New Arrival of the Week: Black Tot Rum 2024 Master Blender’s Reserve

Black Tot Rum 2024 Master Blender’s Reserve is now available from Master of Malt.

Next Wednesday, the 31 July, is known in the rum world and in naval circles as Black Tot Day. It’s a day of nostalgia and solemnity, one that commemorates the end of the Royal Navy’s centuries-old tradition of issuing sailors a daily ration of rum, known as the “tot”. The practice dates back to the 17th century and in 1740, it was regulated by Admiral Edward Vernon, who diluted the rum with water, creating what became known as “grog.”

This practice ended on July 31, 1970, a day since been remembered as Black Tot Day, when the last call of “Up spirits” was heard. Here we are, 54 years later, and naval veterans and rum enthusiasts still commemorate the tradition by drinking rum and swapping tales. A particular rum feels appropriate for the occasion, the one that is named for this day: Black Tot. 

Its latest release, the 2024 Master Blender’s Reserve, is now here at Master of Malt, so given the occasion we thought it was high time to tell the story of the brand. Which we can now do because we recently attended a tasting of the new rum led by global ambassador, Mitch Wilson who introduced us to master blender Oliver Chilton and the brand’s creator Sukhinder Singh, who walked us through the tale of the tot.

Yo ho ho and a flagon of rum

Singh, who is most famous for establishing some other whisky site with his brother Rajbir, is a well-known collector in the industry and the story of the Black Tot brand began with him being offered the chance to buy some original pre-1970 British Navy Rum flagons about fifteen years ago. Six months after he purchased his first lot of tot, the chance to buy half a dozen more came up. So he decided to taste one of the flagons he already possessed to see if it was worth it. “Truly I was horrified how amazing the liquid was. It was the best rum I’ve ever tried. It was so complex, it was so big, it was so rich. It was British Navy Strength. Really the journey began then.”

Singh bought the six flagons and then dug deeper into the story behind them. He learned that after Black Tot Day, the remaining rum, originally married in a couple of big solera systems, was decanted into distinctive one-gallon (or four-and-a-half-litres) flagons. They honestly look like something Indiana Jones would uncover, thick, air-tight ceramic covered in protective wicker and stamped with thick wax seals, some of which were still intact so they could reveal where and when the rum was bottled. They come from big wooden boxes that need to be pried open with a crowbar and are emblazoned with red stamps that reveal a location (like ANTWERP) or a reference to when they were packed (PKD 11/55 – meaning it was packed in November 1955). 

These flagons were put away into storage, where they sat for 35-40 years in a warehouse. When the space needed to be repurposed, the flagons were sold off to several different parties. After learning this, Singh tracked down as much of the stock as he possibly could to acquire them. It took a good few years but he wasn’t to be deterred. “I was just in love with the liquid. Everyone I would deem worthy and whose palate I respected I would give them a sample to try when they came to the office and they would say ‘This is amazing, what is it, can I buy it?’”. 

The flagons weren’t particularly practical, however, so resale of them was out of the question. The decision was made to decant these remarkable rums into 70cl bottles and to create a brand. The history of the liquid meant there was only one thing the brand could be called: Black Tot. 

The creation of the Black Tot brand

The process of creating a rum blended from all these flagons wasn’t exactly simple, however, as Singh explains. “As we opened these flagons to come up with a batch, we discovered there were a number of different styles. Because they were from different eras and the solera system was an open, living breathing system, basically rums from around the world were brought in and topped up into the solera, hence changing the style of the rum at different points in time. We worked out what was what, and we blended the flagons together until we got to a point where we felt it tasted absolutely delicious. That’s what we bottled up to create Black Tot Last Consignment”.

