Kōloa Rum Company Store & Tasting Room — Local services in Kauai

Let start that I am well familiar with Koloa and have enjoyed the product for years. I was very excited to go to tasting and learn more about the distillery, sources, and product while hopefully be able to taste both flagship and unique offerings. For me, this was a bit disappointing.

Starting with some positives: The grounds around are gorgeous! The shop is lovely, lots a enhancing local products from chocolates to syrups to coffee to cakes. Shop staff was extremely friendly and helpful. And of course Koloa's full range is available in both 750 and 50 ml bottles.

Then the not as good: The best description of the tasting was frenetic. Our host was very nice but she was clearly working off a sales script. It felt like a trade show pitch. Extremely fast, detailed on script but unable or willing to answer questions. Our tasting was 4 rums and a premix cocktail. The rums were all standards, white, dark, coconut, and coffee. The premix was the POG. You did not get to taste the aged 5 yr, the cacao, the spiced or the gold. I felt this is a bit off, most tastings run a full gamut or at least split between half flagship/base and half premium or specialty. Not offering the aged or cacao is a big miss as I'm not willing to risk $125 to taste the aged (thankfully they have 50 ml in store but still around $15). The guide spoke in depth about the cacao (which we didn't taste) and coffee process but wouldn't answer a simple question about the coconut. In fact the exact answer was "i know but i'm not allowed to say because its not on the script". Not looking for trade secrets just same basic as waa just discussed for 2 other products. But the big thing that did it for me and why this is 3 star not 4 is they didn't offer water OR ALLOW US TO DRINK our own! I've never been to any tastings of anything (from whisky to wine to coffee) that didn't have water on the table or at least allow you to drink your own. We didn't even rinse the glasses between rums! Very much ruins the tastings.

On the up side the tasting room is lovely and well set up. Not crowded at all.

Finally on the up, all the rum is really good! This won't put me off the products, they are great, but i can't recommend the tasting. Just by a sampler of the 50 mls and...

If you are a rum lover don’t waste your time at Kōloa Rum. If you like overly sweet and simple tasting rums/cocktails this is the place for you. I’ve been to many bourbon and rum tastings and this was by far the worst tasting I’ve attended, the only redeeming quality is that the tasting was free and all I had to pay for was the $5 booking fee.

The tasting started with our guide explaining how they are part of only 5% of rum producers that use raw sugar instead of molasses. They explained they use raw sugar because it doesn’t impart any of the flavors a distiller gets when using molasse and therefore creates a clean smooth rum with a cotton candy aftertaste and no complexity.

The guide then went on to have us taste their “gold” rum. She assured us that the gold from the rum was not from aging but was from adding sugar (I.e. caramel coloring) and they do it to make a sweeter rum offering. While the rum is technically a “gold” rum this shortcut is generally used by lower quality distillers to trick customers into thinking the rum was aged when it was not.

The remaining 30 minutes of the tasting was filled by our guide explaining how to use the rum for everything but drinking. She explained how she likes to use each type of rum in baking, barbecuing, marinating, deglazing and even cleaning. The only time drinking the rum was mentioned was when the guide spoke about using their coffee rum liqueur to make an espresso martini.

The fact that their guide didn’t speak at all about drinking the rum they cultivate, combined with the admitted shortcuts in their “gold” rum showed me that Kōloa isn’t about making a high quality rum. Koloa Rum Company is about making the least complex rum in order to pump out premixed cocktails with Hawaiian branding.

The one good thing from the tour is their relationships building with other local producers. Our guide spoke about how they partner with Kauai Coffee and Lydgate Farms to make products that are mutually beneficial. We however did not have the opportunity to try these offerings during...

Came in for the rum tasting.

This was a fun little excursion. Costs nothing. There may be a small booking fee if you book online. We simply booked at the gift shop and it was $free.99.

These tours get crowded and booked out. So we suggest you book early. There was only two of us, so we took our chances and got into the last tour of the day at 4pm.

Tastings are on the hour from 10am-4pm (as of this writing). They last around 35 minutes.

There is a dedicated tasting room that is setup like a bar.

You don’t get to taste everything. Only a small amount and maybe 4 of the 16 or so things they have to offer. Each day is a different variety of tastings. We tasted the clear white rum, the cacao (chocolate), coconut, Dark Rum and the pineapple passion.

The coconut and Cacau are interesting as they run at a higher proof. They are not liquor’s. They are flavor infused rum.

Kōloa is the oldest Rum distillery in Hawaii (at a young 16 years of age) and distinguishes itself from other rum makers around the world as they use pure cane sugar and not syrup in the production of their rum.

The tasting experience is fun. It’s a subtle sales pitch. But also very informative with lots of hints about how to use and mix the rum for drinks or cooking.

We enjoyed it and it was a fun way to spend some time on a rainy day.

Stop in. The tasting room is very close to Lihue city center and easy to get to. Get a dole whip next door when you are...