New Grove comes from Mauritius, an island from east-coast of Africa. It’s a product of Terra Group, family owned company established at 1838 by French Dr Pierre Charles François Harel. New Grove is the biggest rum producer in Mauritius and they have over 6.000 hectares of sugarcane. The company produce sugar and the molasses, what is left of the sugar productions, Terra Group subsidiary Grays Distilling produces rum. 

Molasses is first being fermented 36 hours and then distilled on gigantic 52 column still. Distillate is diluted to 65%, blended with other rum distillates and let rest 10 months on stainless steel tanks and oak barrels, which have been transferred from France. Before bottling, silver rum is been filtered many times to get rid of the colours from barrel maturation. Bottled on 37.50% alcohol by volume, the distounted price for 70cl bottle was 8.99€ at Maxima.

Nose is light and neutral with hint of peanuts and straw. Taste is light and smooth, rather dry, not so typical for cheap rums which usually are on sweet side. There isn’t typical sugar cane or molasses flavour, also lacks the deeper nuances from maturation, maybe due to rest of steel tanks instead of wood barrels. Alcohol burn is very smooth, there is a hint of some fruits on aftertaste but the flavour is faint. It’s not so neutral than vodka but just few steps of it to the rum world. The taste is not bad at all, there’s nothing which disturb, it just do not offer anything. For mixings it’s very neutral so if you do not want any particular molasses taste on your cocktails, New Grove is a good choice. 

77/100