Trinidad rum, past & present
Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 11:12 am
With respects to rum experts such as Mr. Dave Broom, I think he and others may be more passionate over the flavours of Demerara or the history of Cuba, but to exclude Trinidad as a major rum history chapter is an oversight in my humble opinion. Even in the days of potstill distillation references mention that "Trinidad rum is lighter in style than other island's produce".
Trinidad (and Tobago, although it was a separately governed island state until the end of 19th century when annexed by the British to Trinidad in 1888, for the fact that the islands’ plantation owners went more or less bankrupt due to sugar prices falling to an all-time low), has a long history of rum production and sugar cane cultivation.
I think one reason why Trinidad is not so often mentioned in rum history is the fact that the island changed hands several times during its history, going from being a Spanish colony (claimed for Spanish crown in 1498) which attracted many French colonists after the French revolution when the ripples of its changes reached French Caribbean colonies; and finally ending in the hands of the British in 1797.
In comparison, Barbados was always under British rule, and Jamaica had fallen to British hands already in 1670. Tobago on the other hand passed hands between French, Dutch, Latvians and British during its history, changing masters 22 times only to finally end in British ownership from 1814 onwards.
Unlike on many other smaller or more isolated Caribbean islands, early settlers found it hard to settle Trinidad, a large and untamed island full of South American wildlife and Caribe Indians (Trinidad is only 12km away from the South American mainland). The pace of development accelerated much with the French arriving in force in 1780’s, and large areas near Port-of-Spain, the capital, and nearby valley of Diego Martin, so named after Spanish ruler Don Diego, were cleared for inhabitation and cane growing.
What was it like? One author says this:
“The Spanish authorities could hardly handle the locals - much less the high style emigré French creoles. No one really expected that the French Revolution would send whole communities of French creoles with their slaves, 'octaroon' mistresses and 'pass-for-white' children tumbling in backwater Trinidad by the the 1790s. In that period, the town grew not as a result of town planning, but inspite of it.
The town was a haven for the flotsam and jetsam of the Caribbean in 1797. It was peopled by half-caste Spaniards, broad-nosed Zambos, high-strung mestizo women, French republican soldiers, retires pirates, French nobility and the ghosts of the conquistadors who had died in the previous centuries in search of El Dorado, eaten by the anthropomorgai people in the jungles of Guairia.
All this disorder gave the English their chance. With war generally in the air and Governor Chacon fearful of republicanism, they took the island in 1797 without hardly a shot being fired. although it was reported that the guns at Fort St. Andres fired round after round.”
What of sugarcane then? In Tobago, the Dutch had most likely introduced sugar cane to Tobago already in 1627. This had made them well established, wealthy and well respected in Europe, where a saying “Rich as a Tobago planter” became a saying later on. In Trinidad it was not until 1780’s when Mr. Picot de Lapeyrouse established the first sugar cane estate on the island, as the Otaheite “Noble” variety of cane had been introduced by St. Hilaire Begorrat apparently sometime earlier. The land was found to be very good for sugar cultivation, and unlike in many other Caribbean nations, sugar has been grown in Trinidad in large-scale until very recently.
Rum was first a produce of sugar cane estates where it was made in the traditional pot-still. Bristol Spirits notes of Trinidad rum on their information booklet that “..even when pot-stills were widely used on the island, their rums were traditionally amongst the lightest. Wooden stills were replaced and modern patent stills introduced around 1920.”
Trinidadian (and quite possibly Tobagonian) rum was used in Navy rum mixtures throughout the 19th and 20th Century and was just as important ingredient as was the produce of Guyana, Barbados or Jamaica. It is still an intergral part of the Pusser’s Navy rum recipe, following the old British navy’s traditional recipe.
One important player in Trinidadian rum history is the Fernandes family – Peter’s rum pages has copied the story of the Fernandes family & rums (and a good thing he has, since Angostura ltd. Has bought the company and the original website no longer exists!). It states the following:
“..By 1880 Manuel Fernandes left Madeira in search of a better life and the New World, …he arrived in Port of Spain with his wife and two sons aged five and eight years old.
