Deco Coffee Rum

If there’s anything Portlanders love, along with beer and spirits, it’s coffee. Capitalizing on that love affair, Deco have taken their Silver Rum and flavored it with coffee from local favorite Stumptown Coffee Roasters. The result is an interesting spirit with more presence than most flavored spirits, but with far less sweetness than most flavored liqueurs.

Nose: Dark roasted coffee. Sweet but slightly warm nose. Some dark berry fruit like that found in the aroma of some fruitier, winier African or Indonesian coffees. Cane sweetness from the rum.

Taste: Bittersweet, strong, dark coffee. Oily and full-bodied. Coats the tongue, the mouth. Definite earthiness to it. Lightly fruity, like the nose, but with more bittersweet tastes and bitter dark chocolate flavors taking over. Relatively smooth.

Finish: Slightly bitter. Salty. Definitely earthy with a long, but not complex aftertaste. Just a long, bittersweet, coffee flavor.

Notes: Pronounced, rich coffee flavor that is not buried by too much sweetness like some popular coffee liquors. I look forward to substituting it for those in some cocktail experiments. I also see this working especially well with bitter chocolate and flavors of cherry, and orange peel.

They warn on the label that this may contain caffeine. Given the amount of coffee sediment at the bottom of the bottle I would not be surprised if it had quite a kick.

Deco Coffee Rum (Deco Distilling, Portland, OR) 80 proof, $27

(Sample provided by Deco Distilling.)