Authentic Caribbean Rum Trip 2015

Welcome to The Cocktail Ponders
(known for this post as 'the Rum Ponders')
if you read my last blog post you'll know i was about to embark on an incredible journey to the Caribbean with Authentic Caribbean Rum.

So what's it all about? Why did i go to the Caribbean, and what did i learn... take a look at my journal style post about the incredible things we did day to day.

Authentic Caribbean Rum and WIRSPA (West Indies Rum and Spirits Producers Association) are here to ensure the quality of rum being produced in the Caribbean is always at a high standard. It stands for keeping the traditions of rum making alive and kicking in the Caribbean, and from what we saw on our travels, they're certainly doing a great job.

For more information on the associations please take a look at their websites. ACR are still running incredible FREE training sessions all over the world, get involved if you like rum, it could be you heading to the Caribbean next time.

www.acr-rum.com      www.wirspa.com

you can purchase the products i talk about from www.masterofmalt.com/rum

Barbados

First stop is the Foursquare complex in Barbados and were meeting Richard Seale of Seale's Rum! He's notorious for his love of 'proper' rum, made in traditional ways. I'm so excited to finally meet the maker and see what he makes his amazing rums.

 Fermentation is just the beginning.....

A few hours at the Foursquare plant has been amazing. Richard gave us a fantastic tour, I think he appreciates talking about his work to people who understand the more complex side of Rum Distillation. It's easy to allow yourself to become indulged in the chemistry side of it all, it's such an interesting process and the smallest changes can affect flavour dramatically
Richard is a really enthusiastic guy who grounds his work in traditional practices, no extra sugar added to his products whatsoever and the distinctive taste of rum from his Pot Stills. He was so keen to let us know that his way is the proper way of making a traditional spirit,and its clear from the taste of just a few of his products that thats the way it is.

The next stop was St Nicholas Abbey in the North of Barbados, a real treat for any rum fan

St Nicholas Abbey boasts one of the oldest plantations on the island, it's a beautiful old colonnial house preserved with all its original features and furniture. The distillery opened there only in 2009 but the rums they are producing all come from pressed sugar cane juice (they reduce to a syrup for storage reasons) instead of molasses. It was amazing to see the crushing machine, back in colonnial times all the sugar cane pressing was done by windmill but now at St Nicholas Abbey they use a steam powered crusher that's been there since they began. The result is an incredible white rum full of natural sugar cane flavour, their 5 year is also a great product and has a very subtle bronze tint, a great citrus zing and a baked almond finish. The lack of spirit caramels is a testament to the hand crafted process by Eddie the master distiller.

Eddie showed us their still Annabelle who was running a batch as we watched! To have the opportunity to see real time rum distillation was amazing, Eddie was able to explain to us exactly the process their rum goes through as we were watching.

We then saw the bottling plant, a small room manned by two women and a machine that fills bottles 6 at a time... A real authentic process.

Next up was Mount Gay, one of my all time favourite rums!

First stop we went to the sugar cane fields on the Mount Gay plantation, as the oldest rum distillery in the world Mount Gay prides it's self on the 356 acres of sugar cane they cultivate for molasses. 

It's a working farm, you won't find any neatly polished boots and jeans here, which I really like. It's a much larger set up and they have to purchase extra molasses from Guyana, like a lot of distilleries in the Caribbean these days.

As well as exploring the pot still house and the store houses we were shown the 300ft deep well that they still use today to dilute their rum straight from the casks.








For a massive company the attitude and spirit of the people who make it is amazing, we've truly been treated like royalty. We were taken to Allen Smith's (master blenders) lab, where he took us through tasting different examples of the rum they make. Pot still, single column still and aged single column still. We were allowed to make our own blend and have it bottled and wax sealed.
As I'm not a massive fan of the intense banana/ plantain flavours in pot distilled rum I decided to use a little less of it, the overall flavour was spicy and fresh. Just what I like in a good rum.
The Mount Gay experience for me was unreal, the public don't get to see the distillery but the lovely visitor's centre in the South of Barbados. We headed there after the tour for a traditional Rum Punch...the best in Barbados for sure.