Manuel settled at 25 Henry Street and soon established an import business of wines and spirits. By 1895 Manuel and his family became neutralised British.
It was not long before Manuel Fernandes distinguished himself with the award of a gold medal for Fernandes Old Rum at the Crystal Palace London Exhibition of 1905. For twenty five years the Fernandes rum brands developed in stature gaining more and more ground in the marketplace, under the diligent direction of son Joseph Gregorio and his brother in law Joao Ferreira, a master blender. It was during this period that Joao Ferreira earned himself his reputation, winning medals for blending white rums and Wormwood Bitters at an International Exhibition in New Zealand in 19...
Just two years after the loss of his father Joseph Bento and Joao Ferreira seized an opportunity that presented itself after the fire of 1932, a fire that destroyed the Trinidad British government Rum Bond. Fernandes & Co., acquired the fire sale stocks of rum for blending at a good price and on discovering that the spirit had been distilled thirteen years earlier called it "1919" AGED RUM, it was the forerunner of the most successful of the Fernandes brands for thirty years with the named changed to Vat 19 when the original stocks ran out.
Joseph Bento was weary of being tied to the sugar estates for his supply of raw material. In 1933 he acquired from Henderson Forres Park sugar estate at Claxton Bay…It took years to rebuild the derelict Forres Park into an efficient and productive factory, eventually achieving 8.2 tons of cane to 1 ton of sugar. Scores not attainable today. Meanwhile Joseph Bento tinkered with the wooden still he knew was in the Forres Park compound and practised his hand at distilling and making rums that would be the foundation of his next venture.
In the late 1940's Joseph Bento had planned to build a new and modern distillery, to this end he acquired land at Morvant junction from Mendes and spent as much draining and filling as he had on purchasing this swampy tract. “
In general in the 20th century, due to being the one British island where sugar cane was still grown in large scale, rum production in Trinidad grew significantly whereas it somewhat slumped in many other regions.
The current single big player in Trinidad’s rum market is of course Angostura Ltd. Their history in rum-making is not very long, but their success has been remarkable, not in the least due to the vast amounts of sugar cane growing right next doors in Caroni region of Trinidad especially.
Company states this of their involvement in rum:
“By the turn of the century, the Company ventured into the rum market, at first just in bottling bulk rum from other distillers. After years of intensive research in fermentation and distillation processes, the Company installed a state-of-the-art distillery in 1945 heralding its entry into the production of rum on a major scale.
By the end of 1960, the Company had extended distribution of its products to over 140 countries across the world, becoming well known internationally for its high quality rums in addition to the now world famous Angostura aromatic bitters.”
Angostura Ltd. has now the phenomenal rectification capacity of 50 million litres / year, making it the biggest distillation plant of the English-speaking Caribbean. The company has two gigantic column stills with which they produce a variety of styles. Also Angostura Ltd. has purchased most of the now closed government Caroni distillery’s aged rums in a bulk deal that was heavily criticized locally for its low price.
Angostura supplied (and still does) bulk rums to all corners of the world – Bacardi, Captain Morgan etc. are just a few brands that use Angostura rums in them. At one time, according to inside information from the company, Bacardi used to buy & use in their rums a ready-made blend used by Angostura for their “Royal Oak” rum. Master blender Patrick Patel did not verify if this is true sadly. Bacardi owned 45% of the Angostura stock until in 1997 CL Financial bought them out – however in terms of bulk rum sales, the co-operation has continued. The ownership change allowed Angostura to market their own brands internationally.
Angostura uses only charred ex-bourbon barrels for ageing their rums, and rums are charcoal filtered to a degree based on their age. The maximum age of rum in their warehouse is 15 years, and the company people really suspect many other manufacturers in the Caribbean boasting with age statements that are not possible. (This is of course possible, since no law controls this fact).
