Captain Morgan Original Spiced Gold

A simple classic mixer from my college days, it will always have a place in my heart. Going back to it now, it's a mouthful of vanilla, but still fun and drinkable.

Not a bad choice for a first rum, with coke it becomes somewhat of a starter drink. Caramel and vanilla evident, making coke a fine pairing but I switched to club soda to cut calories and the foul morning after taste coke leaves

Nothing wrong with it when mixed with coke. Pretty much cheap summer classic, but I cant find anything to enjoy when drinking alone.

What is there to say... Capt and Coke please. Not as good as others, but it works.

The nose explodes on vanillin and lemon with hint of honey. In the mouth, we find the vanilla with milk chocolate. Do not look for a final and aftertaste with this rum but rather the way to create an original cocktail with ...

Not for sipping! okay for mixed drinks, wellpriced for that purpose.

En bra rom att ha hemma när det är dags för en Rom & Cola.

Round and warm with synthetic taste of vanilla and arrak.
Mixes good with coke, and that's what it is: a mixer.

Before i will even begin my tasting impressions, i have to write to remind everybody reading and posting here. Captain Morgan Original Spiced Gold IS NOT A RUM by definition. it is "caribbean rum with spice and other natural flavours - spirit drink" as appears on the label. 35% abv.
as such it should be judged more as a Rum powered Liquor and not as Rum per se.
a beverage which could be placed in the tier of hard alcoholic liquors, other flavoured and sweetened distillate based products. this is where it is, for the good and for the bad...
and now to my tasting notions which i really tried to be objective and unrelated to the reviews and tasting notions posted here and elsewhere.
This is my first ever bottle of this product and for tasting purposes only.
Nose: Faint Alcoholic hints mixed with baking rum and vanilla flavours, baking powder, surprisingly it is not sharp or dominant at all, hints of cooked sugar. artificial but not unpleasant.
Palate: First Strike of Sweetness, young Alcohol bite, even though it is only 35% abv, the Rum seems very raw, murky sugary sip with strong artificial vanilla echoing in all parts of the mouth, perhaps the hints of claw are making the rum to taste coarse, there is bitterness resembling artificial sweeteners overdose, the alcoholic burn fades fast and mostly the artificial flavour dominates, hints of agave sweetener syrup.
Finish: medium alcoholic, Industrial sweetened individually packed cakes with artificial aftertaste of sugar syrup, vanilla syrup, agave syrup sweetener, some annoying industrial aftertaste. struggling to define anything natural in this fading syrup.
the finish is definitely the better part.

as i am absolutely objective, i find it difficult to grasp how this juice became so popular and widely available in every supermarket and 24 hour utility magazines. i wonder who would want to buy this at 3 in the morning where the market can offer mostly better drinking experience. i doubt even somebody seriously intoxicated would choose this over some sharper gun. does mixing it with cola makes the secret? i can understand as i remember similar after taste in cheap rum and coke cocktails sold in night clubs when i was a teenager, and this was decades ago, the kind of Rum and Cola mix which makes it easy to vomit in the morning before coming back home.
that hint of vomit aftertaste in the finish is apparent all the time. even though the beverage is clean and not clogging the brain as bad alcohols do, drinking a bottle, which is easy at it is hardly feeling like alcohol and rum but rather as sugary spicy fluid, the artificial vanilla which overshadows the sugar cane background...
the concept of such spirit drink is not new, a much better example would be "Southern Comfort" family of spirit drinks which are based on whiskey but for a period were based on neutral distillate and suffered of similar strange odors and vomit in the making experience.
to be honest, i can't imagine someone like the Captain Morgan in person approving such an abomination as rum or anything close to rum. his crew would surely refuse to drink this. i would refuse. it can't be called Rum. it is not Rum, they don't call it Rum, but just a Spirit Rum and the Captain Morgan label makes the relation in the customers mind which believes he is purchasing and drinking rum. the key is the absence or Rum experience.
for me the dominance of artificial flavours and specially that murky fake sweet vanilla baking essence drags it down into a negative experience.
i am not against spiced rums, i highly praised Captain Morgan Black spiced, for what it deserves as a full rounded spiced Rum based drink. but this one is simply not good.
26/100

On the nose:
Acetone forward, slight tingle, some sweetness, there is vanilla hiding in there somewhere, perhaps a touch of raisin but I can't really pick up more than that.

On the tongue:
At first vanilla forward, but quite quickly gets harsh with ethanol. Once the tingle in the mouth and nose go away, there is some reminiscing afterflavour of vanilla but also some sweetness, but not sugar more like artificial sweetener.

Subjective:
From a neatness drinking point of view, which I review all my drinks, this is a no, but it pairs well with pepsi max, which makes it my go-to drink. So although I score it low here, I keep buying this as my main mixing rum.