The Birthplace of Rum
Easternmost gem of the Lesser Antilles, Barbados has a tropical climate, cooled by the Atlantic trade winds. But, unlike its volcanic Caribbean neighbours, it’s framed by coral reefs.
This roughly triangular pear-shaped island in the North Atlantic Ocean is mostly flat but has contrasts; a windswept eastern Atlantic coast, and glistening sandy beaches on the west and south coasts facing the Caribbean Sea – which is aptly named The Platinum Coast for its luxury resorts and beautiful sandy beaches.
But for rum enthusiasts, Barbados offers something even more enticing: a pilgrimage to the very birthplace of rum.
The wet season runs from June to December and the dry season from December to May. The nutrient-rich soil is perfect for growing lush sugarcane, and rain showers disappear as quickly as they arrive. Here, amidst the swaying palm trees and turquoise waters, you’ll discover a rich distilling heritage that continues to be at the forefront of rum and must-visit destination.
Barbados translates to ‘the bearded ones’ from which 1500s Portuguese settlers named it. Today, Barbados is a melting pot of African, Indian, Creole, and British influences.
Historically, its location was an important first stop in the transatlantic slave trade from Africa. The Dutch traded north from Brazil, and the English colonised the island in 1627. Sugarcane cultivation to produce sugar had a by-product called molasses. Once discarded, it was fermented and turned into rum. First made in Barbados by enslaved Africans and British colonists, rum has forever altered the island’s history and future.
Barbados became a launchpad for the British Empire, which colonised Jamaica and Grenada. Its strategic location connected Trinidad, Jamaica, and Guyana. These historical ties are reflected in many inter-island rum blends, with Barbados rum at their heart.
Today, you’ll likely arrive in Barbados by plane or cruise ship. The Barbados cruise service has grown strongly since the pandemic. Although you’ll arrive in the south, we’ll guide you north to south. With so many small buses going up and down the island’s west side, car rental is not always the best option. Hiring a driver takes you between the best spots and you’ll likely discover hidden gems and great stories from locals. Start our rum guide at the world’s oldest rum company.
Mount Gay Distilleries
Mount Gay, the world’s oldest commercial rum distillery dates back to 1703. The original plantation was known as Mount Gilboa and recently discovered records indicate distilling on the plantation in 1654. The modern brand started to emerge in the 1890s.
Their famous expression Mount Gay Eclipse was developed in 1911, and named after Halley’s comet in 1910. In 2014 Rémy Cointreau bought the brand and started rebuilding and reacquiring cane fields evolving to the large site you will see today.
Mount Gay has 2 sites you can visit; one in Bridgetown near the cruise terminal is a visitor centre with a shop, hosting rum tasting with lunch, cocktail workshops, and masterclasses.
The main distillery tour is a 40-minute drive north at St Lucy. It’s a large site with multiple rectangular coral limestone buildings (pictured above). Book your tour online ahead and choose from a selection of distillery experiences and whether to book a shuttle from your hotel – a wise choice to enjoy the rum tasting.
The guided tour begins from a modern reception room and takes you to the original well, the molasses house, the barrel warehouse, the fermentation house, and the still house to see the old pot and column stills. You’ll learn the process from field to bottle, via limestone-filtered water. The tour returns to the modern tasting room where you’ll likely try the signature range of Mount Gay Eclipse, Black Barrel, XO, 1703 Master Select, and perhaps an available special edition.
2023 Mount Gay Single Estate was released, a seminal moment as they had invested in growing sugarcane for many years before creating their own molasses to distill. Exclusively from sugarcane cultivated on the estate, the Single Estate 2023 edition is a blend of 2016 and 2017 cane harvests, fermented with their own yeast and aged for 6-7 years. Created by Master Blender Trudiann Branker, her team includes Maggie Campbell, the estate rum manager.
Mount Gay has a popup bar at Worthing Village, if open it’s well worth a visit in the evening to enjoy live music, rum, and food stands in a relaxed atmosphere.
Find out more on Mount Gay Distillery
St Nicholas Abbey
A short drive from Mount Gay is St Nicholas Abbey in Saint Peter. Not an abbey, but one of the oldest plantations and Jacobean-style mansions in the Caribbean dating back to 1658. Step back in time and visit its charming surroundings. In 2006, the Warren family bought the estate, and restored the house to immerses visitors in the island’s past. St. Nicholas Abbey is an operating distillery, in 2016, they started distilling their own rum, and you can even take a ride on their Nicholas Abbey Heritage Railway, which opened in late 2018.
