Hello and welcome to a new yearly episode of “Christmas is here so I’m going to talk about the Rum Advent Calendar from Drinks By The Dram.”! Of course, as per usual, I won’t spoil anything, I’ll just give an overall description of the contents.
Drinks By The Dram is under the Atom Brands umbrella and is sold through their online retailer, Master Of Malt. As the name suggests, they offer the option to buy 30ml samples so people can decide what bottles to purchase. They started doing advent calendars in 2012 and haven’t looked back since.
This year it looks like the box design was changed for a more classy-smart look that I don’t hate at all. The calendar contains 25x30ml wax sealed samples for a total of 750ml of rum with an average ABV of 44.5% ABV. The rums are sourced from at least 13 different countries, and that’s without counting the blends. The prices of the full bottles that the samples would come from range from £26 to £335 so it isn’t bad at all – there are some limited editions inside that I know I will thoroughly enjoy.
It seems that this edition is a bit more “serious”, considering this time it contains only around 4 spiced rums and 3 that are outrageously sweet, otherwise everything else has little to no sugar added. This is a great improvement for me as last year’s advent calendar had only 7 unsweetened rums – I’m very much excited for December! The overall tasting notes would be: liquorice, banana, caramel, dark chocolate, warm spices, tobacco, dried fruits, coconut and coffee.
As I said, the 2024 edition of the Rum Advent Calendar has a considerable amount of rums that, at least for me, are great sippers and I believe this would be a great gift for someone who enjoys whiskies but wants to get into rums. This is a proper introduction into the world of sugar cane spirits.
It’s also cheaper than last year, at only £100 for one, so I would recommend to get yourself one before December arrives.
You can buy the Rum Advent Calendar 2023 from Drinks By The Dram by clicking the button bellow – full disclosure, if you do so through my website, I will get a commission of the sale via an affiliate program.
As per the tradition, I will be posting mini-reviews of the drams daily on my Facebook page when December starts. Join me so we can explore all 25 rums together and maybe compare some tasting notes!
Cheers and happy future Christmas!
I am honestly waiting for one decent calendar and I’ll buy it. In here more than 1/3rd is fillers and you can easily guess which 8 you can point out just by scanning the list :).
I agree, but most of these are meant for the general customer rather than geeks.
Then the question is if an average consumer will appreciate Appleton 21 or Black Tot MB Reserve. Placing them in the same set with Don Papa Baroko or Kraken is questionable, to say the least.
Not that I’m trying to defend it as I can relate to your point, but that’s the whole point of the rum category, its diversity. I wish they had some proper agricole here as well in order to properly showcase it as well. If we could do our own advent I’m sure it would be amazing!