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This finally arrived on the shelves of our Provincial gov't's liquor monopoly shelves. Looking forward to try it ASAP.

For the last couple of years I’ve noticed quite a few discussions regarding these two rums, on this forum and others, whether Seleccion de Maestros (SdM) is just Barrel Proof (BP) relaunched or if it is a new product. Actually the first time I remember talking about this was at a lunch in La Barca in Havana hosted by Hunters and Frankau during the festival in 2011. I noticed the Seleccion de Maestros on sale in the restaurant, it was the first time I had seen it and I asked one of the waiters if I could have a look at a bottle, I thought I was quite clear with my “solo para ver”. There were about 30 of us at the lunch and the next thing I saw was 2 bottles of the stuff being opened for 30 glasses. Seeing the Hunters bods scramble around for the extra 280 CUCs for the booze made it all the sweeter. Anyway, at that lunch, somebody was telling me how the SdM tasted different to the BP. Smoother, less heat, etc. So finally I got around to organising a tasting. It wasn’t blind, we all knew what the two rums were as the whole point was to see if there was a difference between them, not how good they are. We did a triangular tasting, two of one and one of the other. This cuts the odds of simply guessing correctly down to 33% from 50%. We had our usual place sort out 18 identical glasses with labels 1 to 18 on them. Two tests were done. The first with three glasses of neat rum and a second round with one cube of ice in each glass with the rum. Unfortunately our usual volunteer guinea pig for this stuff, Yiorgos, wasn’t available so we put together an “expert” panel. Rum drinkers extraordinare Rob Fox, Stuart Fox and Harry Leech. Me. Rafael Agapito, founder member of the Irish Rum Society and has recently launched his own Cachaça brand and, at the last minute, Chris Binchy, former chef and food critic for the Sunday Tribune here. Barrel Proof has been around a while. I started buying a couple of bottles a year on my travels, not that it’s my favourite rum, it’s that I can find it cheap. Seleccion de Maestros, I haven’t had too often. A few times over the last 2 years and only in Cuba until now. Both rums are bottled at 45% vol. and, having a close look, are exactly the same colour. I poured for everyone else, Rob poured for me and we got down to it. Some people took tasting notes, Stuart wrote an essay, others just marked down flavours/differences. Here are the results. As you can see from the chart, none of us got it right in the first round, though I did guess the odd one out. I could absolutely put that down to luck. In the second round with ice, Stuart and Harry got it right. Although at 2 out of 6, that’s well within statistical error. Given 3 glasses of similar looking liquid with one odd one out, just guessing will get it right 33% of the time. Anyway, since two got it right in the second round, we tried it again, with ice, for those two. Both of them in the third round got it wrong again, guessing the incorrect glass as the odd one out. So, while I’m not expecting this to settle anything regarding these 2 rums, I think it shows that when it comes down to it, there is no discernible difference between the two. As far as any of us could tell, it’s the same rum. For anybody who has found a difference, I do know that perception and expectation can play a large role in experiencing flavours. If you don't believe me, organise a tasting and see. It was a fun night, I like this stuff, we did a tasting a while ago which was a double blind triangle tasting of 2 cigars. That showed very interesting results which I must get around to posting up here. Stuart's final tasting comment from the night, "the first round has me half cut but all are better than Budweiser"..

Saw this in my FB feed. Cuba wins Havana Club trademark dispute. Time to grab some "Havanista" bottles as collectibles?