To Infinity (Cask) and Beyond!
In a previous newsletter, I covered infinity bottles. In brief, they result from combining several nearly empty rum bottles into a single “infinity” bottle, then occasionally topping it up yet more rums. If done well, the result may be a sublime amalgamation of the component rums. At worst, you can probably make a decent rum punch with it.
Now, imagine the above on a larger scale. Rather than a consumer, you’re a rum merchant who buys, blends, and sells rums. It’s inevitable that between distillery samples and fulfilling orders, you’ll acquire an ever-growing collection of small containers with a few liters of rum. It seems like a first-world problem, but those containers take up space! And, if your core business is selling much larger quantities of rum, selling hundreds of small scraps might not be worth the time. If only there were some way to sell them all in one fell swoop…
Enter the Infinity Cask
The seaside city of Liverpool, England, is home to The Main Rum Company, which, In all likelihood, holds the world’s largest collection of bespoke, long-aged rums from multiple origins. Rather than bottling and selling them under their own brand, Main Rum sells casks to independent rum bottlers. Just about every independent bottler, big or small, has purchased casks from Main Rum at one time or another. Visiting Main Rum’s Liverpool warehouse is one of the rum world’s “golden tickets.”
My second visit to Main Rum was in mid-2023, and I wrote about the experience in an earlier newsletter: Inside A Rum Wonderland - Liverpool’s Main Rum Company. In the article, I mentioned tasting some spectacular rums with operations manager Ian Hoyles. What I didn’t say was that the rum remaining in my tasting glass after each sample didn’t go to waste. Instead, whatever remained was added to a small sample bottle. Thankfully, I had the forethought to record everything that went in! It’s the ultimate one-of-a-kind infinity bottle, and it resides next to my keyboard.
Also unmentioned in my Main Rum report was my conversation with Ian about a secret project that would come to fruition the following year. In 2003, the Main Rum team combined pre-shipment samples from thirteen distilleries and seven countries into a single cask and left it to slumber alongside Main Rum’s other stocks for twenty years.
I wouldn’t have thought to ask Ian about the project had I not been tipped off by Eric Kaye of Holmes Cay. He’d purchased the cask and asked me if I’d help write a small booklet to accompany it. Naturally, I immediately accepted, but not primarily for the money. Rather, I’d have an inside track on acquiring a bottle or two as partial compensation.
Eric kept me updated on the project’s progress while I wrote descriptions and sourced images for distilleries in the blend. From this privileged perspective, I heard about many of the unexpected twists and turns of bringing the rum to market. You can hear about the experience in Eric’s words in this RumCast episode: Behind the Bottle: Holmes Cay Infinity Cask with Eric Kaye.
Key Facts About Holmes Cay Infinity Cask
The blend is comprised of rums from thirteen distilleries in seven regions:
Guadeloupe (Montebello, Gardel, Poisson)
Trinidad (Caroni)
Barbados (West Indies Rum Distillery)
Venezuela (Pampero)
Brazil (Epris)
Guyana makes up 74% of the blend and Jamaica another 15%. The other regions make up the remaining 11% of the blend. Bottled at 58% ABV.
The oldest rum in the blend is a Port Mourant, distilled in 1976.
The age of the various rums when added to the cask isn’t known. However, they aged for another 20 years after combining in Liverpool.
Two bottle sizes were released. The 700ml bottle has a retail MSRP of $1,500 and comes with premium packaging and the booklet I helped create. The 200ml bottle has an MSRP of $300.
How is it?
Unless I’m doing blind rum judging, tasting notes aren’t my thing. However, I will share that the Infinity rum is full-throated and “rummy” in the best possible way. As you might expect from its 74% Demerara rum component, the overall flavor skews towards what you’d expect from a multi-origin blend that heavily favors Demerara rum.
Will it expand your brain and change your life? Probably not. But to be fair, I’ve been fortunate to enjoy many extremely rare and expensive rums. None were lightning bolts from the gods, but all were experiences worth remembering. The Holmes Cay Infinity rum justifies its seat at the table of legendary rums.
About the Price
Naturally, a certain segment of the internet rum commentariat has been compelled to comment about how expensive the Infinity is. Is it among the most expensive rums available? Absolutely.
However, there’s a difference between a large brand pushing the price envelope with a house-made rum to see what the market will bear versus a small brand purchasing a very expensive cask to make it available to rum enthusiasts at a reasonable profit. Main Rum knows the value of their casks well and certainly didn’t sell it for the same price as a 10-year Enmore.
Holmes Cay making a substantially less expensive 200ml bottle testifies to the importance they placed on making it available to true enthusiasts who aren’t necessarily high rollers. Plus, 200ml bottles are more likely to be opened and enjoyed than a 700ml bottle that remains unopened to retain its resale value.
Last Drops
But wait! There’s more! A few months before the Infinity rum landed on shelves, I saw an announcement from Last Drop Distillers, a British firm specializing in extremely limited bespoke spirits with matching bespoke prices. Nearly all their offerings are whisky, but a few rums have snuck into the party.
The announcement was for their 22-year Infinitum blend. The product page notes:
What happens to old pre-shipment or retained samples? In this case, having been kept for the required time for quality management purposes, the decision was taken to decant all the rum samples into a recycled rum cask made of oak in December 2000. Marked with CMS, after the Main Rum Company’s longest serving member of staff Christine Margaret Southern, it was sealed and left to slumber in a Liverpool warehouse.
Consisting of various aged rums from a wide array of distilleries, the Infinitum stayed in the same cask for over 22 years. The result of this maturation is an intricate dance of flavours from a diverse line-up of countries including Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Venezuela, Guadeloupe, Brazil, and Saint Lucia.
As it turns out, Main Rum had more than one infinity cask going. Might there be more in the final stages of maturing? We’ll have to wait and see. Also of interest, the countries represented in the Holmes Cay Infinity and Last Drops Infinitum would match exactly if not for some St. Lucia rum in the Infinitum.
The Infinitum retails for around $3,300 and 136 bottles were made and bottled at 53.1% ABV. Each 700ml bottle is accompanied by a 50ml mini, enabling the rum to be enjoyed without opening the larger bottle. While rum is made for drinking rather than collecting, I applaud companies for including a small “taster” bottle in their high-end releases. I’ve yet to taste the Infinitum, so have no thoughts to share on how it compares to the Holmes Cay bottling.
Cost Comparing The Infinit(y)(ium)
To save you the time of pulling out your calculator, here’s a per-ml cost comparison of the Holmes Cay and Lost Drops bottlings:
Holmes Cay Infinity (200ml): $1.50/ml
Holmes Cay Infinity (700ml): $2.14/ml
Last Drops Distillers (700ml+50ml): $4.40/ml
Have you tasted either of these bottlings? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
