Hi community,
I’ve got a short question for you to discuss:
What will you drink, when the last bottle of caroni rums on this planet is empty, what is a comparable taste?
Greetings
Patrick
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Continue like I have always done by not putting preferences into my selection of rums 
I’m not into the Caroni hype and know that the coming releases will soon surpass the 1000 Euro mark at release 
There will always be a Caroni available, just a matter of how deep your pockets are.
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Drink something else. Thats the beauty of Rum. The variety.
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in case you are looking for ‚caroni-esque‘ rums, some TDLs come pretty close, particularly the 2001 RA TDL. But they are also a different kind of animal, quite heavy on the menthol side…
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I totally agree with @KevinDK .
Rum has this strength that not all spirits have, which is to offer a particularly wide range of flavors, even within the same country of origin.
Today, even if I am far from having tasted as many products as many of you, I am starting to have a catalog of flavors that I appreciate more or less, a certain knowledge of the types of rum.
It also makes my perception of what I drink evolve. At one point in my discoveries, I was fascinated by extreme flavors, for the excitement it brought to taste this kind of products (big esters like TECC, some caronis…).
But with the time, I realize that I am happy to taste these products but that I am quickly bored if I buy the bottle. I could summarize that I find them more interesting than good.
So today what I take into account is the emotion and the pleasure that it gives me to discover and taste a rum. At the rhumfest, when I arrive to taste the Hampden H from Swell, it’s great. It’s a great Hampden H… again. Like all the latest ones released (Old Brothers, Plantation, Swell etc.). So I don’t really have any particular emotion because I’m in too familiar territory. Same “problem” with the diamond MDXC from RDL.
On the other hand, when I taste the Vast at Savanna, I had a real emotion to discover it because it surprised me. I found it so different from what they released before, offers really original scents (flowers, like geraniums!!), but still very pleasant.
In the end it is certainly not the best bottle that was at the rumfest, for sure, but it is the one that gave me the most beautiful emotion to discover. This is not the case for everyone, I was discussing it with @CalDon and he didn’t think it was that great.
(It’s all so personal, that’s the limit to the system of ratings and purchases based on reviews from bloggers and experts, but that’s another subject).
All this to say, I’m not going to look for which distillery will offer me same flavors than I already know, but rather, which bottlings will really make me feel something. And we can have surprises (to be honest, I did not expect that from this savanna and I hope I will have confirmation of this feeling when I receive the bottle, because the perception of what one drinks and eats is also largely different depending on the environment and what one has eaten/drank before).
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Thanks Rod, I can 100% sign this.
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Yes, there will be Caronis for ever, as many bottles bought now will almost never being opened. But the prices will be so high it will be the same, for normal people, as a complete disappearance. So there is now like a last window of opportunity to buy Caronis at a « normal » price. Like the RX 1619 a rare Caroni from 1995 you can find at Master of Malt for CHF 124.-
That said, there is a wonderful way to discover new rums here : the samples sold by members to other members usually with some advices.
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Yeah, as it was said, I think that Caroni will surely live longer than any of us. Maybe we will surpass the original Tate and Lyle Caroni but the Velier’s are so recognizable and iconic that they will be kept forever, though the proces will defenetely increase rapidly (and since we all know it, I think we also know what to do with this knowledge 
).
With that being said, I think my interests are certainly not limited to Caronis. Their eventual disapearence would be the end of some era, but not a catastrophy. I think I drink rums to try and explore them, so once I know something I usually switch to something else, even though the previous one was great. I focus on trying new things much more than coming back to my favourites, actually.
Don’t loose hope though. There will always be something outstanding to drink. Even if anything from my four favorurites Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana suddenly disappeas (sorry for sharing such a horrible vision) I think I would still find vast enjoyment in rum. And who knows what is still coming… Note that many distilleries begun operation in the last two decades, I’m curious to find out what a 30-year-old Japanese rum tastes like, for instance.
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As much as I agree with most of the sentiment in this thread, I would differ on the point of the death.
I think it already died. Almost 20 years ago when the distillery closed down for good and no matter what, we will never get it back, since the yeasts are probably gone for good. It is the mere echo of something once alive, only remembered. There is nothing new to discover (albeit for a personal experience) just the stewardship of the past…
And yes, it is still full of exiting things to come, so nothing to worry.
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as you are asking what comes closest to the Caroni‘s (HTR) I‘d say look into Demerara (anyway my preference…wait, Damoiseau, Courcelle…there are quite some full bodied, heavy rums out there which brings the flavors of plum, raisins, tannins, would, tar)
We might need more of the rare spanish style heavy rums
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