Is Myers’s Rum Ever Worth $80?

A bottom-shelf spirit strives to to marry its way to the top

Myers’s Rum is a spirit shapeshifter — a bottom-shelf rum that styles itself as top-shelf, billing itself as a “tradition in a glass,” filled with “timeless Jamaican flavor since 1879.”

The label of the standard bottling makes big promises: “100% Fine Jamaican Rum,” “World Famous,” with depictions of four gold medals it won at industrial and agricultural shows in 1910. It’s all set against a stylized illustration of casks and a distillery, surrounded by lush tropical plants beneath a post-nuclear yellow sky.

And all this comes in a plastic, mouthwash-shaped bottle for $17.50 — about $2 cheaper than 70-proof Malibu Black.

But Myers’s aspirations appear to be rising. Last October, the Sazerac Company, which acquired the brand seven years ago, launched the Myers’s Signature Cask Collection — five limited-edition Myers’s rums, each aged in barrels retired from the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection. These included casks that previously held George T. Stagg, William Larue Weller, Sazerac Rye 18 Year Old, Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye, and Eagle Rare 17 Year Old.

I finally had a chance to taste through the collection last week at the Rum Rendezvous, a fundraiser for the nonprofit Friends of the Cabildo — an organization in New Orleans whose board I’ve served on for several years.

Putting Myers’s in fancy casks is a bold experiment. But is it a creative act of spirit aging — or just clever marketing?

It’s a recent pivot for Myers’s, but not its first reinvention. The rum has roots to 1879, when various rums were sold by Fred L. Myers, a Jamaican import/export entrepreneur whose family, one account noted, could trace its “descent back to the Dons of Spain, in the times of the Inquisition.” From his Sugar Wharf warehouse in Kingston, Myers shipped all manner of goods — ginger, coffee, sugar, honey, orange oil, and “Turks Island coarse salt.”

Rum, however, was “their great speciality,” a 1909 account noted. Myers’s offered rums “white and coloured, from the best distilleries, in puncheons and casks, from current crop to rum fifteen years old, for local trade and for export.”

During Prohibition, the Myers’s brand became closely tied to Planter’s Punch, a wildly popular meme drink of the 1920s. Americans fleeing the drought of the dry decade flocked to the Caribbean and sought it out. Recipes varied, but one constant was “pure Jamaican rum.”

“I soon found myself in the Myrtle Bank Hotel, and a planter’s punch soon found itself in me,” wrote a New York theater critic in 1921. “A planter’s punch is made of pure Jamaica rum, a little cane syrup, cracked ice along with a slice of native pineapple and orange to make it more attractive. If one is fancy at all, one can have a cherry in it, too.”

Myers’s leaned in, branding itself “Planter’s Punch Rum” — a label designation that lasted much of the 20th century. (The banner across the label now reads “Original Dark.”) The rum’s fortunes rose with the Planter’s Punch craze.

When that wave receded, Myers’s rebranded again — this time as “a true Jamaican rum,” the essential component of all tropical cocktails. “If your rum drinks taste like you forgot the rum, try Myers’s Original Dark Rum,” read one ad in the 1980s.

When the cocktail renaissance blossomed in the early 21st century, bolder, funkier Jamaican rums began to dominate: Smith & Cross, Hamilton, Worthy Park, Hampden Estate. Myers’s lost the street cred it once had as a flavorful Jamaican rum. By the time Diageo acquired it from Seagram in 2000, Myers’s was already settling to the bottom shelf like so much sediment.

In 2018, Diageo shifted its focus to premium lines and sold off 19 of its value brands to Sazerac for $550 million. Sazerac today markets itself as a purveyor of elite, almost cultish whiskies — Weller, Pappy Van Winkle, Elmer T. Lee, among others. But those are just the tip of a pyramid. The base? Brands like Fireball, Popov Vodka, Goldschläger, Dr. McGillicuddy’s Mentholmint Liqueur, and Canadian Mist — all unmentioned on Sazerac’s main website.

I haven’t been drinking Myers’s regularly enough to track how the flavor has evolved since Sazerac took over. But online commentary suggests the results haven’t been winning many converts.

From RumRatings.com:

• “It tastes like mild medicine and alcohol served on a wooden spoon.”

• “Not a sipping rum, but an upgrade to whatever they use for the bar rum at resorts.”

• “Worst crap I’ve ever tasted.”

It fares better when viewed as a cocktail ingredient — especially if you need a molasses-heavy note. As one Reddit user put it: “It will almost never be my bride when I am making a drink, but it very often is the maid of honor to help create something fun.”

So, how do you revive a brand that’s slowly sunk in public esteem?

One option: marry above your class.

Sazerac owns many of the most revered whiskey labels in America and has a surplus of empty barrels. In recent years, barrel aging in “exotic” casks has become a sleight-of-hand to add depth — or prestige — to otherwise unremarkable spirits. Japanese mizunara casks can give flabby whiskey some spine. One tequila maker ages its spirit in casks that formerly held peach wine or spiced apple cider.

Marrying dowdy Myers’s Rum to Eagle Rare 17 Year or W.L. Weller not only has the potential to boost flavors and the marketing glow, but also serves as a handy bridge. For over a decade, American rum has been chasing after bourbon drinkers, seeking converts with whiskey-like oakiness and bite. Whiskey fanciers loathe to sip rum may be less hesitant when offered a dram that partnered with a coveted antique whiskey collection. They may not spring for a $1,500 bottle of Stagg (if they can even find one), but $80 for a limited-edition cask-aged rum? That feels like an affordable luxury.

And how is it?

At the Rum Rendezvous, my palate was already fatigued — I’d sampled a dozen rums before getting to the Signature Cask Collection. Still, I found the Myers’s selections surprisingly tasty. I especially enjoyed the heightened complexity of the George T. Stagg cask version (100 proof, which might’ve helped).

The next day, I stopped by the Sazerac House on Canal Street and spent $80 on a bottle of the Stagg release. Back home, with a refreshed palate, I dove back in.

My first impression: this is a huge spirit. It plays to the back row in a very large theater. It booms with deep, basso profondo notes — oaky, smoky, with a charred character reminiscent of a campfire recently extinguished by rain. To be honest, it left me a little queasy — like I’d smoked half a black, dense cigar.

It was bold and flavorful, but also felt like a forced marriage — one where the partners never quite agree on the fundamentals. So, to (finally) answer the question: Can Myers’s Rum be worth $80?

For me, not so much, or at least not yet. You can marry up — but for this rum, the nuptials couldn’t mask a century-plus of hard living and bad habits.