For 30 years now, the Drouin house has been distributed in Italy by Velier, the largest Italian spirits specialist. From these years of collaboration was born a sincere friendship between Luca Gargano, Christian and Guillaume Drouin.
In 2004, Luca discovered Caroni in Trinidad and Tobago, during one of his trips to the Caribbean, the forgotten stocks of a large state distillery founded in 1918 and closed in 2003. Caroni rums are among the most original in the world, heavy rums marked by notes of tapenade, pencil lead, petrol or even leather.
In 2020, Guillaume Drouin imagined a new challenge as exciting as it is demanding for Christian Drouin's Expérimental range and asked Luca if he could find him some empty barrels of these rums. Six barrels of Caroni 1996 are soon housed in the Daniel Flambard cellar in Pont l'Evêque and filled with a 17 year old calvados Pays d'Auge.
"We had to find a calvados that was powerful and structured enough to support the aromatics of these old Caroni casks. I usually push the reductions of our calvados quite far to find the best degrees of balance, but for this Caroni Angels, it seemed clear that the chosen calvados needed to be maintained at a higher degree. After maturing for 8 months in these casks, the balance seemed to me to have been reached and Caroni Angels was bottled at 48.8%.vol."
Tasting note:
On the nose, the aromas of roasted apple and dried apricot melt into expressions of leather, petroleum and brown sugar. The mouth retains the liveliness and freshness of calvados on the attack before revealing all its amplitude, richness and length. Toasted, smoky and baked apple notes intertwine on the finish.
ABV 48,8%
70cl