One night in the Rum and Crab Shack, a charming rum bar and seafood restaurant in St. Ives, Cornwall, the owners Chris McGuire and Neythan Hayes were sipping the Venezuelan rum Diplomatico. The conversation led to their mutual love of great-quality rum, and the two decided to create one of their own. After all, they owned a restaurant stocked with the stuff.
The launch of Dead Man’s Fingers rum
At the 2015 Port Eliot Festival, they launched the decidedly maritime-themed Dead Man’s Fingers, a spiced rum made with a mix of Bajan and Trinidadian spirits with an array of spices including saffron, nutmeg, cinnamon, and orange. It’s also the first spiced rum to be blended and bottled in Cornwall. After initially being created as a house rum for the restaurant, its popularity quickly grew and it was soon released commercially.
Aside from the classic spiced rum at the core of the range, what sets Dead Man’s Fingers apart is its unique range, including some pretty unconventional flavour profiles. Let’s take a look at 10 great examples from the range.
The Rums
#1 Cornish Spiced Rum
To kick things off, we have the original spiced rum that started it all. This was a gold award winner at the 2020 Rum Masters and it has a beautifully fruity profile. You’ll get plenty of cinnamon and pepper, notes of dried peels, tropical fruits, and creamy vanilla sweetness. The original Dead Man’s Fingers works beautifully over ice, but we also love it in a Spiced Mojito.
#2 Passion Fruit Rum
Spiced rum and the tart, sweet-sour perfume of passion fruit is a devilishly drinkable combination. There’s plenty of caramel sweetness, and soft notes of nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon, too, bringing bags of complexity. Try this stuff in a Passion Fruit Rum Punch or even in a modified Hurricane cocktail.
#3 Cherry Rum
Bottled in a red skull-shaped jar, the Cherry Rum is a rich, intense, fruity concoction. We get notes of tropical fruit, caramel, cinnamon and spice with a rich ripe tangy cherry note. Fill a highball with ice, squeeze in the juice of half a lime, add a large measure of the Cherry Rum, and top with Cola. The result is…well, the result is you’ll make another one immediately after.
#4 Pineapple Rum
An incredibly luscious, tropical addition to the range, the Pineapple Rum captures the tart, bright flavours of fresh pineapple. It’s complemented by a base of caramel, cassia, spice, mango and hints of ginger, and it is really rather good. This is great in desserts, and it’s equally great with lemonade and plenty of ice.
#5 Tequila Coffee Rum
Another skull-shaped jar, this time filled with a wonderful mix of spiced rum, Tequila, and fresh coffee. Utterly unique, but really interesting too. The component parts are all there, but together they combine to form something really special. We get notes of chocolate, spice, dried orange peels, mixed nuts, an earthiness, and something slightly herbal.
#6 Banana Rum
The Banana variant of Dead Man’s Fingers is really decadent. It has all the sweetness you’d expect, but with a wonderful cooked banana note too, almost like banana flambéed in rum. There’s a little honey, a dash of cinnamon, and just a whisper of black pepper. Obviously, this is brilliant in a Banana Daiquiri. It’s also great in an extra fruity twist on a Piña Colada.
#7 Coffee Rum
Finally, we have the Coffee rum. This is a simple yet effective blend of their beautiful Cornish Spiced rum and rich, oily, intense coffee. We get a mix of chocolate orange, Christmas spice, orange peel, and hints of vanilla. It’s so good that it also picked up gold at the Rum Masters and the International Wine and Spirit Competition!
This is just a sampler, but the Dead Man’s Fingers range is vast. Click here to have a look at the full selection. Alternatively, it’s well worth browsing our selection of flavoured rum and spiced rum.
