To Infinity (Bottle) and Beyond!

While most articles here focus on the technical or business side of rum, I occasionally have thoughts about more “everyday” topics. Lately, infinity bottles and related topics have been on my mind.

Creating an infinity bottle is simply the outcome of blending several nearly empty bottles of a particular spirit, e.g., rum. Generally speaking, the best results come from combining spirits with a similar flavor profile; bourbon is particularly noted as such a spirit.

The infinity nomenclature refers to occasionally topping up the bottle over time with more nearly empty bottles. In essence, an infinity bottle is akin to a single-bottle solera without the aging component.

Why would anyone do this? There are at least two primary reasons:

• The more air in a bottle, the faster the remaining spirit oxidizes and changes flavor. Rather than rushing to finish up nearly empty bottles, marrying them together alleviates the issue and gives you something new to experience.

• People with extensive liquor collections frequently run out of space for the hundreds or thousands of bottles on their shelves. Combining bottles frees up valuable shelf space—which undoubtedly will soon fill up with more bottles! Admittedly, this is a first-world problem for myself and many others.

Please let me join my friends!

This isn’t to say that anyone should frantically combine the last few drops of particularly precious bottles. But, if you have more than a handful of “everyday” bottles taking up substantial space, intelligently combining them often makes sense.

Once everything is combined, the resulting liquid will slowly adjust to a new chemical equilibrium. The result will taste different in six months than immediately upon combining the components.

It’s hard to mess up the creation of an infinity bottle when intermingling spirits with tightly defined flavor profiles like cognac and bourbon. But rum’s enormously broad flavor palette means that some forethought is prudent. For example, you might give careful thought to combining a light Spanish heritage rum in the same bottle alongside a high-ester Jamaican, unaged rum agricole, and a Caroni. The resulting mishmash of flavors may not be to your liking.

Infinity Bottles in Practice

While some infinity aficionados have a single, carefully nurtured and documented bottle, I typically have three or so bottles in rotation at any given moment. Each bottle represents a particular rum style I currently have in abundance. For instance, I sometimes judge rum competitions where small sample bottles are shipped to me. Afterward, I have dozens of samples with an ounce or so remaining and (usually) no idea what any sample is. Thankfully, the sample bottles broadly indicate the rum style, e.g., “molasses rum, 8-12 years, sweetened” or “unaged cane juice rum.” That’s a no-brainer infinity bottle to make!

While it’s interesting to taste an infinity blend by itself, I typically use my infinity bottles to make large batches of cocktails with other strongly flavored ingredients besides rum. For instance, when making a pair of daiquiris for Mrs. Wonk and myself, I might ponder whether to use Havana Club 3 or Diplomatico Planas. But If I’m whipping up eight daiquiris for a large gathering, I reach for my “light rum” infinity bottle.

A well-focused infinity bottle like “AOC rhum agricole aged for 3-5 years” can serve as a benchmark for that style’s baseline expected flavor. A side-by-side tasting of the infinity bottle and a specific expression of the same style can help make the particular flavor markers of the single expression stand out.

Before adding anything to an infinity bottle, I ask myself if it might stick out like a sore thumb alongside the existing rums. If so, I don’t add it. Taste the infinity bottle and potential addition side-by-side, and if they’re wildly different, perhaps don’t do it.

Some styles of rum, Spanish heritage, in particular, have added sweeteners. While this matters immensely to some, I don’t worry because my blends include plenty of dry rums. The resulting rum will likely end up in a cocktail where the slight amount of additional sweetness won’t significantly impact things. If hitting an exact flavor profile is critical, I’m not reaching for an infinity bottle.

I also don’t worry too much about the alcoholic strength of the rums I combine. Two ounces of 65% ABV rum won’t materially change the strength of 40 ounces of rum at 45% ABV. If I deeply cared, I’d get an inexpensive hydrometer to measure the strength.

Suggested Starter Infinity Bottles

My preferred infinity bottle form factor is square-sided 1.75-liter bottles like those used by Flor de Caña and Bombay Sapphire. Stored side-by-side, they can store a lot of rum in a small footprint—important if your bar space is cramped.

Here’s some ideas to get you started on your own bottle(s).

Lightly aged and filtered rums, i.e., “aged white rum.” Examples:

• Bacardi Superior

• Angostura White Oak

• Don Q Cristal

• Havana Club 3

• Flor de Caña 4 Extra Seco

Multi-region “white” blends. Examples:

• Plantation 3 Stars

• Denizen White

• Hamilton White Stache

• Probitas

• Banks 5 Island,

Moderately aged, middle-of-the-road molasses-based rums. Generally, I keep strongly flavored Jamaican rums out of these blends, but you may feel differently. Examples:

• Bacardi Anejo Cuatro

• Mount Gay Eclipse

• Havana Club Anejo Especial

• Angostura 5

• Bounty Dark

• Don Q 7

Unaged cane juice rum. Depending on your goals, you might limit what you add to French rums from Martinique and Guadeloupe. However, going further afield could yield delightful results. Examples:

• Rhum J.M Blanc

• Saint-James Blanc

• Copalli White

• Oxbow Rhum Louisiane unaged

• Renegade “pre-cask” series.

Aged cane juice rum. Same ideas as immediately above, but with the brand’s corresponding aged expressions.

The bottles above are just starter ideas to get you underway. Also, the rums listed are examples of what you might include rather than a specific recipe. If you come up with an interesting infinity blend style of your own devising, please post in the comments!

Next time, we’ll look at something extremely rare: infinity casks.