In reviving rum production, they grow their own high-sugar cane and harvest it by hand. Committed to quality and tradition, they use cane syrup instead of molasses to create unique single-cask rums You can see the cane crushing on the tour, and you’ll also visit the “Annabelle” still which creates a white rum aged in bourbon casks. Each bottle is hand-filled from a single cask, ensuring a limited-edition experience (around 300 bottles per cask). The rum is bottled without blending, colouring, or added sugar.
St. Nicholas Abbey prioritises quality over quantity, deliberately limiting production. Their rums are sold primarily on-site in Barbados, but can also be found in small batches exported worldwide. Railway enthusiasts will enjoy the train journey, you can even help turn the train around in the turning wheel at the Cherry Tree Hill Reserve viewpoint of the East Coast.
The tour shows the working distillery and cane crushing demonstration, and gardens with exotic birds, before entering the main house for a guided tour of the period rooms. The tour finishes in the tasting room and shop where you’ll try the delicious rum. There’s an onsite restaurant where you can have lunch and listen to the steel drums as the family tortoise wanders around your table.
St Nicholas Abbey has released a 25-year-old rare special reserve single cask rum, and you’ll find their latest releases in the distillery shop, where you can also have your bottle engraved. The train runs from 10am-2.30pm, and distillery tours are 10am -3.30pm. (Closed Saturdays). The railway is currently being extended as a large project, following the progress on their socials.
Find out more on St Nicholas Abbey
West Indies Rum Distillery
Bridgetown the capital has a beachfront distillery called West Indies Rum Distillery (WIRD). It was built by German engineer George Stade in 1893 and is the island’s biggest rum producer. This is home to Planteray Rum (previously Plantation Rum, the name changed in early 2024) bought by the French spirits brand in 2017.
In January 2024, after reconditioning the Rockley Pot Still (pictured) which dates back to 1780, and is considered one of the world’s oldest pot stills was recommissioned at the distillery.
In 2024 the new Stade’s Visitor center with a beachfront bar was opened. Bring your swimming costume, and you can go for a dip in the sea at Brighton Beach after your tour to cool down. It must be one of the few rum distilleries right next to a beach. Stade’s Rum is their brand for the local market, and quite new for international rum lovers. You’ll find this in the bars and restaurants, along with Planteray Rum.
When you tour the distillery you’ll see the scale of operations, and get to pop inside the archive room displaying old documents dating back to the early days. After seeing the production facilities like the fermentation tanks and huge column stills, you can visit the vast Stade’s cask warehouse and perhaps try a sample from the cask. The tasting room experience will include the Barbados Planteray Rum range. After the success of Plantation Stiggins’ Fancy Pineapple and 4 years of development, they released Cut & Dry Coconut Rum.
They are building more warehousing for casks at Kendal plantation where they plan to grow sugarcane and coconuts for the Cut & Dry rum.
Find out more on West Indies Rum Distillery
Foursquare Rum Distillery
Foursquare Rum Distillery was built on a plantation in the 1920s and owned by the fifth generation of the Seale family. Not from the airport, Foursquare Rum Distillery opened in 1996. Richard Seale, the owner and distiller stands out in the rum world for his dedication to consistency and transparency over the years. The Seale family team has been instrumental in elevating Barbados rum to a high-quality spirit equal to a single malt or fine cognac.
Signature to this is the Barbados style of blending pot and column distilled rum before and after ageing in cask. Pot-Column Blend with new stills at the distillery referred to as single blended rum. The distillery makes several marques and has recently experimented using cane juice molasses & cane syrup in Foursquare LFT (long fermentation type) a collaboration with Velier.
Peter Holland UK Brand Ambassador for Foursquare tells us what’s new: The next Exceptional Cask Selection release (Foursquare 2011) is scheduled for the end of May in the UK with Foursquare Equipoise (meaning balance) closer to summer. Demand remains high for the ECS releases, and with good reason as the liquid is exceptional. It seems that each new release pushes the bar ever higher.
But let’s not forget that Doorly’s range of aged rums remains available year-round and offers amazing value for money given their qualities. Foursquare also produces Real McCoy, Rum Sixty Six, and other brands and bottlers. You can try their local brand on the island called Old Brigand Rum.
You can walk around the site with some interesting features, or book a guided tour and tasting showing you around the distillery with the new upgrades in recent times. Afterward in the sampling room and shop you can taste the Crisma Rum Cream, Foursquare Spiced, Doorly’s Rum 5, 12, 14 Years, R.L. Seale’s Rum, and perhaps a special release if you visit at the right time.
Find out more on Foursquare Rum Distillery
English Spirit Distillery Kendal
The English Spirit Distillery has recently opened a distillery in April 2024 and produces rum on the copper pot alembic stills shown above. This introduces a new dimension of rum-making in Barbados.
“We are opening our newest distillery in Kendal, Barbados, where we will continue our rum journey marrying together the immense past of Barbadian rum’s heritage with my penchant for French Oak barrels!” says John Walters founder of the English Spirit Distillery.
