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524C8CBC-8E9A-4385-BF7A-B972CA259666Trinidad Caroni Mezan
Mezan Caroni Trinidad 1996 70cl bottle
Bottle
Aged rum · 20 years · 40%

Mezan Caroni Trinidad 1996

"Not a bad rum, but not a Caroni" — that verdict keeps coming up. The famous rubber and tar are missing here; what's left is a thin, watery body with light oak, vanilla, dried fruit and a hint of cocoa. The 1996 vintage and 20 years are real, but at 40% it drinks diluted, and the Caroni markers barely show through.

The community says
  • Easy to drink
  • Light dried fruit
  • But: Watery body

Offers & prices

No shop currently delivers to Germany.

The look inside the bottle

How does Mezan Caroni Trinidad 1996 taste?

Summarized by AI from community reviews.

Light, watery Caroni missing the tar and power Easy to drink but too watered-down to satisfy — most tasters rank it the weakest Caroni they've had, fine as a first taste of the distillery.

Perfect for

first-time Caroni tasters wanting something gentle

Less suitable for

Caroni fans chasing tar and heft

Experience level · Explorer (3/5)

Style & occasion: Mature & oaky

Full aroma profile Aroma families · nose & palate · top aromas
Flavor profile
Sweet & dessert
Spice
Wood
Dried fruit
Roasted & dark
Fruit
Funk & ester
Vegetal & floral

Relative to this rum's strongest aroma family

10 of 16 left detailed tasting impressions · Click an aroma to explore similar rums

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Recommendation

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What does the community say?

7.4/10 Good

16 community reviews
10 selected write-ups on this page, all of them in the RumX app

Rate it in the app
Distribution of all 16 ratings
9–10 0%
8–9 19%
7–8 50%
6–7 25%
5–6 6%
4–5 0%
0–4 0%

See the full rating guide

Positive from 8.0 · Mixed 6.0–7.9 · Critical below 6.0

Review by Serge

Most helpful positive review

Serge
Mar 2024904 reviewsGermany
8.0/10

Tasted at the Catawiki stand at the Village in Nuremberg. For the price at the stand, something you can try, but unfortunately really only a sniff of the potential of the 1996 vintage. A lot of what you would expect from a rum, but - given the dilution - of course not what you would expect from a Caroni. But still a good rum.

Review by JFehr

Most helpful critical review

JFehr
Sep 2024181 reviewsGermany
5.0/10

Unfortunately heavily diluted.

Review by cigares

cigares
Oct 20241,173 reviewsSwitzerland
7.8/10

A sample taken at the German Rum Festival 2024. A beautiful nose, ample with tropical fruits, light wood and gourmand pastry notes. The mechanical workshop is in the background. The mouth is watery, diluted with almost no flavors. I struggle to spot the Caroni markers. The finish is short with slight pastry notes. Not at all a bad rum, rather easy to drink. But in no way up to what one can expect from a Caroni 1996.

Community shelf

13 bottles logged by 13 collectors.

A drinker's rum.

38% opened, 2 emptied.

8 sealed 3 open 2 emptied

What did the community pay for Mezan Caroni Trinidad 1996?

Avg. community purchase price 88 €.

What members paid for this bottle, self-reported. Not a market value — the purchases are over three years old at the median and unverified.

13 purchased · 17 tasted · 3 wishlist · as of

Details about Mezan Caroni Trinidad 1996

A rum from Trinidad, bottled by Mezan, at 40%.

DistilleryCaroni
CountryTrinidad
BottlerMezan
Raw materialMolasses
ABV40%
Age20 years
Vintage1996
Volume70cl

Read on in the RumX Guide

Caroni

Distillery

Caroni 

Avg Rating 8.8/10 over 620 Rums

No closed distillery is chased harder than Caroni. The Trinidad distillery shut down in the early 2000s and not a drop has been made since, but its heavy, oily, almost diesel-like rum became a collector obsession, carried to the world by Velier. Every bottle now comes from a finite, shrinking stock, even though auction prices for some Velier Caronis have fallen since 2022.

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Rating guide

Every score is the median of members’ ratings, from 0 to 10. A 7 is already a recommendation to buy.

Share of 11,159 rums with at least 4 ratings, calculated on October 14, 2026. Scale and calculation in detail ›