1. Appleton’s Reserve (Jamaica)
The good stuff. Darker than Appleton’s Special which is closer in color to my ideal gold but blended smooth and with more flavor from both the barrel and the molasses. Plus it has to take the top spot on my personal list because it was an open bar on Appleton’s at a Coppershot Soundsytem dance inside Kingston’s Caymanas club that first forced me to recognize that rum could taste better than coke. That was in 2005 and it’s taken only 5 short years to go from non-drinker to full-hundred rum snob.