#NZbloggers are hosting a weekly blog post challenge. This week’s theme is From Below and you can check out other posts on this theme here.
New Zealand is a small cluster of islands in the southern hemisphere. Rum conjures up scenes of pirates and our little island nation seems to enjoy rum as much as any other island nation. I think it’s time to celebrate with three rums from below.
Rum from below:
Stolen
Stolen Rum is one of my favourite spirit companies and lives in Auckland. The company started in 2009 in a flat right here in Mt Eden and is now sold in the US and Australia with other markets on the horizon. They have clever marketing tactics and a smooth drop to back it up.
The rum is made in Trinidad and available in golden, white, dark and “spiced”. My favourite is the golden rum, although the white rum is pretty smooth for mojitos. Stolen launched Coffee & Cigarettes in the US but renamed it to Stolen Spiced for NZ and Australian markets. It’s pretty polarising in flavour. I’m not 100% sold on it yet, even though I’ve bought more than one bottle. It’s really smokey and tastes like coffee.
From a design point of view, I really liked their original bottle design with cork stopper and long elegant neck.
Bottles and branding design by local design genius Kevin Soh from DDMMYY.
37.5% alcohol by volume, 700mL bottle $45NZ
www.stolenrum.com
Rum from below:
Wild Days
Wild Days Rum is made on Waiheke Island which is a 45 minute ferry ride from downtown Auckland. Made from molasses and Waiheke rain water, Wild Days is aged for just 10 months on oak in barrels from Waiheke’s Te Whau Point Vineyard.
Wild Days comes in original flavour, Murder Rock Rum which is vanilla flavoured and Kill Devil Juice which is aniseed flavoured. Barrels are released one at a time with a limit of 300 bottles.
40% alcohol by volume, 700mL bottle $60NZ
www.wilddaysrum.co.nz
Rum from below:
Smoke & Oakum’s Gunpowder Rum
Smoke & Oakum’s Gunpowder Rum always caught my eye when we visited our local booze shop. I bought The Koala a bottle of Smoke & Oakum’s Gunpowder Rum for his birthday earlier this year. Made in Port Nicholson, Wellington, New Zealand the brown paper wrapper looks home made and the illustrated pin up pirate girls (which change regularly) on the label are hand coloured. The size and shape of the bottles also change.
Imported rums are blended and mixed with fresh NZ artesian water before being infused with organic chillies, native American ‘peace-pipe’ tobacco, and old-fashioned black gunpowder to create this fiery concoction.
Limited to 1000 bottles per year, each bottled is individually labelled and numbered. Bottles can be found in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, USA, France and the UK.
51.8% alcohol by volume, 700mL bottle $110NZ
www.gunpowderrum.com
Bunny Eats Design 
Ook, rum that tastes like coffee…yuck. But then I hate coffee. I love rum though. And really, they toss gunpowder into rum. That’s very…unique. I’ve taste gunpowder (a story for another day) and I can’t see why they’d want to add it, unless it’s marketing. 🙂 I’ll have to keep an eye out for these when I’m in the US.
I don’t mind the coffee in that one, it’s the smoke I find a bit too much. The gunpowder one mostly tastes like rum and chili which feels like quite a manly drink.
That Stolen Rum is gooood!
Agreed!
I love Stolen Rum – it’s my absolute favourite drink! What do you drink yours with?
Hi Georgie, I love the golden rum with ginger beer and the white rum with mojitos. Actually you can have golden rum with mojitos too. Mmmm…mojitos…
How do you drink yours?
Oooh yummy! I usually have their dark rum with diet coke or ginger beer as well. I did however try their spiced gold rum, mixed with a cocoloco coconut at an event and it was absolutely delicious! Must try it at home 🙂
Im not a big drinker, but one thing that I love about Stolen Rum is the bottle designs and the labels 🙂
Visiting your link from the linkzy
I’m a total sucker for pretty bottles and labels. 😀
I’m not a huge rum fan but man, the Stolen Rum packaging is mint.
You’re missing a few other NZ rums on here: Waiwera Spirits (Auckland), Liquid Alchemy (Nelson), and Murderer’s Bay (Takaka).