RUM ROUTES
BORN TO RUM
Barbados water, kill-devil, or just plain old-fashioned rum, is a Caribbean staple. But, with a plethora of distilleries and a vast array of blends to choose from, where do you start? And where’s the best place to enjoy a tipple? Janet Kipling takes a rum tour of the region
“I wonder whether they have rum and Coke in heaven. Maybe it’s too mundane a pleasure, but I hope so – as a sundowner. Except, of course, the sun never goes down there. Oh, man, this heaven is going to take some getting used to.”
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU
OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM:
Crafting tools no.1 – pressure gauge; Rum, Cuban style; Fitzroy Smith, Mount Gay’s distillery manager at work; Crafting tools no. 2 – small hammer
THIS PAGE: Trudiann Branker,
Barbados’s first female master blender
PHOTOS: RICHARD WADEY/MOUNT GAY;
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM For me it has to be a daiquiri – dark rum, fresh lime juice and a good dash of sugar syrup.
Settling back with that icy glass, an Antigua sunset and the prospect of (one day) seeing the green flash on the horizon. It’s a mundane pleasure for sure… but what a pleasure.
However sweet the present moment, that glass is filled with a dark history. The West Indies gave birth to rum, where enslaved Africans grew the cane, crushed the juice and boiled it into molasses, which is the starting point for the fermentation and distillation of ‘kill-juice’ as it was originally known.