Papas Pilar Dark 24-Year

Not bad but I can’t taste the maple taste everyone is talking about

Whoever would have said "Delicious" and "leathery" in the same sentence? This rum is a beautiful deep colour, red, and inviting. In the glass it immediately smells of burnt caramel, and leathery. In a way that is hard to describe. There's some maple in there. More sugar. A bit of oak. Maybe maple syrup. Smooth taste, that lingers at the end. A bit of hit on the back of the tongue, letting you know the alcohol is there. Very complex. Old tasting, but not necessarily "aged". Like it came from a bottle that had been in a saddlebag. Maybe a pony keg. Not dusty though. Very exciting, this is a great tasting rum. I need to have another taste!

A very sweet rum, but a natural sweetness (think maple syrup, molasses, etc). This makes it super easy to sip and enjoy!

starts sweet Blends a lot of flavors. As a side note the Hemingway Family donates the proceeds from the name to charity.

I'm usually a sucker for solera aging, and buying this one was a good choice. My gosh, is the aroma rich! This is a pleaser for those that like their rums sweet (I would put it in the class of "dark" rums, like Gosling's or Blackwell), with plenty of complexity from oak aging (I get caramel, maple, sherry, oak, various fruits). The bottle is really nice too. I tend to prefer drier styles of rum, but this is great every once in a while, and the bottle looks amazing on the shelf. Recommended.

Disons qu'il n'est pas dans mes goûts. La bouteille est super belle. A pars ça, bof.

It's no secret that there is a maple syrup and vanilla explosion when you open this bottle. With a dram 3 feet away in a Glencairn, I can still smell it. No doubt this aroma and flavor profile appeals to many people but it is a bit overly sweetened for me. I also get a smell and taste from this that is almost identical to a medicine I had to take as a child. I had completely forgotten about that medicine for almost 30 years until I tried this rum. That is most likely the reason I find it so unappealing. I will keep this to pour out for friends who like sweeter drinks. I'm sure it will be favorable to most of them, but I just can't drink this one. It is of good quality so I can't rate it too harshly and I will revisit Papa's Pilar again in the future to see if I can get past those flavor memories.

Purists probably won't give 9 out of 10, it's just that this one brings back some beautiful memories. Not memories of rum, but of mocha flavored ice cream. Yes, this rum truly makes me happy...

This rum is good neat or on the rocks. Start to finish it has great flavor. A contrast to other dark rums in the same price range. Worth a try.

After exhaustive research on this site to find another one for my rum collection, this one barely appeared like one that may appeal to me. Everyone who helped in my decisions got votes of approval here, which includes the most popular rums from Panama, Colombia, Martinique, Haiti, and Trinidad. Now with my self imposed $50 per bottle limit, I doled out $38 for this one, well knowing that it was a risky buy for me. Being the most popular rum based in the USA also helped, especially since it is from Key West.

I gather that the goal of the folks at Papa's Pilar was to mimic the very successful model of Plantation Rums by combining rums from all over the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and other places, and then age them one final time elsewhere. Plantation Rums are generally harmonious. This Papa's Pilar Dark is a total clash of complex flavors as stated on the side of this bottle. As others have already stated, it starts off smelling and tasting like maple (or Crown Royal Maple, God forbid!) The bad aftertaste is due to aging in oloroso sherry casks. Of course Papa would be proud of it because he drank like there was no tomorrow and did not have a discerning palate. One day, he would have called it rum the way that it was meant to be and the next day he would have tossed it overboard and called it swill (or worse). To make a long story short, it was an arduous task drowning out the awful flavors over several days with Pepsi sweetened from pure cane sugar.

It is a very nice bottle modeled after the World War II USA Army canteen, even complete with the chain to keep from losing the cap. I had a few of those aluminum canteens as a kid growing up. But the best part of the bottle is the rooster on the neck to remind me of the protected Key West native. Similar to Kauai, these birds crow 24 hours a day for the inconvenience of tourists who have the nerve to complain about them. And no, I did not buy this rum for the bottle. It is a very unique rum, but it is not for me. However, once the bottle was finally emptied, it makes one of the best bottles due to it's low height and wide mouth for storing pre-mixed complex drinks like Zombie Punch or Planters Punch in the fridge or ice chest. Just juices, rums and flavorings with no carbonation.

With the distillery having been opened fairly recently in Key West, hopefully some new and better rums will be released in the future. They just need to not try so hard as they did here. It backfired for me, but has been a huge success for many others who view this as one step above Bacardi.