Since I’m based in Mexico and the country seems to grow lots of sugar cane, it has been a mystery to me why they don’t produce more rum. So when I see a Mexican rum brand on the shelf I don’t recognize, I almost always buy it. So when I saw Ron La Gloria rum on the shelf at a fancy La Comer Fresko store in Los Cabos, I snatched it up and shared it with a friend I was staying with on the East Cape.
I paid around 600 pesos for this heavy bottle of aged rum which seems like a good value. That’s about $35 with the US dollar in the toilet as it is when I write this, but would be $30 when the peso is at 20, as it was at the end of 2024. That’s in the same range as Botran 8 and Flor de Cana 7 on a store shelf in Mexico.
As with Botron, the number is kind of meaningless though. Under the sistema solera method, that just means that the oldest rum in the mixture is eight years old and you have to just take it on faith that there’s more than a smidgen in there. It’s up to the master distiller to decide how much of the blend is aged that long and how much is aged four years or less. So each time you buy a solera rum, it’s kind of a crap shoot on how aged it really is.
Thankfully, it only took one sip to confirm that I hadn’t gotten a raw deal. While I wouldn’t rank La Gloria anywhere near the top of the best rums I’ve ever tasted, it’s certainly one of the best from Mexico, which is quite hit and miss on quality. (It’s a different story with mezcal and tequila as long as you buy what’s 100% agave.)
La Gloria Ron Añejo Tasting Notes
While this añejo rum isn’t on the same level as the smooth and complex Guatemalan ones and doesn’t have the heft you get from the Caribbean ones (if you’re after that), it’s a solid contender by Mexican standards. It’s made from the Diamante sugar cane grown in Veracruz that’s a hybrid cross-breeded with stock from Cuba. (The company founder was Cuban.) In theory that means you get the best of both worlds with this trademarked “Diamond Cane” and Veracruz has the best climate for the sugar cane crop in this country.
Online reviews have been mixed, but to me this came across as just a quality, middle-of-the-road rum that’s just trying to be good, not stand out as different. It’s smooth enough for sipping neat, with all the expected butterscotch and vanilla elements and some seriousness from the oak barrel aging. It is priced low enough to be a good cocktail rum though and that’s how two of us ended up finishing off half the bottle after the neat tasting. I’d buy it again in a heartbeat for that if I see it again in a Mexican supermarket.
I’ve tried a few other Mexican rums, from supermarket cheapies that taste cheap to steps up like Prohibido, Mocambo, and Ron Potosi. La Gloria ranks above the first two and on par with the last one. I’m still waiting to find a good Mexican run that is really aged the number of years it has on the bottle instead of using the solera method with no transparency, but I’m not sure if that day will come. You would think that a country used to waiting 10 or more years for agave to mature would be able to store rum for that long so we could get a good 7-year version straight up, but it hasn’t happened yet that I’ve seen.
I’m a little confused about how this solera rum that’s aged “up to 8 years” got to be so dark, and there’s not much information about their process on the website, but overall the presentation is good, with a hefty glass bottle and a nice nose when it pours.
It looks like from their website they only produce two products: this one and a bleached-out “cristilano” version that is also aged but doesn’t look like it. I guess that’s meant to please youngsters who want clear cocktails where the spirit doesn’t look like what it is.
Perhaps in the future we’ll get one that’s aimed at a higher market, but for now this is worth grabbing if you see it, assuming the price is right like it was for me.
Where to Buy La Gloria Rum
Like I said, I got my bottle in Mexico at a La Comer Fresko store and I haven’t seen it at my local La Comer. But Baja is a long way from Veracruz, so I assume it is widely distributed in Mexico. It seems to be in some Mexican Walmart stores because it’s on their website.
They do seem to have U.S. distribution as well because I spotted it on a few online liquor store sites like SipWhisky, SudsandSpirits, and Instacart. It looks like I might have overpaid: on that first site La Gloria rum is only $29, which takes from “decent value” to great deal for cocktails. At that price you can elevate your rum drinks to better quality but not feel like you’re wasting the good stuff.
