Overview
Brand: Alambique Serrano
Origin: Distillería de Rommel Krassel, Santa María Tlalixtac, Oaxaca, Mexico
Still: Krassel Column
Age: NAS
Finish: ex-Bourbon & French Limousin
ABV: 55.8%
The folks at Alambique Serrano released what seemed like an unending stream of excellent, additive-free rum last year. It's been hard to keep up, but we're returning to the Oaxaca-based Krassel brothers with another one of their blends.
Alambique Serrano Otoño (lit. "autumn") is Blend #6 from the brand, produced from the juice of sugarcane from the Java varietal. After fermenting in stainless steel vats with ambient yeast, Axel and William Krassel distilled the rum using their unique Krassel still.
The blend consists of 66% rum aged in ex-Bourbon casks for 29 months (2 years, 5 months) and finished in American and French oak casks, and 34% completely unaged rum, distilled in January 2024. It was bottled at 55.8% ABV, yielding 740 bottles in total.
Appearance
Marigold, low viscosity
Nose
Greek yogurt with honey, fresh cinnamon roll, hint of overripe banana peel, butterscotch, vanilla bean, dark chocolate
Palate
Cinnamon roll, vanilla, nutmeg, spiced cake, butterscotch, sea salt
Finish
Medium-long, warm, spicy; cinnamon, nutmeg, oak tannins, allspice, toasted sugarcane
Rating: 7/10
Summary
Otoño is a very enjoyable rum that brings a good amount of cask character, but also a bit of the bite of fresh sugarcane juice rum. It's not my favorite Alambique Serrano rum to date, but a very easy one to enjoy.
My two biggest takeaways from this are the cinnamon roll, reminding me of the center of the Country Donuts cinnamon rolls I had as a kid, and honey-drizzled Greek yogurt, which is mostly smelled during the nosing. Speaking of, the nose does a lot of work, and is perhaps a bit more expressive than the palate, which is still plenty enjoyable. The finish is warm and filled with spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and ends with the slightly earthen flavor of toasted cane.
I will say that I'm not convinced adding the unaged rum to this blend really worked for me. Nothing against it by itself, of course: I know from trying the Cartier 30 expression that the Krassels can make excellent unaged rum. It's more that it takes a bit of the focus away from the cask-aged component, and muddies the overall experience a bit.