As we’ve mentioned before, some of the best rums in the world are produced in Central America and if you’re willing to open your eyes to the possibilities when you’re traveling through there, you can find the liquor deals of a lifetime. Costa Rica has a good contender on the rum shelf, with Ron Centenario.

Ron Centenario Costa Rica rum

I’m a big fan of Ron Centenario Costa Rican rum and think it’s one of the world’s best undiscovered gems. It doesn’t have the complexity of Guatemala’s Ron Zacapa and it won’t hold up to a cigar smoking session like Flor de Cana, but if you’re looking for something to sip on the patio or next to the fireplace, this is a golden choice.

In a duty-free shop in the airport in Costa Rica, you can pick up the 9-year Centenario rum version for around $14 for a 750 ml bottle and a 12-year version for around $22 As you can see from the photo I shot below, even if you go all out, a bottle that has been made from rum aging in a barrel longer than a teenager has been on this planet will set you back less than what you probably earn for an hour of work. But of course, you’ll be enjoying this rum for far longer than an hour because it’s one of the best sipping rums you could wish for.

Costa Rican Rum for Sipping

What makes a great sipping rum is a matter of taste, of course, and some real rum fans will read this and scoff. They prefer something with more bite, more substance, more of a kick in the ass. You can surely get that from Caribbean rum made at sea level with bad water and molasses aged in sweaty tropical barrels. You can also get it from Flor de Cana from Nicaragua, which we’ll admit to enjoying thoroughly in the right circumstances. Instead, this Ron Centenario rum is like a distillation of butterscotch, vanilla, brown sugar, and sunshine. It’s a guilty pleasure and a pure delight. The longer it’s aged, the more serious it gets, but for making cocktails even the four-year version is terrific.

Centenario rum review

Consider Ron Centenario a more mellow, more refined rum for those who put smoothness above how many flavor notes they can detect over a two-hour tasting session. This is maybe not a rum to talk about for years, rather one that will make you talk about what a good time you had while you were drinking it with friends. You’ll find yourself finishing your glass, as will your friends, and the finish will leave you wanting more.

Buying Ron Centenario Rum

Since this Costa Rican rum brand is not part of a big global conglomerate spending bazillions on marketing, it’s hard to find outside of Costa Rica and hardly anyone has heard of it. That just adds to the cachet though if you bring a bottle back as a gift. It’s a rare find instead of something your client or friend could have bought in their liquor store a block away. This also makes it a tremendous value.

Stores that have a huge rum section may have it, however, and I found a few versions at Drizly online, including the 7-year version.

The regular bottles have gotten far more boring lately, so I wouldn’t buy this as a gift until you get up to the 20- or 30-year versions that you see above. They’re still in nice bottles with some heft to them.

A Bottle Downgrade for Costa Rican Rum

Costa Rica Rum Centenario
This photo above is what the Centenario Rum bottles previously looked like, back when they had some flair. Unfortunately, probably to save some money, the owners made the unfortunate decision to downgrade the bottles and now they look really routine, with slapped on sticky labels. When you see the next to the cool Flor de Cana bottles from Nicaragua now, the Costa Rican ones look downright cheap.

The bottle design for Ron Centenario is now a very typical cylindrical version without the 3-D glass relief designs of old. You can see the 2023 design at the top of this post, an image you’ve probably forgotten already.

Thankfully, what’s inside is still just as good. If you do happen to be in Costa Rica, this rum producer will probably have something to offer you. I got a four-pack of bottles for just $15 on a previous trip and it included the three you see above plus a more basic version I used to make a few cocktails. I bought another one as a gift and my friend was taken aback, thinking I had really gone all-out and spent way more money than I should have for his birthday.

If your tastes run to more heavy, chomp-on-a-cigar while drinking rums that come from the Caribbean and other lowland areas, you might find Ron Centenario to be too mellow for your tastes. For people who want to make a beach cocktail in Costa Rica though, taking advantage of all the tropical fruit, then the four-year version here is fantastic and for sipping, the higher up you go on the years, the more oak notes and complexity you’ll find in the mix.