REFINED VICES

Sale of Caroni (1975) Ltd rum stock by auction was aborted yesterday two hours after the auction started.

There were no bids following the announcement by auctioneer Edward Soon that bidding would have to start at $7.8 million.

The auction was to have been held at Rum Distillers of Trinidad and Tobago (RDTT), Old Southern Main Road, Caroni, at 11 a.m.

RDTT was set up after Caroni got out of sugar production in 2003, to sell rum manufactured by the company. RDTT has since closed its doors and handed over the sale of its remaining stocks to certified auctioneer Soon.

Sale of the rum stocks was advertised on September 16 and included bulk rum in 5,388 casks in various types and aged from three to 19 years old, bulk rum in vats measuring 60,000 litres and 2,860 cases of bottled rum.

Registered buyers questioned the quantitative loss in quantity since the last inventory, ten months ago before the start of the auction.

RDTT's chief executive officer, Rudy Moore, assured the buyers that the quantity received would not be less than 92 per cent. He said that the base price had taken into account loss by evaporation of four per cent.

Source: Trinidad & Tobago Express

Frontpage article.

Thanks JaRiMi for forwarding this news article to Refined Vices .

I had a conversation about this with Robert Wong on my last trip to Trinidad. Caroni have been trying to sell their rum for a long time, both in bottles and in bulk. We even thought about it for a short while. I see several bottling companies advertise they sell rum from the Caroni stills. I hopefully will have some coming from Bristol Classic Rums soon and will be interested to compare them with the Robert's fine Angostura Rums. (There will be a lot of influence from their long ageing in the UK though)

I had the pleasure to taste some Caroni rums at the Rum Fest as well as Bristol Spirits rums, the Caroni rums I tasted were very good and I've been meaning to acquire some.

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TheRumelier wrote:I had a conversation about this with Robert Wong on my last trip to Trinidad. Caroni have been trying to sell their rum for a long time, both in bottles and in bulk. We even thought about it for a short while. I see several bottling companies advertise they sell rum from the Caroni stills. I hopefully will have some coming from Bristol Classic Rums soon and will be interested to compare them with the Robert's fine Angostura Rums. (There will be a lot of influence from their long ageing in the UK though)

To my knowledge, the Caroni rums recently bottled by Bristol Spirits in the Classic Rums series have not been matured in UK for any amount of time. They were purchased directly from Trinidad quite recently, and bottled directly. Another source for old Caroni rums is Italy where Mr. Luca Gargano has bottled also a wide variety of Caroni's older rums, from single casks to ready blends.

As unblended (or how to put it, blended in very small amount) and very lightly filtered rums, comparisons of these rather unique small indy-bottlings of Caroni rums to Angostura's current standard mass-market offerings may not offer the best comparative notes. I must say that a comparison between Angostura's older bottlings done for the local Trinidadian market (Royal Oak, Old Oak) and the Caroni 1975 Ltd.'s similar products (Special Old Cask, Gold Magic) reveal close similarities in style and flavour. The current Angostura 1919 and 1824 are very different products in style and composition to the older Angostura bottlings I feel which represent more the traditional light Trinidadian style rum.

It's been ages since I was last in Trinidad..Sigh. I do miss the doubles and roti so bad bad bad, Geeeddd..