Buy Penny Blue

Penny Blue is the rum label of the Medine distillery in western Mauritius, one of the island’s oldest sugar estates. The name nods to the Mauritius “Post Office” stamp, among the most coveted in the world, and the bottles lean on that collector’s angle with simple, clean packaging that reviewers like Blaidor repeatedly flag as good value.

Production centers on molasses-based rum distilled on the island, then aged in a mix of ex-bourbon, cognac and other casks for the XO, and increasingly in Oloroso sherry barrels for the limited releases. The house avoids added sugar, a point many in the community respect.

The range splits into two camps. The XO is the workhorse, bottled around 40 to 43 percent, showing oak, cocoa, baking spice, a little citrus and a touch of smoke, with a finish most describe as medium to short. Then come the Single Cask and Rare Cask bottlings, often cask-strength near 60 percent, carrying dried fruit, raisin, cherry, leather, roasted wood and caramel from the sherry. These are the ones that reach into the mid 8s, though a few tasters feel the sherry can bury the rum’s native profile.

How people drink it: the XO handles both neat and mixed, with X-Savior finding it clean over ice and workable with cola. The single casks ask to be sipped slowly, a sample at a time, as an after-dinner pour or something to share with a guest who appreciates sherried spirits.

With a median of 7.9/10 across the catalogue, Penny Blue rewards drinkers curious about Mauritian rum who want honest, unsweetened bottlings and don’t mind a bit of variability between the easygoing XO and the bolder cask releases.