Find out more on English Spirit Distillery
Hopewell Distillery
The newest rum distillery has roots in the island’s past and a vision for the future. Founder Greg Crozier’s mother’s family, the Perkins, arrived in Barbados in the 1680s. His great-grandfather, John Edward Perkins, managed the Mount Gay plantation and distillery until his passing in 1923. Greg’s grandfather, Ivan Oliver Perkins was only 13 at the time. He moved to Bridgetown, and went on to carve his own path, working for sugar and rum merchants before establishing Perkins & Sons an ageing, blending, bottling, and distribution business. Old Mill Rum and Rum 75 are the Perkins & Sons brands.
Meanwhile, Greg’s Cozier family arrived in Barbados even earlier, in 1637. They established themselves as sugar growers for generations, with Hopewell Plantation becoming their family estate.
Greg is the link between the families and is forging ahead with a new distillery in Saint Thomas. They currently distill gin from sugarcane, the rum stills (pictured) will be installed by the end of August, and distillery tours start in December. They’ve had a 100-litre double-retort still (pictured) made for events. Something to look forward to for your holiday season vacation.
Find out more on Hopewell Distillery
Other new rum projects on the horizon include Scotch whisky distillery Kilchoman on Islay. They announced plans to build a rum distillery in Barbados, after acquiring Bentley Mansion and estate on the island in 2021.
Rum Like a Local
There are many places to enjoy rum in Barbados, starting with the 1500 or so Bajan rum shops which are small local bars (pictured above) where you can hang out with locals.
It’s a quintessential part of the island’s culture and social life; most are family-owned and were previously chattel houses. Jump on one of the small buses that go up and down the west coast, and you’ll discover a relaxing way to enjoy rum over a game of cards or dominos.
Friday night Oistin’s Fish Fry is the most popular event on the island, held in the fishing town Oistins on the south coast. Locals and visitors flock there to enjoy fried or grilled tuna, swordfish, or the Bajan national dish flying fish, and cou-cou. Our advice is to go early to avoid the traffic. Better still go to Foursquare Distillery first, and skip the southbound traffic. Dis Ole House Kitchen & Garden is a good spot near the distillery.
Crop over Festival is the biggest carnival event and signifies the end of the sugarcane crop harvest with roots going back to 1687. It’s super busy with events from July 31st to August 06th, 2024 island-wide, so plan when visiting during this time as it’s a rum-fueled experience.
Barbados is considered the culinary capital of the Caribbean, every October the island hosts the Barbados Food and Rum Festival which is a must-visit experience for foodies and rum lovers. In 2024, October 19th – 22nd at Kensington Oval in Bridgetown. Also, October 28th-31st is the Barbados Rum Experience in Bridgetown.
Barbados Independence Day is a big celebration on November 30th. The island is busy over the Festive season, so book ahead for New Year celebrations, some distilleries will close, and gala dinners and events need to be pre-booked, so check what’s available.
Rum punch is popular, but try a Corn’n’Oil – Two parts aged Barbados rum to one part falernum and aromatic bitters. Falernum is a delicious lime-ginger-clove-rum cordial with roots in the 18th century.
Pro Tip: We recommend visiting distilleries and sites by region on the island, i.e. visit the distilleries in the north together, and then enjoy local restaurants and bars nearby. West Coast towns like Lone Star near Holetown, Speightstown Rum Vault, John Moore Bar in Saint James, or the Sea Shed at Mullins Beach.
After visiting distilleries near Bridgetown, you are not far from bars and restaurants on the Southwest coast like Hastings Boardwalk, The Tiki bar at Rockley Beach, St Lawrence Gap, or enjoy a fish cutter and rum punch at Carlisle Bay Beach beside the Hilton Barbados Resort.
For a place to pick up a bottle locally try, Massy Supermarket, Clifton Market, Wine World, or Cave Shepherd.
Rum and Barbados are inextricably linked to the sugar trade and the legacy of slavery. To delve deeper into this complex past, visit the Barbados Museum and Historical Society in Bridgetown. You can visit other sites the Sunbury Plantation Great House dating back to 1600 which is quite near Foursquare distillery.
Barbados is not a one-trip wonder, the rum scene is evolving.
Barbados’s rich history never gets old, there’s always something new to discover – even for returning visitors. The ever-evolving rum scene alone gives you a reason to come back and experience the latest innovations.
To learn more about general tourism VisitBarbados
For travel planning use our Barbados Rum Map
We also have Barbados Distillery prints and maps: Rum Geography Shop
Special thanks to all the brand owners who contributed to this article for their insights. Image credits to the rum producers, Canva Pro, and user contributions.
