Wajos Santas Spiced Rum. Rum with cinnamon, star anise, and spiced plum, 37.8 percent – the spiced rum to enjoy neat over ice and in mulled wine.

Wajos Santas Spiced Rum is a rum-based spirit with 37.8 percent alcohol, spiced with cinnamon, star anise, and spiced plums, 500 ml from Dohr on the Moselle. Not a pure Caribbean rum for collecting, not a liqueur, not a punch, but a spiced rum that smells sweet and bold and tastes of Christmas spices. For ages 18 and up.

Santas Spiced Rum from Wajos sits next to a classic rum like gingerbread next to a butter cookie. One is the original: sugar cane, cask, time, that’s all. The other takes the same base and gives it what December needs – cinnamon, star anise, plum. If you collect rum, you’ll be happier with the first. If you want a glass on a cold evening that smells like a Christmas market, go with the second. We receive frequent orders for this bottle – as a gift and for one's own winter evening.

Amber-colored, sweet-scented, cinnamon and star anise in the glass

The rum is amber-colored and has a sweet, bold aroma, first of cinnamon, then of star anise with its licorice note, followed by dark, cooked plum. On the tongue, at 37.8 percent, it is smoother than an overproof rum and rounder than a gin: warm, full-bodied, with the spices at the end, which linger for a long time. The spiced plum is a specialty at Wajos – it is available as a crema and as a liqueur – and here it gives the rum its fruitiness.

To be honest: The label says "spirit" instead of "rum." This is the rule rather than a deficiency – a rum to which spices are added legally loses this designation, even if rum is the base. Which rum this is and where it comes from, Wajos keeps to itself. And how sweet the spicing turns out to be is left open by the ingredient list – the scent is sweet, the taste bolder than it smells.

For those looking for a pure, unspiced rum from the Caribbean, this rum is not suitable – here it is about the spices rather than the barrel. Those who prefer their winter spices dry and with juniper will find them in the Christmas Gin.

Neat over ice, in white mulled wine, in cola, and in punch

The easiest way is a glass with ice. Four centiliters, two large ice cubes, wait five minutes until the cold takes the edge off the sweetness and the spices come to the fore. That is the nightcap after Christmas dinner, a glass instead of the whole shelf. If you prefer it milder, add an orange zest or a cinnamon stick.

The house recommendation is white mulled wine: a glass of hot white mulled wine, add two centiliters of spiced rum, stir. The rum adds depth and plum, the mulled wine adds warmth – for an evening on the balcony in December or after the Christmas market at home. It is also the shot that makes a drink "grown-up" in hot apple juice with a cinnamon stick or in a punch with orange and clove.

As a long drink, it works like any spiced rum: with cola and a lime wedge, with ginger beer and ice as a wintery Mule, or with apple juice and sparkling water as a light, long drink. In a Hot Buttered Rum – rum, hot water, a piece of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon – it is right at home. It is not suitable for classic rum cocktails like Daiquiri or Mojito: the spices clash there with the lime and mint.

And as with any spirit: the rum is for those aged 18 and over, and the glass that tastes like Christmas is one per evening.

Our tip: Two centiliters of spiced rum in a mug of hot apple juice, a cinnamon stick, an orange slice – the punch for the afternoon when the tree is put up.

From the liqueur manufactory where Wajos started

Spirits are the origins of Wajos. Walter Josef Oster, a winemaker from Ediger-Eller on the Moselle whose family has been making wine for 15 generations, founded a liqueur manufactory alongside the winery in the 1980s – his initials became the brand name. From the 2000s onwards, his son Peter Oster and Ulf Schwichtenberg built it into the Wajos brand in Dohr near Cochem, with the first store opening in Trier in 2008 and today stores all over Germany.

Santas Spiced Rum belongs to the house's winter bar, alongside the Christmas Gin and the Christmas liqueurs. Like most of the approximately 900 items, it comes from Dohr, where over 80 employees work and the in-house laboratory checks every bottle before it leaves the premises. The flair for spice and fruit in the bottle comes from forty years of liqueur making – infusing and dosing aromas was the first thing the company excelled at, long before gin and rum.

The bottle for the St. Nicholas boot and for people who avoid gin

Santas Spiced Rum is the gift for those who remain indifferent to gin. Dads, grandpas, colleagues, friends with a grill and a wood stove – anyone who enjoys something bold in their glass in December is in the right place here. The bottle is self-explanatory in a boot, under the tree, or as a gift for an Advent party – the name tells you exactly when it's time for it. It should be stored in a dry, dark place and upright, outside the refrigerator; 500 milliliters are enough for about twelve glasses or twenty mulled wines. If you want the cinnamon to be even more distinct, you will find it in the Christmas Spiced Rum, and for those who prefer to eat their rum, in the Jamaican Rum Pralines – both on our Wajos page.

The rum is not suitable for anyone under 18 years of age, and for anyone who avoids star anise – its licorice note is distinct, and it lingers.

Rum with cinnamon, star anise, and plum, 37.8 percent, from the Moselle – the spiced rum that belongs in the St. Nicholas boot.