That was the original Black Tot release, priced at its first launch at £600 a bottle (it’s now over £900), which in the rum world was a hefty cost. But the brand took off. Once people tried it they loved it. Not everyone can afford a rum like that, however, and demand increased for something more mainstream. “It was always on the back of our minds, to do something which would be an entry-level product. But it took us some years to work out what that product should be. Should it be a replica of Last Consignment which would be a pretty impossible task? Or should it be something different? I couldn’t get my head around it,” Singh says. “But in the last six/seven years, the rum industry started taking off and changing. They started beefing up their core products. Where they were lighter, more column still heavy, light and fruity, they started adding more pot still, making them more robust, complex, I could say more whisky-like. Something sippable, bigger, more interesting. That’s when it sparked, there’s something that can be done.” 

They took everything they knew about the art of blending from the British Navy as a basis. “It’s important to note that if we looked at how much rum was actually used by the British Navy, it would be one of the top 10 spirits brands in the world today, it was enormous. It’s also important to note that if it wasn’t for the British Navy, rum might have become extinct or be a smaller category. A lot of old brands took inspiration from the British Navy,” Singh explains. “In the old days, Captain Morgan was a British Navy Rum. Lambs was British Navy Rum. Because British Navy Rum was always a blended product, primarily from the colonies, Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados, and Jamaica etc, we thought we could use the same format, but create a rum for today. Something lighter, brighter, fresher, but still using the art of blending, the same style of liquid, but in different ratios to create something more easy, sippable, mixable, but also complex. something that has layers and layers of flavour”.  

Blending Black Tot Finest Caribbean Rum

Chilton was given the task of creating what became Black Tot Finest Caribbean Rum, and while he had lots of whisky experience this was the first rum he ever blended. He says that rum is broader in terms of the characters you’re playing with, from the different countries and styles and production techniques, which makes it really interesting. He adds “In some ways, blending rum is a bit easier, you’re working with quite pronounced flavours, big flavours, I find that fun and inspiring to do. When you work with big flavours you can create interesting things. Finest Carribean was probably one of the most challenging products we ever had because we were trying to learn so much quite quickly, but in terms of blending, it was relatively straightforward, it was only 26/27 attempts which in my experience is not too bad”. 

The basis of the idea was to create something light, fruity and approachable, while also using Last Consignment as a reference. “One thing were definitely trying to achieve was an element of natural sweetness and fruitiness came through, but we didn’t want to use sugar. I think we did a pretty good job,” says Singh. “When we first launched it I sent a bottle to one of my heroes, Luca Gargano, one of the world’s authorities on rum. He didn’t believe there wasn’t any sugar in it, so he sent a sample off for chemical analysis to make sure we were not lying and he was pleasantly surprised, which ticked a box for us”. Chilton adds that they follow a lot of rules that mirror the way they make whisky, no chill-filtering, no additional colouring or sugar, and the ability to work without the pressure of a price point. He also says that rum as a world is quite interesting as when you work with companies they’ll ask you what you want to add or how you want to change it, which you never get in whisky. 

The final product, Black Tot Finest Caribbean Rum, was a blend comprised of the following: 40% Guyanese rum, aged between 3-5 years and a mix of pot and column still rum; 35% rum from Barbados aged for 5 years and distilled in a column still; 20% unaged Guyanese rum, again a blend of pot and column; and finally 5% of 3-year-old high ester Jamaica pot still rum. Each rum is molasses-based and matured in bourbon 200-litre white oak casks in the country of origin. It was bottled in Scotland at 46.2% ABV, without chill filtration and no sugar added. If you’re super geeky, you’ll appreciate knowing the volatile compounds are 183.1g/hLAA and that there’s 1.383g/LAA of sugar imparted from the barrel. 

Black Tot Finest Caribbean Rum

In 2020, it was the 50th anniversary of Black Tot Day so the brand decided to create Black Tot 50th Anniversary to mark the occasion. Wilson ranked it as the most geeky, amazing, ridiculous blend of rum he‘d ever seen with some of the most remarkable casks and ingredients put together. He felt they needed to tell people what was in the blend. Black Tot claims to be the first rum to create a bottle with all the information of the blend on the label and there’s no doubt it’s an incredibly transparent brand. Which you have the luxury of being when you do things the right way. What’s there to hide? It included favourites like Foursquare and Hampden but also a 23-year-old Caroni, a 42-year-old Port Mourant and some of the original Navy Rum from 1970. 

