Berry Bros & Rudd

The shop opened in 1698, when a widow known as the Widow Bourne started an Italian grocer's at No.3 St James's Street, selling tea, snuff, spices and coffee. The coffee-mill sign still hangs outside the premises today. As the business moved into wine and then spirits, Berry Bros. & Rudd began bottling casks under its own label in the early 19th century, which is why the house describes itself as Britain's oldest independent spirits bottler.

It is still owned and run by the Berry and Rudd families, holds two Royal Warrants and has supplied the British Royal Family since the reign of King George III. It was also the first wine and spirits merchant to launch online, back in 1994. The history has its colourful chapters too: the firm supplied smugglers running alcohol into Prohibition-era America and once sheltered Napoleon III in the cellars beneath the shop.

The house looks for balance, complexity, maturity and texture rather than famous names. A cask that sits outside a distillery's usual house style is welcome if it tastes better for it, and the team rates maturity over sheer age, so the oldest barrel is not automatically the one that gets bottled. Each release is meant to stand on its own as an expression of a place, a year or a still.

Across the range that reaches RumX, that selection shows up as a profile the community tags most often as woody, vanilla and dried fruit, with caramel and tropical fruit close behind.

The Classic Range is the entry point, built so each bottling is a clear standard-bearer for its origin, all sitting around 40.5% ABV. Curated by Felix Dear, it currently spans four origins: the Barbados Classic Range Barbados, the Classic Range Guatemala, a Classic Range Jamaica with the island's typical fruit and funk, and a softer Classic Range Nicaragua. It is the easiest way to taste how one bottler reads four very different rum countries.

Alongside the Classic Range sit cask-strength single casks from named distilleries, often sought-after or closed ones. From Foursquare in Barbados, run by the Seale family, comes a column-and-pot blend like this Foursquare 2010. From the long-closed Caroni distillery in Trinidad, demolished in 2002, come the heavy, tar-and-tropical bottlings collectors chase, such as this Caroni 1997. And from Guyana's Demerara stills come spirit-led rums like the Versailles 1985, distilled on a wooden pot still. New single casks join the line-up regularly, so the live catalog above is the place to check what is in stock.

The rum range is curated by Felix Dear, Berry Bros. & Rudd's Spirits Curator. He came to spirits through whisky, from a childhood near Scotland's Royal Lochnagar distillery to hosting tastings at Speyside's Highlander Inn and the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in London, then buying world-whisky casks at Atom before joining Berry Bros. & Rudd. That single-palate, named-curator approach is why the range hangs together rather than reading like a random parcel of casks.