I remember it was about 17 years ago that I was just starting to learn my ass from a hole in the ground. At that point, I thought my local “big box” liquor retailer had prices that would beat the band (hint: they didn’t), and I struggled to get through my first proper bottle of Islay scotch.
And long before I ever developed a taste for rum, I remember seeing what had always looked like an interesting bottle to me: Pyrat. Alongside Sailor Jerry, Captain Morgan, and Bacardi, the squat jug stood out in the best of ways, cutting an attractive figure with its little hang tag and jaunty orange neckerchief. Pyrat called to me as a craft product long before we collectively started using the word “craft” to describe much of anything.
It would be years before I gave it its day in court, but I credit Pyrat with being the progenitor of a thought that would rattle around my head and eventually pull me into the spirit category as a whole: “Maybe some rums can be good.”
Cue finding a 375ml bottle at Total Wine with a price point of under $20. Here Pyrat was, at the beginning and end (okay, fine: middle) of my path from boy to man. What better time than now to explore what I’d been missing?
Well, as it turns out, the answer was “Not a whole lot.”
“It’s possible I’d have evaluated Pyrat more charitably in my twenties, when I only knew the taste of crappy rums. Today, however, it absolutely falls flat.”
Let’s get this out of the way first: Pyrat is not a bad rum, in the way that I would say there’s something downright gross about the kinds of supermarket rums that are at the forefront of most consumers’ collective consciousness. Again, I speak of the burnt, chemical taste of Bacardi, the cloying artificiality of Captain Morgan, and the odd, Robitussin “froot” fakeness of Sailor Jerry.
My first impression of Pyrat was actually positive. It makes a good first impression with a very bright, clear note of orange. Pyrat isn’t too sweet, so at the very beginning it emerges as something citrus forward with a little sophistication. I initially thought Pyrat came from one of those rum distillers that makes a big hullabaloo about not using any sugar in their rum for the sake of not wanting to adulterate a quality product, and I said to myself, “Okay: if that’s what they’re going for, I can hang.”
It was after that point that Pyrat proceeded to botch the proverbial job interview. As I mentioned before, Pyrat is dry. Beyond the orange, and in the absence of sweet, Pyrat doesn’t bring much of anything else to the table. Worse yet, the spirit begins to develop this weird minerality that grows and grows. After about four sips, it becomes particularly insidious and flat out refuses to go away.
Think about it like this: your first Flamin’ Hot Cheeto? Not very hot. Your tenth Flamin’ Hot Cheeto? You begin to understand why the bag’s illustration depicts Chester Cheetah standing in the fourth ring of hell.
Give the Pyrat more than a few cursory sips, and I’m fairly confident you’ll come face to face with the repellant minerality I’m describing. Ice will make the orange flavor even more one-note than it already is, but fortunately it removes most of what makes the finish increasingly galling.
Is it possible I’d have evaluated this a lot more charitably in my twenties, when I’d known only the taste of truly shit rums? Certainly. But, now that I’m in my early forties, I’ve had wonderful rums across all spectra of the price continuum, including Plantation, Smith and Cross, Kirk and Sweeney, Atlantico, Clement, Angostura, Barbancourt… I could go on.
With those various brands and bottles still in my sense memory, I say this to Pyrat: “We appreciate your time, but we’ve decided to move forward with more qualified applicants.”
As an interesting aside, Demerara Distiller’s Ltd (which seems to be alternatively known as “Diamond Distillery”) is the only rum producer left in Guyana. With that in mind, if you want to actually taste the best of what they’re capable of producing, readers would be well advised to source any of the limited edition releases from Plantation with “Guyana” on the label. They’re also the distiller behind El Dorado, so you could also just get the ED12 or ED15 and get a substantially better rum than Pyrat.
It’s not like the Diamond Distillery is incapable of making a stellar product, but to repeat a phrase I first heard from LeBron James, “This shit ain’t it.”
