Outside Santo Domingo the warehouses stand close together, and the air inside stays heavy and warm all year.
Time works faster here than in a Scottish dunnage. The casks give up their character at a pace no cool northern cellar can match, and the angels take their cut every single year.
Opthimus is the Oliver family's answer to what that heat can do, if you still have the patience to wait.
The expert's description
Opthimus 18 years Cum Laude 2019 is a Dominican Rum from Oliver & Oliver, matured in ex-Bourbon casks of American white oak and bottled at 38%.
Oliver & Oliver is a family business with Cuban roots. The family left Cuba in 1959, and it was not until the early 1990s that the company was rebuilt in the Dominican Republic, where it sits today in Hato Nuevo outside Santo Domingo. The house does not distil its own spirit. It blends and matures molasses-based distillates under maestro ronero Don Pedro Oliver.
Maturation follows the Sistema Solera, the Spanish pyramid system originally developed for sherry. Rum of different ages is blended continuously through a tier of casks, so a fraction of the oldest rum always carries forward. The 18 on the label refers to the oldest rum in the blend, not to everything in the bottle. That is worth knowing if you come from whisky, where an age statement means precisely the opposite.
Cum Laude is Oliver & Oliver's own designation for the bottlings the house rates highest, and it appears only on selected releases. This one was bottled in 2019 in a run of 1,000 bottles. Every bottle is filled, labelled and numbered by hand, and the label carries the maestro ronero's signature. The casks are former Bourbon barrels from Kentucky, made from American white oak, and they are the source of the vanilla, coconut and soft timber running through the whole palate. The 38% is a deliberate house choice: this rum is built for softness rather than punch.
Tasting notes
Nose
Warm vanilla and light honey lead. Behind them come toffee, dried fig and a mild cocoa note, and right at the back a trace of pipe tobacco and dry oak.
Palate
Soft and rounded. Honey and caramel carry the opening, then dark chocolate and roasted coffee unfold, with a faint peppery edge and a hint of ginger in the background keeping the sweetness in check.
Finish
Long and spiced-sweet. The vanilla lingers longest, alongside sweet oak and a dry tobacco note right at the end.
Specifications
Name: Opthimus 18 years Cum Laude 2019
Distillery: Oliver & Oliver
Region/Country: Dominican Republic
Type: Dominican Rum
Age: 18 years by the Sistema Solera method
ABV: 38%
Size: 70 CL
Cask type: Ex-Bourbon casks of American white oak
Bottled: 2019
Number of bottles: 1,000
Edition: Cum Laude
Serving suggestion: Neat at room temperature in a tulip-shaped glass
Flavour profile
Sweet · Cask matured · Vanilla · Cocoa · Soft
Did you know?
Oliver & Oliver hold more than 3,000 American white oak casks, every one of which held Bourbon in Kentucky before being shipped to the Caribbean. Few rum brands can match a cask stock of that size.
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