Singh says that the response was so good, it couldn’t just be a one-off. “It literally won every single award in the rum industry. So we said let’s champion what we did with this product, which was the art of blending, and we renamed it Master Blenders Reserve. Every year we would come out with a completely different blend, but using the previous year’s blend as a starting point,” says Singh. From the original 50th-anniversary bottling, about a third of the blend was kept behind and that’s in each Master’s Reserve, now referred to as the ‘perpetual blend’. This was also inspired by the flagons themselves, which were always changing and evolving as a response to what rum was available to the navy. Chilton says you can taste that, how trading was changing. 

As the basis of this brand is rooted in the history of British Navy Rum, you might think that limits Black Tot’s potential rums to certain ex-colonies. Instead, it buys in a similar to the navy, which is to say good quality spirit from anywhere that had a port. Australia was included regularly in the Navy rum. “We’re certainly not focused on the traditions of where they’re made, we’re focused on good quality. It’s more important to look at how sustainable those sources are. Our longer-term plan is to distil a little bit of rum as well. Black Tot needs to be celebrating the world of rum – the whole world,” Chilton says. 

Our new arrival: Black Tot Rum 2024 Master Blender’s Reserve

This brings us to the star of the show for today: Black Tot Rum 2024 Master Blender’s Reserve. The fifth annual release of Black Tot Master Blender’s Reserve rum is the first to be built around one country. For 2024, the focus was on Barbados to showcase the fruity, sweet, fudgy, honeyed character of its rum. 

A lot of rum from Trinidad was then added to bring its trademark stone fruit flavour that bolsters the honey and the sweetness, while the amount of Guyana rum was toned down from previous releases, as was the portion of Master Blender’s Reserve 2023 as it was such an imposing rum (just 3.94% of the blend). There’s a bit of Caroni in there again as it brings oiliness and body. Black Tot Rum 2024 Master Blender’s Reserve is aged in a combination of American and European oak casks and offered un-chill filtered at 54.5% ABV. The full outturn is more limited than previous years too, closer to 3,000 bottles than the usual ~5,000. We also know that the 2025 edition will be country-focused again and on a style we haven’t seen before. 

You can see the full blend breakdown of the 2024 edition in a print of its label at the end of this article (I’d recommend opening the image into a new tab so you can zoom on all those percentages). We’ve also got our own, full tasting note and will leave you as Wilson did us, with the following toast: 

There are tall ships, and small ships, and ships that sail the sea. But the best ships, are friendships, and may they forever be. 

Happy Black Tot Day, everyone!

Nose: The nose is very elegant and well-balanced, the aromas seep out of the glass like a fine perfume. It starts with an incredible array of sweet aromas – pineapple cubes, fudge, coconut cream, strawberry laces, passion fruit syrup, mango, white chocolate, honey, butter… Let this nose breathe and it will reward you. In support, there’s oak, red chilli warmth, lime juice, and fresh herbs which bring complexity. 

Palate: Some oak spice and nutmeg give a viscous palate a slightly prickly edge through which notes of red cola cubes, brown sugar, vanilla, caramel, Caroni-style engine oil, and a little peppermint emerge. Throughout there’s more fresh tropical fruit, with banana taking more of a centre stage alongside papaya, melon, mango, and pineapple. 

Finish: The finish is slick and tongue-coating with liquorice and anise setting the tone. Dark chocolate, lime, warming vanilla-y oak, and the remnants of that tropical fruit salvo linger. 

Order Black Tot Rum 2024 Master Blender’s Reserve now from Master of Malt to get it in time for Black Tot Day.

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