Trois Rivières Ambré Rhum Agricole

This one year old rhum agricole from La Mauny made us say “go on girl, give us nothing”.

Bottled at 40% ABV after aging for one year, Trois Rivières Ambré Rhum Agricole is the younger of the two expressions we tasted from the La Mauny distillery. At the time of writing Ambré gets only a 6.1/10 on RumX, compared with the Cuvee Du Moulin’s 6.4/10. While neither are stellar numbers, ratings on RumX within a lineup generally correlate with age, so a drop of 0.3 points with a drop of two years of aging is about what you’d expect.

We measured a density of 0.947g/cc and a refractive index of 1.3552, indicating no additives, in line with the requirements for the Martinique Rhum Agricole AOC.

On the nose you get a certain level of dusty funkiness that isn’t super pleasant. Classic agricole grass and apple are there, with a note of caramel that may have played better if it wasn’t fighting against the sort of off muskiness. The palate is pretty thin, and while the apple is joined by some ginger, there’s not much going on. The finish is light and short, continuing most of what was on the nose and palate.

In our blind taste test we thought it was just okay as a neat sipper (6.4/10), but pretty good as a mixer (7.8/10). Overall this rum doesn’t give much, and what it does give isn’t particularly flavorful.

The Superficial: A quality feeling bottle with nice glass details. The matte embossed labels isn’t winning design awards, but looks reasonably nice and feels good. The metal wrap around the top feels substantial and is fun to pull off, and while the natural cork is nice, I wish there was a wooden stopper.