How do you discover new bottles to buy?

General
1

How do you discover new bottles or brands? Do you have a local dealer, find them here in the app, onlineshops or a different way?
Looking forward to your answers.

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2

In two ways:

  1. by reading almost anything someone writes in this forum
  2. by looking through the new releases popping up at my local liquor store

I have to admit though that that doesn’t seem to be enough as I am late to the party more often than not.

Another factor is that I don’t want to (and am not able to) spent that much money on rum so that I don’t blindly buy any expensive bottlings. And once I had the chance to taste them the really good stuff is often gone already, at least in the stores that are not adding a hefty premium to such releases.

But if you are interested in discovering new brands or styles in general it gets a lot easier: look through the tastings of other people in the RumX App and get a sample of whatever sounds good to you from some one in this forum. If you like it you can look for the same or a similar bottle to buy.
If you have some specific notes or other features you like in a rum you may also consider to ask the (very knowledgeable and experienced) people in this forum if they can recommend anything that might suit your palate.

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3

By tasting a lot of samples :joy:

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4

I haven’t bought a full bottle in ages :joy:. The sample business in this forum is just too good.

But I know my preferences (Guyana is at the bottom of my heart) and I know which marques I like the most. If there is some new release at decent price I’d get it from online store. The old and rare stuff (and I want to try so much in this category) I source from auctions.

So, if you are at the beginning of your journey, aim at defining your preferences. Try to explore new territories, instead of staying in the comfort zone. And for this, use samples, there’s nothing worse than a neglected bottle at the bottom of your cabinet, waste of money and rum :slight_smile:

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5

In the beginning I read a lot of reviews on blogs. I guess I read thefatrumpirate twice, scr once, and the rest of them at least half of the texts. I tried to figure out, what’s interesting and affordable.

By now, the app, this forum, and many samples are driving my rum experience.

For news I follow my favorite bottlers and brands on Instagram where most of the news is posted as well (as I have no facebook)

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6

Ah yes and the obvious Facebook groups are a very fast and reliable source to see whats coming out. At least if the majority of the people in there is italian or french based. German groups I tend to avoid since its always the same circlejerk about certain “cool” brands and bottlers.

Examples: Rum Friends, Rum Collectors, La Confrerie du Rhum, Run to the Rum

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7

I started off seeing deals for rum on hotukdeals (mainly Amazon deals) then I use rum ratings to see how the bottle fairs and have found this app a few days ago. Rhum attitude seems pretty good for samples but I haven’t purchased from them yet.

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8

I use all of the above.
Plus; social media is amazing for news in the spirit-world. Many distilleries have an instagram or Facebook account, and they sometimes tease news before the general public knows about it.
Reddit also has some new info once in a while.
Other than that, there are podcasts and e-mail newsletters you can subscribe to

5 Likes