In a bout of housecleaning, I was shocked to discover I still had some of two 1958 Puerto Rican Bacardi samples on hand. So… time for another tasting!
None of these rums offer a lot on the nose, but the vintage Bacardis once did. The second sample (label fell off) was actually the best sample of the three unopened samples that I began with many years ago. That one had an lovely nose, and a bunch of folks got to experience that before it faded away (over a period of many months). The other two samples (one not shown) had mostly lost their aromatics before I got them.
It’s quite possible that the vintage bottles have declined a little in proof from the 86 they began at. In any case, they remain richer, rounder, and have more rum flavor than the Hamilton and contemporary 87-proof Mexican Bacardi. I would say that the contemporary Bacardi is identifiably closer in flavor to the vintage Bacardis than the Hamilton (makes sense), but the contemporary Bacardi is so thin. By contrast, the Hamilton and the vintage Bacardis taste like actual rum. The vintage Bacardis are even basically sippable (but let’s not get carried away—this is mixing rum). So much of the difference here is in the (alas, unrecoverable) aromatics. Without the aromatics, the distance between these liquors is not that great.
Also, these samples are Puerto Rican, and they are probably inferior, or at least a little different, from what Bacardi was distilling in Santiago at that time.