In Trinidad, Angostura Limited buys molasses produced by Caroni Limited, and this is where the communality ends. Angostura’s multi-coloured distilling plant may well be the most modern of its kind anywhere. Using their own yeast cultures and distilling methods, Angostura produces the full range from light to dark rums.

In 1918, the Caroni sugar factory started to distill rum in a cast iron still. There were at that time some eight or ten other sugar factories operating, each owning some form of distilling apparatus and producing different types of rums. These rums were bought up and barrelled by various merchants, and then sold to rum shops all over the island. The haphazard blending, either by merchants or the rum shop proprietors, produced amazing one-offs, never to be repeated, and concoctions that sold over the counter in unlabeled ‘petit quarts’.

Over the years, Caroni improved the quality of its distilling process. From the original cast iron still to a wooden coffey still to a single column still, and to the new four-column still. The rums produced in Trinidad are said to be amongst the best in the world. As Thomas Gatcliffe, chemist and retired chairman of Angostura Limited said:

“Rum is to the Caribbean what whisky is to the high lands of Scotland or wine to France.”

It is much better to drink good quality light Trinidad rums than inferior blends of artificially aromatised products that call themselves whisky, for style sake… Cheers!