Gosling’s Black Seal Rum Review And Tasting Notes
Gosling’s Black Seal Rum is the rum with which Dark and Stormy should be made, the legendary cocktail based on rum and ginger beer. Yes, of course, nobody forces you: you can use any dark rum, but know that the Gosling family, which still produces this rum after 200 years, owns the rights to the cocktail.
We told you this because Gosling’s Black Seal Rum should never be drunk straight. It is not made to be a meditation rum: it is too flamboyant, spicy, sweet, but to be mixed with ginger beer.
In this way, all its explosive sweetness is cut across by the sharp ginger’s flavor, which manages to give balance and aromatic credibility.
The Gosling’s Black Seal Rum is excellent for making cocktails, that’s all. The dark and stormy is really good. It is an intense and tempestuous symphony. And if you use it to make cocktails with chocolate, dried fruit, coconut cream, and tropical fruit, it’s delicious. But neat is not delicious at all: it’s barely potable. And the very fact that it tastes so baroque is proof that it was not meant to be drunk alone in the dark.
Gosling’s Black Seal Rum was born in Bermuda from an assembly of 3 different rums, and it is always the same. Year after year.
It is pumped out of proportion, and the spiciness reaches levels of unspeakable heaviness.
The bouquet
Intense nose with dried fruit, oranges, cherries in alcohol, and endless chocolate. The spices are all there: cinnamon, nutmeg, anise, and then tones of raisins and others more oxidized than almonds and sherry. Then the sweet notes of toffee, caramel, vanilla, cream, and saffron. It is full and intense, marked by the wood, which struggles to find a harmonious development, it lacks a side to lean on and an opposite to refer to. Redundant.
The taste
It is warm and rude in the mouth: it is a pirate rum, vanilla from fear, with spicy tones and flavors reminiscent of wood and cinnamon. Not very balanced, but structured and very persistent. Peppery finish.
Cost of Gosling’s Black Seal Rum
27-30 euros. A little expensive, to tell the truth, for a monotonous and not very agile rum, which you could use for many cocktails, but which also risks being left on the shelf to collect dust.
What cocktails to make with Gosling’s Black Seal Rum
Dark’n Stormy, Scorpion, Planter’s Punch.
Food Pairings
Tiramisù, chocolate salami, creme brulee, aged cheese, Gorgonzola, aged Cheddar.