Bully Boy Distillers’ original Rum Cooperative blended rum, released just a few months ago, was a delightful oddity, a mashup of rum sourced from five different countries. Now, Volume 2 has arrived, and it’s also a blend from five nations — only one of which coincides with the quintet from Volume 1.

Here’s what you’ll find in Vol. 2:

37.2% 8 year old rum from Martinique
27.3% 12 year old rum from Panama
22.8% 12 year old rum from Mexico
6.5% 10 year old rum from Puerto Rico
6.2% 10 year old rum from Colombia

Says  Will Willis, co-founder of Bully Boy Distillers: “Volume Two has a higher proof, and also includes some rhum agricole in the blend making it great for mixing in cocktails. We hope folks have as much fun drinking it as we had making it.”

We gave it a try, and here’s what we thought.

Wow, this is a different rum from Vol. 1, and not in the way I was expecting. With all that rhum agricole, I was expecting a rich and hogo-heavy experience, but the nose says something else entirely. Impossibly sweet with a distinctly fruity cotton candy character, it’s simply overwhelming with sugar, the subtle notes of apples and elderflower all but buried under a mound of sweets. The palate doesn’t alter the focus one bit, its incredible sweetness never wavering, with that berry-scented cotton candy character enveloping every corner of your mouth.

The Rum Cooperative Vol. 1 was a very sweet rum, but Vol. 2 doubles down on that approach, making for an even more aggressively sweet experience. And while Vol. 1 remained approachable thanks to a host of secondary elements, Vol. 2 is simply too much, so much so that the base components just never find a way to truly shine.

84 proof.

B- / $36 / therumcooperative.com

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