Toti Dark Rum

The Sustainable Spirit Company created Toti White Rum with conservation group Sea Shepherd. This partnership will see 15% of the profits from each bottle sold go to supporting marine conservation in the Caribbean. Delicious rum and a great cause? What a combination! The rum itself is built around a combination of rums from Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, Barbados and the Dominican Republic.

Cask Reserve is a dark aromatic sipping rum with a full bodied flavour and smooth finish. Our master blend combines a very special five year old cane “agricole” rum from The Dominican Republic with a funk filled fusion of three year old barrel aged pot-still rums from across the Caribbean. The blend is finished with fresh demerara rum and a lick of bittersweet blackstrap molasses.

Just under half of Toti Cask Reserve is a rich complex barrel-aged “agricole” rum from the Dominican Republic. Our agricole rum starts life as ripe sugar cane, the cane is cut and pressed to extract its juice, the juice is fermenting using local yeasts to produce an alcoholic wash of around 8% abv, this wash is distilled in column stills to produce an 80% overproof agricole rum. Finally the overproof rum is cut back with water to 70% and put into ex-bourbon American white oak barrels – where they are left for five long years of accelerated tropical aging in the consistent humid heat of the Caribbean.

The other key element in the Toti Cask Reserve blend is molasses rum. Molasses is produced by boiling down pressed sugar cane juice – this process produces sugar crystals and a thick dark treacly liquid called molasses. The molasses is mixed with water and fermented to produce an alcoholic wash of 7% alcohol which is then distilled to produce higher strength spirit.

Toti uses six different styles of molasses rum from six different distilleries in its rum blend. From Jamaica we source three highly complex aromatic rums that are produced in centuries old distilleries using centuries old yeast cultures and time honoured traditional methods. Dryness and minerality comes from lighter column still spirits from Barbados & Trinidad. All these rums have been tropically aged in ex bourbon oak casks for three years acquiring complexity and smoothness.

The magic of Toti Rum is very much in its secret blend – masterminded by founder Mark Douglas Hill and Dutch rum maestro Hein Smit. The elements are blended at high strength and then cut to two classic bottling strengths of 38% & 42%. To maintain a lively, aromatic tanginess and fruitiness in Toti Cask Reserve, we finish the blend with some fresh Demerara rum from Guyana and an 8g/L “dosage” of bittersweet blackstrap molasses.

Tasting Notes

On the nose – Cask Reserve is richly fragrant with prominent notes of caramelised banana and dried mango. The taste is rich and complex with notes of treacle tart, vanilla & ripe banana. The finish is sustained and buttery, with hints of liquorice.