Next up we headed to the West Indies Distillery in Barbados

 It's a much larger operation than the other distilleries we've visited in the past few days. Their main product is Cockspur Rum, not something I've imbibed in much but it was amazing to see a large scale distillery, with four 200,000 litre fermenters and massive column stills working 24 hours a day. Such a beautiful juxtaposition against the turquoise seas and the white beaches of Barbados.

Not only do they produce rum here, with molasses again shipped in from Guyana and Trinidad, but the facility is also used to bottle Malibu, certain vodka's, Pussers Rum and even varieties of Gin. As a mass production facility it's a tight operation sat on the beachfront in Bridgetown's port area. There's nothing stranger than standing at the top of these giant fermenters looking out to the beautiful cristal clear waters of the Caribbean. 

The facility is a real industrial Mecca for rum and spirit production in the Caribbean, the enormous yearly output is huge and being right next to the port they ship all over the globe. They produce so much rum they send it off in massive tankers for other companies to use too. It's been incredible to see the scale of mass produced rum in the Caribbean, and it's a massive difference to the experience we had at places like St Nicholas Abbey. It was really good be able to see the whole spectrum and it has totally changed my mind about drinking large scale rums. But I understand these places are necessary to feed global consumption.

Guyana

Today has been spectacular, an early morning took us to Eldorado and The Demerera Distilleries Ltd in the centre of Guyana. This place produces in my eyes some of the best tasting rum in the world. If you've not heard of Eldorado it's an incredibly diverse range of rums made 400m from the Demerera river in Georgetown Guyana. Shaun Caleb, the master distiller and Sharon Sue Hang Baksh took us on an incredible tour of the distillery, famous for its use of local molasses from the insanely huge sugar factories here, as well as being the only distillery to house a wooden Coffey still!

We were taken from the massive fermenting chambers where they make the low wines, right through to the bottling plant where a mass team of local workers cleans, caps, labels, packs and ships Eldorado and Demerera rums all over the world.

The one thing that really stood out for me about Eldorado was the love and heritage of the people and the place. We met workers who'd been there in the barrel warehouses for 30 years, and I truly believe the quality of their product is down to the dedication and consistency of its work force, and the traditions they've with held over the years. And really this is what ACR is all about, today showed me why we've come here, why its so important these people are part of the authentic Caribbean rum association. Traditional values upheld by traditional people.

The master taster here Sharon took us to their museum full of beautiful old stills and scale models of their working equipment, we gathered around the bar to taste the range, it's always fascinating to try things side by side, compare the nose, the palate and understand WHY they each taste the way they do. If there's one thing I'll take away from this trip it's an appreciation for all the stages of rum making, there are so many factors that change the way a spirit tastes, so many variables that can produce totally different products.

The ageing warehouses here were spectacular, being able to taste a 14yo rum directly from the cask was fantastic, the workers are so proud of their product and couldn't wait to whack out the bung and give us all a sample!

After a traditional lunch with the big bosses at Eldorado and DDL we headed to the Guysuco sugar processing plant on the coast in Guyana, about an hours drive from the distillery.

We met Gavin Ramnarain, the enigmatic head honcho and we headed out to heir 650 odd hectares of Sugar Cane Fields. Gavin and his team explained that the cane fields here are different as they are below sea level, unusual and hard to work with, but never the less these fields were stunning. Jumping in the back of a truck we headed out into the middle of the plantation, the networks of canals and irrigation waterways meandering through the hectares, full of beautiful egrets, Eagles and snakes!

