Bruno Mars Rum

Bruno Mars’s love of rum has led to him co-owning a brand distilled in Panama, and the latest expression is their Bruno Mars SelvaRey Owner’s Reserve.

Bruno Mars with his SelvaRey Owner's Reserve Rum — Bruno Mars with his SelvaRey Owner’s Reserve Rum

Bruno Mars is a man of many musical talents, and he’s one of the biggest-selling artists of all time with over 130 million records sold worldwide. His YouTube channel has over 36 million subscribers, at the time of writing, and he’s won so many awards that it needs a separate (and huge) Wikipedia page to list them all.

Bruno Mars and SelvaRey

In 2014 SelvaRey, then a small rum brand from Panama, began catering Bruno Mars’s parties and events. In 2015 Mars met one of the founders of SelvaRey, Seth Gold, and was so enthusiastic about the rum and the company that he bought a stake in it.

Bruno Mars SelvaRey Owner's Reserve Rum bottle in box — Bruno Mars SelvaRey Owner’s Reserve Rum

SelvaRey Rums

The distillery is in the small Panamanian town of Pesé. Till Bruno Mars came along they’d only released two expressions, a White Rum and a Chocolate Rum. SelvaRey is made at a single estate rum distillery, where everything takes place. It starts with harvesting their own sugarcane, which they turn into molasses, and ends with bottling the rums.

The SelvaRey Distiller

SelvaRey’s rums are made by distiller Don Francisco ‘Pancho’ Fernandez, who has quite a story to tell. He was born in Cuba where he would cut sugarcane as a boy. He began to work for Havana Club, where it was discovered that he was one of those few people who had an extraordinary sense of smell, a man with a nariz dorada or ‘golden nose’. He rose to the top of the ranks with Havana Club.

Fernandez was sent on a mission by the Cuban government to help the Panamanian rum industry. While in Panama he fell in love with a Panamanian woman, and after 35 years working in the Cuban rum business, he moved to Panama and started his own distillery. Little did he know that his carefully hand-crafted rums would eventually be discovered by one of the greatest musical artists in the world.

Bruno Mars’s Rum

Bruno Mars is very much a hands-on guy, and he got involved with the distiller with the aim of producing his very own Owner’s Reserve Rum. It would be the best rum that Fernandez had ever produced, but only after many experiments was Bruno Mars’s rum born. It’s a blend of 15-year-old and 25-year-old rums, which are themselves both blends of the best rums of their time. The rums are then aged in American oak barrels till the ‘golden nose’ decides that the rum is at its peak. The rum is then bottled at 40% ABV (80 proof).

Bruno’s Bottles

The first thing to say about the rum is not the spirit itself, but the bottle. It’s a work of art, and has been designed by Bruno Mars himself. He came up with the bottle shape, the logo, the wording, and even the materials to be used. He also designed the presentation box, and the classy green and gold bottle is definitely something you’ll be keeping. It’s a limited edition and is sure to become a collector’s item.

Tasting Bruno Mars’s Rum

So far, so good. It’s a fascinating story that has you wondering about the rum. Can it really be that good? Is it worth the high price? In an interview with Departures, Bruno Mars said this:

I was very involved. It was something I wanted us to develop because dark, aged rums are my favorite. I knew what I wanted. It had to be not just the best, it had to blow other rums out of the water.

The rum is a lovely, rich dark color, and you can smell its richness, even just taking the hefty cork out. Mars has described SelvaRey’s rums as ‘a vacation in a bottle’, and you know what he means from one sniff of the rum. He grew up on Hawaii, which is why rum became his go-to spirit, especially in exotic tropical cocktails.

This Owner’s Reserve is a tropical cocktail of aromas, all by itself. There’s some banana, brown sugar, and caramel, all delivering a natural sweetness. There’s a suggestion of chocolate, along with both a spiciness and a nuttiness.

Sipping it, it feels like you’re still on vacation but have moved to a slightly different tropical island. The sweetness is still there, with caramel, brown sugar, and toffee. The nuttiness is still there too, but on the palate it’s a little more like sherry. There’s a subtle spiciness too, though the taste of the rum is so complex that hints of different flavors keep coming around, the more you sip.

And this is a rum that’s only to be sipped. Don’t even ask about cocktails. Sure it’s a hefty price tag, but if you break it down and consider the bottle has over 21 standard shots in it, it works out at around $7 a shot. Would you pay $7 for a shot of one of the finest rums you’ll ever taste? It’s a no-brainer.