Malibu Caribbean Rum Review And Tasting Notes

Malibu is a coconut-flavored rum, a sweet and velvety product suitable for making quick and straightforward cocktails. It is a kind of premix for those who have no time to waste searching for high-quality products or prefer to make drinks on the fly, adding juice, soda, or ice.

Organoleptic Characteristics Of Malibu Rum

The bouquet is very alcoholic, closed, not very broad, and remarkably bland. You hear the coconut and a distant tropical call.

It is very sweet, cloying on the palate, dominated by a fake coconut flavor that seems like a bounty melted in the dashboard of a rented car used for a robbery in North Dakota. It moves thick in the mouth, syrupy, and there is little room for rum’s charm.

There is nothing wrong with using Malibu. We do not want to be snobbish. For unpretentious home use, no one is indignant, but the scandal is that Pernod Ricard has called it flavored rum when it is clearly a liqueur.

There are fabulous flavored rums, such as Plantation Stiggins’ Fancy Pineapple Rum, but it is made with a fine rum blend in which real pineapples are macerated; on the contrary, this Malibu is a simple solution of rum, sugar water, and coconut. And honestly, calling it rum does not do justice to the category of these noble spirits. Of course, the Plantation Stiggins’ Fancy Pineapple Rum costs 44-46 euros, compared to 13.50 for the Malibu, the cost is on another planet, but then a few questions about the quality of this Malibu we should do it.

If they had called it rum and coconut liqueur they would have made their communication to consumers very clear, who at least in this way would know what they are buying.

But why is it ridiculous to define Malibu as a rum? First, its shallow alcohol content of 21 degrees is typical of liqueurs and not rums. The problem is not the flavoring, which is not a bad idea: the problem is the alcohol content, or we should say absence.

If you buy a gentian-flavored grappa and a liqueur at 21 degrees is given to you, how would you react?

Why does Drambuie have 40 degrees and is a whiskey-based liqueur, even though it has an honest alcohol content and hasn’t been watered down?

Is there a law that establishes the minimum strength of a flavored rum or that protects consumers?

Obviously not. Each producing country has different laws and traditions, so we have to rely only on our palate and eyes to read the labels well.

Malibu ingredients

And since we’re talking about labels, let’s read it and see what the ingredients are: rum, water, coconut extract, and sugar.

Cocktail to do with Malibu Rum

Aside from all this tirade, what is Malibu for? Can you at least make the Pina Colada with this coconut-flavored rum?

Yes, but its fake, stylized, and not very dynamic flavor is not the best. Indeed it is not suitable: quite the opposite of what it takes to make a good Pina Colada, which should be creamy, velvety, but never too sweet and syrupy. Malibu is sweet, while a light, aromatic and slender Cuban white rum would serve. This is a distillate of unique heaviness.

If you want to use Malibu rum, consider it a sweet liqueur like triple sec, so don’t add sugar or syrup, and remember to balance your drink with a good dose of lime to cut the glucose.

How to serve Malibu

We have been strict with the marketing policy of this rum, but we do not despise it regardless, and its place for home use is always found. Serve it with ice and 3 cl of pineapple juice and 1 lime, and you will make an easy and quick aperitif. But above all, with the Malibu, the Pina Colada-flavored popsicles are very good, less alcoholic and more velvety.

Price

13.50 for the 0.70 bottle. It’s cheap, at least that’s the only positive note.