanc. It's fruitier on the palate than on the nose, and all those sour or decomposing notes are subsumed into something rich, evolving, complex and incredibly distinctive but really hard to describe. It's sweeter than the Communal and more balanced and approachable than the Sajous. It has far less burnt tyre, and lacks the full on crazy of le Rocher, and instead it's an amalgam of sweet and sour, fruit and grass, infinite layers and huge finish. Somehow, it integrates it all, and makes it fascinating and richly enjoyable.

Makes a fantastic Hurricane and a very intriguing Dark 'n' Stormy, and a great dram by itself now an again. Glad I bought it; it's not like anything else on the shelf, and another reminder that I will always want to have a least one clairin to hand, for nothing comes close to pure pot still unaged rustic juice for flavour, not even Rum Fire!

Never fails to make me smile, and therefore it's got to be that very rare thing, a 9

VINTAGE:2018
COUNTRY:Haiti
TYPE:Sugar Cane Juice(Madame Meuze)
COLOURING:No
NO ADDED SUGAR OR FLAVOURINGS:Yes

Nose: pepper, tonic, mango, orange, sugar cane, rubber
Palate: dry, peppery sweetness, red wine notes, grass, mineral
Finish: long and pleasant, spicy, ash, pleasingly sweet

Aroma is wild agricole style. Taste is nicely ballamced and comolex - grass, lemon, wood and a hit of fruital sweetness. Aftertaste is pleasant and long. Agricole rum lowers can easy add one point 😉