Trinidad is het grootste van de twee eilanden die het land Trinidad en Tobago vormen. Het behoort tot de Kleine Antillen, en is hier het grootste eiland van.

Geografie
Trinidad heeft een oppervlakte van 4828 km² en een bevolking van 1.050.000 inwoners. De hoofdstad is Port of Spain met 300.000 inwoners.

Trinidad ligt 11 km ten noorden van Venezuela en ligt 30 km zuidelijk van Tobago. Het klimaat is tropisch. Er valt ongeveer 200 cm regen per jaar en er zijn twee seizoenen: het regenseizoen van juni tot januari en het droge seizoen van januari tot juni.

Trinidad heeft de grootste bron van natuurlijk asfalt ter wereld, en heeft een oliebron waaruit sinds 1867 olie wordt gewonnen. Verder wordt er suikerriet en cacao verbouwd.

Sinds de oliecrisis van de jaren zeventig is toerisme een belangrijke inkomstenbron. Het carnaval, op Trinidad mas geheten, is wereldberoemd. Op Witte Donderdag vindt een ‘parade of bands’ plaats.

Rum

Rums may be described as heavy or light, depending on the purity to which they are distilled. Rum produced on a continuous still is considered ‘good light rum’. Rum made on a potstill, in your backyard, bush rum or ‘babash’ may be described as ‘heavy’.

The mixing of rum from different stills, or rum distilled to different purities, and the placing of the mix in barrels for various lengths of time is called blending. This skill is basic to the production of rum. The art of the blender, especially before scientific controls were introduced, made or broke the brand.

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 rumshop 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!

Bron: Wikipedia + Triniview +Alice & Gerard Besson