Death By Foursquare, Part I: ECS 2008 v. 2007 v. 2005

Foursquare on Barbados is, arguably, one of the best rum distilleries in the world. It is also, arguably, the one that a good segment of the rum enthusiast crowd is increasingly tired of seeing. And it's not really the fault of the distillery or of Richard Seale beyond the fact that they just happen to make rum (both in Doorly's as well as in this upper-level stuff) in a really wood-forward style which happens to appeal to a certain palate, and that they happen to lack any real competition. When Bourbon refugees hop over to rum, Foursquare is the one they tend to land on - Fred Minnick basically wrote a book on this stuff. And quite bizarrely Foursquare seem to be the only ones selling anything in this style at higher ages, with higher proofs, without additives, and at prices not creeping far above a hundo. (Are you listening, Appleton? Mount Gay? Diamond?) As a result , many of the nerds are just a little bit over it. This little series, then, is about investigating and adjudicating the constant charge that Foursquare is basically just selling the same damn rumskey in every bottle they offer... and that task involves drinking a lot of very strong high-end Bajan rum. The upcoming Part 2 is where I do a blind tasting of a number of different (upper-level) bottlings - this one is a vertical review on three among Foursquare's most distinctive Exceptional Cask Selection releases, namely their vintage dated bottlings. In particular it's the recently-released 2008 versus the 2007 (previously reviewed at    • Foursquare ECS 2007 and Cadenhead Classic ...  ) and a sample of 2005. Stats: Foursquare 2008 12-Year-Old Single Blended Rum (Exceptional Cask Selection Mark XIII , Barbados; pot/column blend aged in ex-bourbon casks, 2008-4/2020; 60% ABV), 89/100 Foursquare 2007 12-Year-Old Single Blended Rum (Exceptional Cask Selection Mark , Barbados; pot/column blend aged in ex-bourbon casks, 2007-3/2019; 59% ABV), 89/100 Foursquare 2005 12-Year-Old Single Blended Rum (Exceptional Cask Selection Mark VI , Barbados; pot/column blend aged in ex-bourbon casks, 2005-10/2017; 59% ABV), 89/100 Actual reviewing starts at about 10:00, btw. You may notice that there's a lot of sameness in those numbers, which seems to prove part of the naysayers' point. Are there differences? It's subtle, but yes: I myself slightly prefer the marginally more leafy 2008. But it's not enough to make any change in the score, and not even enough that I could clearly recommend any one of these over the others. These three make less sense as individual releases than as different batches of the same release - Foursquare Vintage, say, not Foursquare 2005, 2007, or 2008. And you know what? That's fine. The important thing is that this release, in all its batches, is extremely good. Thing Consistent ≠ Thing Bad. But then the onus is on the other, more expensive upper-level Foursquares to stand out a little bit more - and that's for Death By Foursquare 2.