During the rum-making process, the fermentation takes an average of 48 hours and the alcohol-content of that brew before actual distillation is 10%. Rum is casked at 70% alcohol content, higher than what whisky industry uses these days (around 63% I believe).
Hope you have the energy to read through all this..!
Trinidad (and Tobago, although it was a separately governed island state until the end of 19th century when annexed by the British to Trinidad in 1888, for the fact that the islands’ plantation owners went more or less bankrupt due to sugar prices falling to an all-time low), has a long history of rum production and sugar cane cultivation.
I think one reason why Trinidad is not so often mentioned in rum history is the fact that the island changed hands several times during its history, going from being a Spanish colony (claimed for Spanish crown in 1498) which attracted many French colonists after the French revolution when the ripples of its changes reached French Caribbean colonies; and finally ending in the hands of the British in 1797.
In comparison, Barbados was always under British rule, and Jamaica had fallen to British hands already in 1670. Tobago on the other hand passed hands between French, Dutch, Latvians and British during its history, changing masters 22 times only to finally end in British ownership from 1814 onwards.
Unlike on many other smaller or more isolated Caribbean islands, early settlers found it hard to settle Trinidad, a large and untamed island full of South American wildlife and Caribe Indians (Trinidad is only 12km away from the South American mainland). The pace of development accelerated much with the French arriving in force in 1780’s, and large areas near Port-of-Spain, the capital, and nearby valley of Diego Martin, so named after Spanish ruler Don Diego, were cleared for inhabitation and cane growing.
What was it like? One author says this:
“The Spanish authorities could hardly handle the locals - much less the high style emigré French creoles. No one really expected that the French Revolution would send whole communities of French creoles with their slaves, 'octaroon' mistresses and 'pass-for-white' children tumbling in backwater Trinidad by the the 1790s. In that period, the town grew not as a result of town planning, but inspite of it.
The town was a haven for the flotsam and jetsam of the Caribbean in 1797. It was peopled by half-caste Spaniards, broad-nosed Zambos, high-strung mestizo women, French republican soldiers, retires pirates, French nobility and the ghosts of the conquistadors who had died in the previous centuries in search of El Dorado, eaten by the anthropomorgai people in the jungles of Guairia.
All this disorder gave the English their chance. With war generally in the air and Governor Chacon fearful of republicanism, they took the island in 1797 without hardly a shot being fired. although it was reported that the guns at Fort St. Andres fired round after round.”
What of sugarcane then? In Tobago, the Dutch had most likely introduced sugar cane to Tobago already in 1627. This had made them well established, wealthy and well respected in Europe, where a saying “Rich as a Tobago planter” became a saying later on. In Trinidad it was not until 1780’s when Mr. Picot de Lapeyrouse established the first sugar cane estate on the island, as the Otaheite “Noble” variety of cane had been introduced by St. Hilaire Begorrat apparently sometime earlier. The land was found to be very good for sugar cultivation, and unlike in many other Caribbean nations, sugar has been grown in Trinidad in large-scale until very recently.
Rum was first a produce of sugar cane estates where it was made in the traditional pot-still. Bristol Spirits notes of Trinidad rum on their information booklet that “..even when pot-stills were widely used on the island, their rums were traditionally amongst the lightest. Wooden stills were replaced and modern patent stills introduced around 1920.”
Trinidadian (and quite possibly Tobagonian) rum was used in Navy rum mixtures throughout the 19th and 20th Century and was just as important ingredient as was the produce of Guyana, Barbados or Jamaica. It is still an intergral part of the Pusser’s Navy rum recipe, following the old British navy’s traditional recipe.
One important player in Trinidadian rum history is the Fernandes family – Peter’s rum pages has copied the story of the Fernandes family & rums (and a good thing he has, since Angostura ltd. Has bought the company and the original website no longer exists!). It states the following:
“..By 1880 Manuel Fernandes left Madeira in search of a better life and the New World, …he arrived in Port of Spain with his wife and two sons aged five and eight years old.
Manuel settled at 25 Henry Street and soon established an import business of wines and spirits. By 1895 Manuel and his family became neutralised British.
