From the local, internationally awarded Mhoba Rum distillery situated in the Lowveld, this Single Cask Bourbon bottling yielded just 241 bottles. Carefully selected by Navigate World Whisky at the Mhoba Rum Distillery, this rum is a combination of single and double distillations from 2020. Filled in January 2020 and bottled in December 2023, this rum matured for just short of four years in the hot climate of the Lowveld, at the Mhoba distillery.
WR1 (Woodford Reserve cask #1) and WR4 (Woodford Reserve cask #4) are two contrasting single casks, selected together, and each bottled as a single cask to showcase two very different cask characters, despite both being sister casks.
WR4 is a fitting companion to follow on from the very well received Mhoba 2017 single cask #BC20 bottled for our last catalogue. To make these two single casks a little more approachable for a compare and contrast we opted for a bottling strength of 55% ABV as opposed to BC20 at 64.8%.
Tasting Notes
Nose: Zoo biscuits! Milk powders & Kit Kat! Lots of Bourbon cask with baked goods, sticky sweetness and baked fruits along with dried mango. Apple cumquat, tarte Tatin, a slight sour note balancing out the sweetness, cherries or berries (take your pick). Burnt sugarcane, the smell of the MHOBA bamboo labels. If ever there was a classic MHOBA nose this would be it. A revisit reveals more cereal notes, ProNutro & a few hints of Maltabella porridge.
Palate: Fresh sugarcane juice rum but with plenty of cask. That doesn’t say much does it but needed to be said! Pencil shavings, a wooden desk with leather desktop, polished wood, blood orange, a little sidecar cocktail like, more cocoa powder than milk chocolate on the palate, perhaps a 70% cocoa dark chocolate.
Finish: Long, quite sugarcane-y, are we allowed to use such a word? A tad beer like, almost malty, it must have been a long fermentation. Warming but soft, rich and full. Youthful but truly well balanced.
Now you need to visit WR1 for the smoke!