Of all the things Barbados is famous for, rum — a sweet, brown liquor made by fermenting and distilling sugarcane — is arguably the most popular.
The Caribbean island, which is home to less than 300,000 inhabitants but receives more than triple that number of tourists annually, is the birthplace of rum. The drink’s documented history stretches back to 1651, when a local document first called it ‘Rumbullion’, or ‘Kill-devil’, and described consuming it as ‘hot, hellish, and terrible’.
Today, rum is Barbados’s oldest and greatest export. The drink has shaped the island’s history and remains an important part of Caribbean culture.
Below, five of the best places in Barbados to learn more rum — and enjoy it.
Mount Gay is the oldest commercial rum distillery in the world, founded in 1703. Named after Sir John Gay Alleyne, a Barbadian who was asked to manage the distillery by its owner, the humorously named John Sober, Mount Gay is famous for its use of charcoal filtering and aging its liquor in oak barrels, giving it a rich, amber colour.
Mount Gay is the spirit of choice for making the island’s famous Rum Punch cocktail, which typically also includes orange juice, sugar, lime an Angostura Bitters.
Tours of the historic Mount Gay distillery, which is still operational, and the surrounding estate outline the manufacturing process and offer the chance to partake in a rum-pairing session. Visitors can also enroll on a cocktail workshop run by local experts.
https://www.mountgayrum.com/tour-mount-gay/
The Rum Vault offers possibly the most veritable rum education around. Tucked away inside the Colony Club hotel in the island’s district of St. James, it contains Barbados’s most comprehensive rum bar. Its walls are lined with a library of no less than 150 different varieties — some from as far away as Japan and Fiji — offering something for every palette.
The hotel’s very own ‘Rum Ambassador’ and storyteller Corey Sobers guides guests through a flight of tastings and offers expert tips on how to swill and sip, along with the best way to describe and analyze each liquors’ complex flavors. The private chef is also on hand to design dinner and desert pairings.
https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/bgilc-colony-club-by-elegant-hotels/dining/
St. Nicholas Abbey, a plantation in the north of the island, produced rum for nearly 200 years, until ceasing in the mid-20th century. In recent decades, however, with the help of the Barbados National Trust, the estate has been restored to its former glory and is once again manufacturing. The sugar cane is grown in the field’s surrounding the plantation house, then crushed on site in a steam mill that dates to 1890. The rum is then aged in the estate’s warehouses for anything from 5 to 23 years.
It might not have the same global recognition as some other rum brands, but the liquor handcrafted at St. Nicholas Abbey is some of the finest around. Regular tours around the distillery take place every day, along with tasting sessions, but make sure to also visit the The Great house, formal gardens, and terrace café, which overlooks tropical jungle and throngs with the sound of bird song — an ideal spot for resting your feet and enjoying a drink.
https://www.stnicholasabbey.com
The Crane hotel, on Barbados’s southern shore, was the first purpose-built hotel in the Caribbean. It opened in 1887 and among its first guests was the American cowboy Buffalo Bill, who supposedly settled his bill with a gold chain. At the centre of the hotel’s complex is its bar, designed in a plantation style with wrap-around verandas and shuttered windows.
Supposedly, the recipe for the hotel’s famous — and potent — rum punch was provided by a member of staff named Errol, who landed his first job at the resort after mixing his concoction for the owner’s wife.
Offering views down to the hotel’s famous palm-fringed, pink sand beach, which hugs the shore of a natural harbour that whistles with the Atlantic’s breeze, it’s easy to see why guests have been visiting The Crane and enjoying a drink of rum in this spot for nearly a century-and-a-half.
https://www.thecrane.com/dining/bar-1887/
La Cabane is a chic restaurant and bar shack on shore of Batts Rock Beach. It was the vision of two friends. One is Clement Meniaud, an architect who previously established a cocktail lounge at the nearby legendary Cliff restaurant, and used his knowledge to build Le Cabane’s open-fronted bar. The other is Jules Gualdoni, who prior to moving to the Carribean worked in the bar business in London. He also is obsessed with rum.
Guests can feel the sand between their toes or swing from hammocks all day and into the night (with ideal sunset views) whilst sampling no fewer than three different rum punches. They offer some of island’s tastiest varieties featuring cucumber and elderflower or Mount Gay Black barrel, which is aged in heavily charred ex-bourbon casks. There is even the option to sip Mount Gay XO, an intense blended rum best drunk neat, straight from a coconut, for the ultimate tropical refresher.
https://www.lacabanebarbados.com
Article by Harry Seymour