It was almost like being on safari, discovering the way they harvest and move the cane about was so interesting. The main canals have tug boats that the workers fill with sugar cane and tow by tractor up to the sugar processing mill. The cane is chopped with massive mechanical blades and then milled through 4 enormous crushing machines. After this the juice is filtered and the cane husks taken to fuel the steam boilers that power not only the entire sugar plant but half the surrounding town too. The juice is clarified in large tanks that sift the mud and dirt via naturally occurring chemical compounds that clump together when the juice is heated. The mud that is extracted is taken to a vacuum where the remaining juice is extracted, and the mud is used back on the fields as fertiliser. Nothing is wasted or thrown away, even on the scale of this plant. 


The juice is put into large evaporators that seperate the compounds and the majority of the molasses is taken off. The juice still contains some molasses and the sugar crystals occur naturally at certain temperatures in large vats and we were able to look at the quality of the cristals in each stage.














Once the cristals are at the desired size they place it into a centrifugal spinner that seperates off the rest of the molasses. As this is Demerera the sugar that we all know and love for its slight brown colour and amazing flavour, it still has a slight molasses coating.
The molasses is shipped off in large containers to distilleries all around the world who use it to make rum.... Amazing to see the entire process from field to bottle.

A few tasting notes from the Eldorado Range we tried at the Distillery

El dorado 3 yo A light rum, aged and charcoal filtered So chocolatey, perfectly sippable Eldorado 8yo Sweet toffee Chocolate Dark prune fruits Eldorado 15 Gorgeous silk Moth warming, slight tingle Stone fruit Sultana Eldorado Single Barrel Demerera Rum EHP only available in US 
Made in the Wooden Coffey still Edward Henry potter Wooden hues Creamy Light and citrusy Eldorado Single arrel PM double wooden pot still only available in US Fresh plantain Slight rubber Chewable oak Eldorado single barrel ICBU Fresh blueberry pancakes Honey Oak Toffee apple

Trinidad

The House of Angostura

A day at the Angostura Distillery in Trinidad has been unreal.

We were met by the head distiller John Georges and his team who took us on an amazing journey through the distillery, warehouses and bottling plant. The column stills are really impressive here, they're the biggest we've seen yet!

The Angostura team hosted a special lunch for us, everything we ate had Angostura bitters or rum included in it, an extremely tasty lunch that was needed after the mornings flight.

The bitters room at the distillery was fantastic, the aromatic smells that overwhelm as we walked in was unreal! 

Beautiful hints of cardamom filled the air and you can recognise the smell of the bitters straight away. The secret herbs and spices are chopped and macerated for three months in massive vats, it was amazing to see where it comes from.

A few tasting notes from the Rum we tried at The House of Angostura

Angostura 5yo Soft citrus, pineapple, dry pepper. 5 column distillation- leaves a clean palate Ex bourbon barrels Angostura 7yo Amber colour Christmas cake, creamy, mocha, honey. Dry caskyness Angostura 1919 Creamy, orange zest, soft nose, ripe banana, vanilla, oak Blend of between 5-10yo rums Angostura 1824 Sweet cinnamon, dark amber colour. Licquorice, fills the mouth, super soft. 12yo rum minimum blend. Great for a rum old fashioned Angostura no1 First ten years in first fill American oak-Great rounded flavours Then 6 years in French oak ex Cognac casks- flavours with bite Wood, flower, Lots of French oak Dry dry finish with hints of chocolate Angostura Amaro 35% Contains Angostura Bitters inside it. Rich spice bouquet, slightly sweet. Toasted caramel, citrus and liquorice, sweet chocolate herbs
A really great product on its own or for mixing.

I can't even describe the incredible journey we've all been on. From first landing in Barbados at the start of the week and meeting the incredible friends I've had he pleasure of sharing this trip with. We've seen the very roots of the Caribbean rum world, we've been invited into the lives of the people behind the companies that produce incredible products for people all over the globe. The knowledge and understanding these people have shared with us has been an experience like no other. They welcomed us like family to their homes and businesses and the hospitality has been truly overwhelming. 

Thank you Authentic Caribbean Rum for the opportunity, I'm so grateful. It's taught me to always take more chances, go for the opportunities you're given

Til next time! 

Follow my Rum friends on Twitter
@inuakena
@aslakhelle
@becverseur