Having tried the rather awful Khmer whisky I was tempted to give up on my Cambodian moonshine quest until I ended up at a closing down sale. One of the few positives about this whole COVID-19 thing is the odd closing down sale. Thus I was thrust into the liquor department of the a soon to be closed duty-free store.
Sora Khmer Rum is another Cambodian drink like Cambodian Beer, Ize Cola and Khmer Whisky which for some reason have almost no internet presence bar, only a Facebook page. In fact the only real comment I saw was that it might be the “best rum you have never had”.
The rum is produced and bottled by Khmer Jyoryu Co.LTD in Battambang, Cambodia. Again there is scant information online, but I will go out on a limb and say like most things it is a Chinese joint-venture.
The presentation is extremely good with the following not so great English on the bottle;
“Rum borns in peace-restored field, where it was minefield before. Attempt to improve local industry for community development and sustainable livelihood in the future, we tried to make the auricle Rum and succeeded in producing a distinct and deep flavor of rum”.
Quite the mouthful! I’ll guess that the Chinese translation is a bit better!
So on to the important shit, how does Sora Khmer Rum taste? Well firstly despite the lovely packaging it was a white, not dark rum. Initial smell was of licorice and it reminded me of super strength Wray & Nephew from Jamaica, as did the taste. It felt a lot stronger than the advertised 40%. Not awful as white rums go and you will be happy to know it passed the ever so important Rum & Coke taste test…..
Sora Khmer Cassava Liquer
From what I can gather the second and newest product from the company and definitely not one that I cold hope to garner 300 words for.
Its a cassava liquor at 37%, which is again dressed up in sexy packaging with a bad English story on the side (I am not typing it out).
How does Khmer cassava taste? I’m not gonna lie I was kinda expecting something with habit more of a fruity taste, this was more like cassava brandy and at 37% not exactly what I expect from a liquer.
But at least we had made some progress on the search for Khmer moonshine. To be fair far better than Khmer Whisky, although you wouldn’t exactly stick bottles in your rogue survival kit either.
The Cambodian moonshine adventure continues….