It was not long before Manuel Fernandes distinguished himself with the award of a gold medal for Fernandes Old Rum at the Crystal Palace London Exhibition of 1905. For twenty five years the Fernandes rum brands developed in stature gaining more and more ground in the marketplace, under the diligent direction of son Joseph Gregorio and his brother in law Joao Ferreira, a master blender. It was during this period that Joao Ferreira earned himself his reputation, winning medals for blending white rums and Wormwood Bitters at an International Exhibition in New Zealand in 19...
Just two years after the loss of his father Joseph Bento and Joao Ferreira seized an opportunity that presented itself after the fire of 1932, a fire that destroyed the Trinidad British government Rum Bond. Fernandes & Co., acquired the fire sale stocks of rum for blending at a good price and on discovering that the spirit had been distilled thirteen years earlier called it "1919" AGED RUM, it was the forerunner of the most successful of the Fernandes brands for thirty years with the named changed to Vat 19 when the original stocks ran out.
Joseph Bento was weary of being tied to the sugar estates for his supply of raw material. In 1933 he acquired from Henderson Forres Park sugar estate at Claxton Bay…It took years to rebuild the derelict Forres Park into an efficient and productive factory, eventually achieving 8.2 tons of cane to 1 ton of sugar. Scores not attainable today. Meanwhile Joseph Bento tinkered with the wooden still he knew was in the Forres Park compound and practised his hand at distilling and making rums that would be the foundation of his next venture.
In the late 1940's Joseph Bento had planned to build a new and modern distillery, to this end he acquired land at Morvant junction from Mendes and spent as much draining and filling as he had on purchasing this swampy tract. “
In general in the 20th century, due to being the one British island where sugar cane was still grown in large scale, rum production in Trinidad grew significantly whereas it somewhat slumped in many other regions.
The current single big player in Trinidad’s rum market is of course Angostura Ltd. Their history in rum-making is not very long, but their success has been remarkable, not in the least due to the vast amounts of sugar cane growing right next doors in Caroni region of Trinidad especially.
Company states this of their involvement in rum:
“By the turn of the century, the Company ventured into the rum market, at first just in bottling bulk rum from other distillers. After years of intensive research in fermentation and distillation processes, the Company installed a state-of-the-art distillery in 1945 heralding its entry into the production of rum on a major scale.
By the end of 1960, the Company had extended distribution of its products to over 140 countries across the world, becoming well known internationally for its high quality rums in addition to the now world famous Angostura aromatic bitters.”
Angostura Ltd. has now the phenomenal rectification capacity of 50 million litres / year, making it the biggest distillation plant of the English-speaking Caribbean. The company has two gigantic column stills with which they produce a variety of styles. Also Angostura Ltd. has purchased most of the now closed government Caroni distillery’s aged rums in a bulk deal that was heavily criticized locally for its low price.
Angostura supplied (and still does) bulk rums to all corners of the world – Bacardi, Captain Morgan etc. are just a few brands that use Angostura rums in them. At one time, according to inside information from the company, Bacardi used to buy & use in their rums a ready-made blend used by Angostura for their “Royal Oak” rum. Master blender Patrick Patel did not verify if this is true sadly. Bacardi owned 45% of the Angostura stock until in 1997 CL Financial bought them out – however in terms of bulk rum sales, the co-operation has continued. The ownership change allowed Angostura to market their own brands internationally.
Angostura uses only charred ex-bourbon barrels for ageing their rums, and rums are charcoal filtered to a degree based on their age. The maximum age of rum in their warehouse is 15 years, and the company people really suspect many other manufacturers in the Caribbean boasting with age statements that are not possible. (This is of course possible, since no law controls this fact).
During the rum-making process, the fermentation takes an average of 48 hours and the alcohol-content of that brew before actual distillation is 10%. Rum is casked at 70% alcohol content, higher than what whisky industry uses these days (around 63% I believe).
Hope you have the energy to read through all this..!