J.G Thomson Bold Jamaican Rum

Another Leith whisky name has recently been revived. This time it's in the form of the Artisanal Spirits Company's J.G Thomson & Co. ASC plc are also the owners of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society so it will be interesting to see how the single cask and blended malt categories, as well as its other spirit bottlings, are divided up between these two companies in the future.

The name J.G Thomson goes back a long way. On the side of The Vaults in Leith, you can see the date 1785 - the year when the wine and spirits merchant, James Gibson Thomson, founded his company there; home to the SMWS and the current J.G Thomson & Co.

The company ceased bottling at The Vaults in 1964. Four years previously, it had been acquired by Charrington United Breweries and subsequently became a subsidiary of Tennent Caledonian Breweries. By the early 1980s, J.G Thomson was based in Glasgow and its offices at The Vaults were becoming more and more dilapidated. If you'd like to find out more about the history of J.G Thomson, this is a great resource: J G THOMSON HISTORY

The Artisanal Spirits Company acquired the rights to use the J.G Thomson & Co name in 2017. So far, releases have included three non age statement blended malts, a 23 year old blended malt, a blended grain distilled in 1972, a citrus dry gin and a Jamaican rum.

And it's the rum which we turn to first.

As someone relatively new to the rum category, I'm keen to find out as much information as I possibly can. However, despite asking the questions, it's not always easy to get the answers. From the J.G Thomson site, we know that this was matured in ex-bourbon barrels in Jamaica for three years. It then spent some time in Scotland for a further maturation period but I don't know how long. If I receive an answer, I'll update this post accordingly. So, this rum doesn't have an age statement but we know it's at least three years old. It's 100% pot stilled, bottled at 46%, non-chill filtered and with no added colouring or sugar.

Nose: two stroke oil; mushy overripe bananas; pan fried gammon steak with a grilled pineapple; PVA glue; plasticine.

Palate: warm banana loaf; Toffee Pennies; McVitie's Classic Caramel Digestives; Chocolate Gingers; an extremely oily texture.

Overall: this is really good stuff! Maybe it's because I'm still relatively new to rum, but this is very accessible whilst still maintaining that funky character of Jamaican rum. £37.50 is a pretty decent price too. One for the lineup for this month's Quarter Gill Club tasting, I think.

Thanks to the kind folk at J.G Thomson for sending me this sample along with those of the NAS blended malts and the gin. There'll be a post on the three blended malts on the site in the not too distant future but I'll need to ask someone else to taste the gin on my behalf ;-)