Your eyes are closed. Your nose is still inside the glass. This is the last white Rhum agricole in the gauntlet, somewhere past number twenty, and your palate has just survived the closest thing rum judging has to a trial by fire. You open your eyes. Glasses lined up in rows, each one sitting on its own numbered square, so no sample is ever anything but a stranger. Judges beside you, heads down, writing. Nobody has said a word in twenty minutes. This is the Caribbean Rum Awards, the only rum competition held in the Caribbean. The Gauntlet They call the opening flight the gaun...