The citrus brought out certain flavors that were more subtle when tasting the rum neat, particularly ginger and cardamom. It worked, but a citrus-forward cocktail didn’t feel like the best way to really unlock Merrymeeting’s potential.

In Coke, however, it felt completely at home. The combination took on the characteristics of a sweeter amaro, like Averna. It’s the spiced-rum-and-coke for people who don’t drink spiced-rum-and-cokes. In fact, if I regularly stocked Coke in my fridge, I’m almost certain it would quickly earn a spot in my pantheon of go-to “I’m feeling lazy” drinks.

But if I had to pick one drink in which this spiced rum truly shined, it would be the one I least expected: hot chocolate.

The inspiration here was the verte chaud (AKA hot chocolate + green chartreuse). While I wouldn’t describe Merrymeeting as similar to green chartreuse, it does possess certain similar qualities—it is herbal, it is rootsy, and at 80 proof, it has enough heft to balance out its sweeter qualities.

As much as I’ve recently learned I love verte chauds, green chartreuse is so damn expensive I’m usually hesitant to make them. The rest of this sample of Merrymeeting will undoubtedly stand in to create a few more cups worth of this affordable alternative. Given the reddish hue owed to the beetroot and rooibos tea, perhaps an appropriate name would be the rouge chaud?

#3: Parchando 12 Colombian Rum (Aged 12 years, column distilled)

Parchando 12 is a molasses-based, column-distilled rum sourced from Casa Santana distillery in Barranquilla, Colombia, where it spent 12 years aging in used bourbon barrels.

Why is a rum distillery in Maine selling an aged Colombian rum alongside its own? According to McConnell, it’s to give customers a roadmap to the quality of aged rum Three of Strong would like to offer one day.

“We came to the decision pretty early on that we wanted to provide an aged product that was aspirational for where we want to be,” he said.

While some might interpret this reasoning as window dressing on an excuse to quickly expand their portfolio of spirits, I think there’s more to it. American rum distilleries are, in a sense, little rum embassies. For most customers walking through the doors for a tour and tasting, it’s the first time they’re really learning about what rum is and what it can be beyond whatever bottom shelf brands they associate with memories of their college dorm’s bathroom floor. Whatever they taste and learn at their local small distillery impacts their perception of the entire category, for better or worse.

By offering them an example of a long-aged, imported rum with no additives, you’re not just selling them on that particular bottle—you’re selling them on the potential of the entire category.

“The concept of sipping rums, for most of most of our non-industry friends, is fairly uncommon. It's not something that people associate with rum,” Pierce said.

Parchando 12’s job is to make sure those same people do start thinking of rum as something to be sipped. And for that job, it’s suited fairly well.

If the rums you’re used to enjoying neat are heavy-bodied, cask-strength flavor bombs, it might not offer the level of intensity you crave. But if you’re newer to rum, or sipping spirits neat in general, it’s a nice introduction to what you should expect from an unadulterated, long-aged rum. You get classic notes of toffee, dried fruit, coffee, and a bit of chocolate on the finish, without anything punching you in the face. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of rum I could see opening the uninitiated drinker’s eyes to the category. And it’s likely to continue playing that role for Three of Strong for at least a few more years.

“Until we've got something that is, maybe not 12 years old, but of an aged quality that's similar to this, we'll continue to source product,” McConnell said.

I’ll also add that it made a phenomenal rum old fashioned, which I appropriately enjoyed on the couch, on a Saturday, with the afternoon sun going down.