Business Barbados - 2023 Edition

In 1856, there were 158 distilleries in Barbados. The introduction of still licenses, rum duty and the prohibition of distillers retailing their own rum, all of this together with the economic malaise of the period, would see this number fall to just 23 by 1888. Rum making in the 19th century differed from today in two particular ways. Back then, a rum distiller would have a direct link to a sugar estate and the rum produced came from the sugar cane grown on the attached estate. Related to this direct link, rum was distilled from both fresh juice as well as molasses and possibly sugar cane syrup, each of which would have been produced on the very same sugar estate which operated its own boiling house. Today, we tend to think of Barbados rum as being made exclusively from molasses, in contrast to rum directly from sugar cane juice, the latter being something peculiar to the French Islands. This is actually a modern construct. In the late 19th century, Barbados was as famous for its molasses as Demerara was for its sugar. The Barbadian rum distiller would use valuable molasses sparingly mixed with sugar cane juice. The latter might come from ‘rum canes’, so called because the juice was low in sucrose - but high in simple sugars - and better directed to the still than the boiling house. Barbados rum making would take its modern shape around the turn of the century. It was impacted from within its own industry by the adoption of the more efficient column still, but the change was also externally driven by the shift in Barbados to central sugar factories. As late as 1910, Barbados had 339 plantations, each of which had their own sugar works. By 1921, 19 central factories had been created and this would increase to 31 by 1930. By 1939, there were 33 vacuum pan sugar factories, up from just 9 vacuum pan factories in 1897. This shift meant that no longer could an individual sugar estate make its own rum. They did not grind their own canes, they sent their cane to the nearest central factory. To make rum, one would have to source molasses in bulk from the central sugar factory. The new vacuum pan factories Back to Our Roots Richard Seale Distiller, Foursquare Distillery Cane harvest at Mount Gay BUSINESS BARBADOS 2023 94 F O U R S Q U A R E D I S T I L L E R Y