Grander Panama Rum Review

We’ve been reviewing rum from Central America and Mexico on this Luxury Latin America blog for close to 20 years now, so we’ve tried a lot of them in the pursuit of research. There once was a time when their wasn’t much to talk about when it came to Panama rum, but that has changed a lot in the past decade. One that has made great strides in getting the local scene noticed is Grander Panama Rum, available in several different options for sipping or making cocktails.

You can’t always judge a spirit by the bottle it’s in, but if there’s a hefty glass bottle that’s doesn’t seem like the whole reason for an inflated price, that’s a good sign. The inward sloping bottles that Grander Rum come in are heavy glass with some heft, ones where you can feel the branding as part of the bottle beyond just the label, making a good first impression.

This rum has pedigree too, using a master distiller who is famous in the country. I mentioned it earlier on my round-up of good rum from Panama that you can find at that link, but I had limited time to try things during my last visit to there and didn’t get to that one. Thankfully I had the chance while in the USA recently, so I can now talk about it with some authority.

I’ve been trying two versions of the many choices they produce and hope to widen the scope next time I’m in Panama. First a little back story about the company, then I’ll share my tasting notes from several sessions of enjoying this Panamanian rum.

Grander Rum is Making Their Mark

First of all, when they say this is a Panamanian rum, they mean it through and through. Local sugar cane, distilled there, aged and bottled there. The only element that’s foreign is the used bourbon or sherry barrels it is aged in, which is common for most premium rum brands. (You don’t find a lot of oak trees in the tropics, so even in the colonial days, the barrels came from elsewhere.)

There’s more of a connection to bourbon than the barrels though. Founder Dan DeHart came from Kentucky and worked in the bourbon industry before landing in Panama. He was a latecomer to rum and thinks that most of the US population is too, not realizing that the good stuff is ready to sip neat, on par with Scotch and bourbon.

He founded the company in 2015, using established distilleries and a master distiller that knew what they were doing so that it could hit the ground running. In the time since, their products have gotten high user ratings and won awards, especially their 8-year and 12-year versions, some of the former packaged as single barrel options.

Complex Trophy Release Aged Rum

If you’re someone who loves sipping fine rum and is frequently perusing the shelves for something new to add to your collection, the name of this one implores you to make space in the home bar for it. The Grander Rum Trophy Release deserves its moniker. Trophy Release is a premium Panamanian rum made from a blend of carefully selected rums aged roughly 8 to 15 years.

Blending versions with such varying ages requires skill, experience, and a bit of art to get right and in my opinion, they master distiller definitely got the blend right with this one. It’s a special sipping rum for sure, designed to highlight depth, balance, and maturity.

From the first sip and finish, it’s clear that this is a top-shelf spirt that’s not just using fancy bottling or clever marketing to give it cachet. It has all the expected elements of caramelized sugar, vanilla, and a few sprinkles from the spice rack, but it comes across as having far more depth in its flavors and balanced intensity than its under-$60 price tag would imply. There’s nothing “pruney” or cloying about it, the rum equivalent of a well-fitted custom suit where nothing looks out of place.

Trophy Release bottles may change from one purchase to the next because these are made from barrels deemed as outstanding, with aging time of 8 to 15 years. There’s a limit to each release, so far from 900 to 1,650 bottles.

You need to be careful with this one though: it’s 50% alcohol (or sometimes more) but it it doesn’t taste a full quarter stronger than your average rum. So go slowly and savor it.

El Toro Rum

This was one of the stranger rums I’ve tasted in the sense that it mellowed out after a while like many wines will do. When I first poured it and took a sip, I found it too astringent for my taste, a bit sour and with a very heavy whiff of alcohol in the nose. After I let it sit for a while in an open glass and came back to it, all those notes were noticeably dialed back a good bit, though there was still a stronger burn on the finish than I would like.

Taste is a very subjective thing with aged spirits though, whether it’s bourbon, Scotch, or rum. Some people love heavy rums from Jamaica or Barbados, others prefer the smoother butterscotch highland versions from Guatemala or Venezuela. I’m closer to the second camp in my preferences, so I didn’t like this one as much as the Trophy Release version.

The best analogy I can give is that it tastes like a Cuban rum to me, something like Havana Club, which makes sense when looking at who made it. The master distiller Francisco “Don Poncho” Fernandez, who has his hand in more than half the rum brands from Panama, including this one, is from Cuba originally. So if that island’s rum gets you excited, this will be a great match.

All that makes sense, of course, since most Panamanian rum is distilled and aged at sea level, like Grander Rum is. Since the aging process is rapid, the spirit absorbing the characteristics of the wood much faster, whatever the liquid is aging in is going to have an outsized impact in this climate.

Eventually I started mixing El Toro into cocktails and it really shined there. I didn’t have the ambition to make pina coladas, but when I made a batch of Dark and Stormy cocktails with ginger beers, this felt like a perfect match. It goes for $40 at Walmart in U.S. states where it’s available and is probably less in Panama, so you won’t feel guilty using this with a mixer.

Other Grander Panama Rum Options

Not very many people drink white rum straight, but if that’s your jam, check out the Grander Cane Harvest. I haven’t tried it, but the company says it is “a more structured and character-driven style than most white rums, with real weight, texture, and depth.” They point out that, “It is additive-free,” which I guess is an attempt to separate it from the lousy brands we should avoid anyway. I’m guessing this makes a much better cocktail than drek like Bacardi.

For aged options, they make an 8-year- and 12-year small batch blend, plus Toasted Oak bottlings made from rum aged in a second barrel after again for years. Another is finished in rye whiskey barrels instead of bourbon ones, imparting the spirit with a whole different flavor profile.

Then there are additional limited release and single barrel versions you can try, especially if you have some time in Panama to relax and sip some fine rum.

See more at the official GranderRum.com website. You can purchase from them direct if you don’t find it in a local store — depending on your state laws of course, which are a patchwork mess in the USA, unfortunately.

Review and photos by editor Timothy Scott, a spirits enthusiast and frequent rum reviewer.