Barbados in a Nutshell - 2022 - EBook

Jarred Niles Morris courtesy Business Barbados 14 Larry Warren at St. Nicholas Abbey Barbados Rum partner John Hutson - successfully overcame the new legislation by establishing a second company called Mount Gay Distilleries Limited, specifically to blend and bottle rum produced at their rum distillery in St Lucy, making them the sole owner of the trademark. Having been producing rum in St. Lucy since 1703, Mount Gay qualifies as the world’s oldest rum distillery still in operation today. Now owned by Remy Cointreau, Mount Gay Rum is widely recognised as one of the world’s very top brands, as evidenced by its numerous international awards. The other two major distilleries currently operating in Barbados are West Indies Rum Refinery, WIRD, and Foursquare Rum Distillery. WIRD was founded by the Stade brothers in 1893, at which time they introduced the first column still to Barbados. Foursquare is owned by R.L Seale, which started out as a Bridgetown commission agent in Roebuck Street, bottling and selling rum. Since building and opening their own distillery in 1995, Foursquare has developed into a highly respected producer of premium quality rum. So much so that Foursquare was awarded the highly prestigious ‘Best Spirits Distiller in the World’ by the International Wine and Spirit Competition in 2021. On a more modest scale, St. Nicholas Abbey, one of only three existing Jacobean plantation houses in the Western Hemisphere, has resurrected a Barbadian tradition by producing high-quality rum entirely on site, from field to bottle, using sugar cane grown on the estate, crushed and boiled into syrup, then distilled into rum. For the rum enthusiast, their private Rum Experience Tour can be booked on select days with owner Larry Warren. While many Barbadians prefer pure white rum, claiming that it doesn’t give them a hangover, international connoisseurs favour our refined golden rum that has been created by master blenders and aged in whisky, bourbon and madeira barrels, giving each brand its own distinct taste and character. As rum is now Barbados’ most prestigious and valuable agri-industrial export, with huge potential for further growth, several of the producers have applied for a Certified Geographical Indicator, a CGI, to officially identify rum that is 100% genuine Barbados Rum. If successful, this will be another exciting step forward for the small island of Barbados that developed the world’s first rum industry almost 400 years ago.