Foursquare Rum

Foursquare is a family distillery in Barbados run by Richard Seale, and the range here covers all three of the labels that come out of it.

Doorly's is the accessible line and it runs as a clean vertical: the 3 Year White at 47%, then 5, 12, 14 and the XO. Buying the 12 and the 14 together is one of the more instructive pairs in aged rum, because the only real variable is time.

R.L. Seale 10 Year sits alongside them, named for the family and finished in ex-madeira casks.

The Exceptional Cask Selection is the reason collectors watch this distillery. Equidem, Mandamus, Convocation, Covenant, Touchstone, Magisterium, Equipoise and the 2011 Vintage are all single blends of pot and column still rum, bottled without added sugar and without colouring, at cask strength or close to it.

Two others belong to the same house. Velvet Falernum is the Barbadian lime, clove and almond liqueur that a proper tiki bar cannot work without, and Equiano is a blend Foursquare makes with Gray's in Mauritius.

Crisma is the rum cream.

Foursquare 2011 and R.L. Seale both made our eleven rums to try, which is a useful shortlist if you are deciding where in this range to begin.

History

Foursquare sits on a former sugar plantation in St Philip, Barbados, and the distillery as it exists now was built in 1996 by the Seale family, who have been in rum since 1926. Richard Seale is the fourth generation.

Barbados has a fair claim to being where rum began. The earliest surviving written references to the spirit come from the island in the 1650s, and Mount Gay's deed of 1703 is the oldest surviving rum brand document.

What sets Foursquare apart is a position rather than a technique. Much of the rum sold worldwide has sugar added after distillation, sometimes a great deal of it, and no law requires this to be declared. Seale has argued publicly and persistently for classification by production method and for full disclosure, and Foursquare bottles nothing with added sugar, colouring or flavouring.

The distillery uses both pot and twin column stills and blends across them, which is why a Foursquare rum tends to have the weight of a pot still rum and the clarity of a column one. The Exceptional Cask Selection releases are single blends, each finished in a different cask type, released once and never repeated.

How to drink it

Doorly's 3 Year White is a mixing rum and a very good Daiquiri base: three parts rum, one part lime, half a part sugar syrup, shaken hard over plenty of ice.

From the 12 Year upward, drink it neat. Tulip glass, room temperature, no ice and no water unless the bottling is at cask strength. Expect banana, toffee, oak spice and a dry finish, with none of the sweetness that a sugared rum leaves on the tongue.

The Exceptional Cask releases reward patience. Give one five minutes in the glass before the first sip and a few drops of water if it is above 55%.

Velvet Falernum has one essential job: the Corn 'n' Oil, which is Barbadian and unfairly obscure. Aged rum, falernum, lime and a dash of Angostura over crushed ice. It also belongs in a Zombie and a Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

To understand what Foursquare is doing, pour a Doorly's 12 next to a Demerara rum of the same age. Same category, opposite philosophies.