Black Tot’s 2024 Edition of Master Blender’s Reserve Celebrates the ‘Birthplace of Rum’ With Limited Release

Black Tot Rum unveiled its latest edition of Master Blender’s Reserve for 2024. (Photo: Black Tot Rum)

Black Tot Rum announced on Monday the fifth release of its Master Blender’s Reserve, which is set to hit shelves across the globe on July 1.

For this year’s offering, Black Tot Rum Master Blender’s Reserve is honoring what the brand refers to as the “cultural birthplace of Rum,” or Barbados.

“I knew I wanted to highlight Barbados, and then bring in some of the older Jamaican blends that we created a few years back, for added intensity,” said Black Tot Master Blender Oliver Chilton in a statement. “We also used some deep, rich rums from Guyana and Trinidad, including the one from the closed Caroni distillery.”

Three thousand bottles are available of this expression, and Black Tot Rum Master Blender’s Reserve hosts a suggested retail price of 54.5% ABV.

Chilton implemented a blend that has been added into each year’s Master Blender’s Reserve since 2020 for the backbone of this year’s limited release, then actively sought out different rums from around the world to create a distinctive flavor profile.

The brand claims Black Tot’s Master Blender’s Reserve 2024 possesses aromas of pineapple grilled with butter, drizzled with lime juice and dusted with chili and coconut. The palate possesses dark sugar and baked bananas coupled with tropical fruits like guava and sweet melon. The rum finishes with dried mango, bitter chocolate and licorice.

In July, Black Tot unveiled its previous edition of Master Blender’s Reserve. The rum was a mixture of casks sourced from Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad.  A 1993 rum from Grenada was added to the blend to provide a bit more complexity.

Barbados and Rum’s Highly Complex and Multicultural Origin Story

According to Tasting Panel Magazine, Barbados proudly hosts the reputation of being rum’s birthplace, and a deed dating back to 1703 is proudly displayed in the Mount Gay visitor center. The outlet reports that the deed is the oldest deed involving rum distillation. Though Mount Gay claims to be the oldest continuously operating rum distillery in the world, it’s possible other distilleries pre-dated Mount Gay, yet those may have been lost to history.

Yet if one really wanted to understand the origins of rum, one would have to understand the complicated history of Brazilian cachaça, rum’s ancestral spirit. Distiller reports that rum’s lineage dates back to this sugar cane-derived spirit with origins that date back to 1516.

Smithsonian Magazine reports that like rum, cachaça comes from sugar cane. Cacaçha was originally consumed by African slaves who worked in Brazilian sugar mills and initially helped ease aches and pains from arduous days working in the mills. Eventually, the wealthy developed a taste for cachaça, and it became one of the most popular spirits consumed in Brazil.

A century later, European demand for sugar was skyrocketing, and sugar production moved to Barbados. In Barbados, distillers found new ways to turn molasses by-products into rum, and that is how rum became the spirit we know it is today.

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