Rum Hunting - Day Four - St. Nicholas Abbey

Built in the mid-17th century, St. Nicholas Abbey is a former sugar plantation that has been immaculately preserved and restored in the St. Peter parish of Barbados. It's been around for more than 350 years and current owners, the Warren family, have decided to turn part of the old plantation into a boutique distillery. We were excited to get off the guided tour and adventure out on our own a bit, so we caught a taxi to the Abbey for a closer look.

The distillery itself is merely a small Holstein still over to the right of the barn entrance, exactly like you would see at St. George or Old World Spirits in the Bay Area. To the left, however, is a fantastically old-school sugarcane crusher that squeezes out the fresh juice and sends it to the boiler where it's turned into a syrup.

While the Abbey has been around for centuries, the distillery at St. Nicholas is quite new. They've only been up and running for about two years, so there's still some construction going on inside the plant. Over to the left you'll see the tanks for boiling the juice, which is piped in from the crusher directly behind me, which you'll see in the next photo.

The crusher was fully-operational today. The sugarcane was coming right in from the field outside where it was being fed through the machinery. It was quite fun to watch.

A tractor outside brought the sugarcane right out of the field and into a the pile being fed to the crusher. The entire operation was quite romantic: local agriculture being harvested and utilized right there on the island. Mount Gay's molasses supply is mostly imported from India and Guyana due to lower prices. Only about 30% of it comes from the island. Our cab driver told us that Barbados' sugar is quite special and demands the higher price point on the market.

The rum being distilled at St. Nicholas Abbey is not blended. It's all coming off their small Holstein still and is not combined with any other distillate from another still elsewhere. Currently they only have the white rum for release as their oldest aged expressions have only been in wood for about two years. The problem with the "pot still" rum is that it is immediately fed into the column still next to it where it's rectified into an almost neutral spirit. We loved the aromatics on the nose, but the palate might as well have been Belvedere vodka. It just goes to show you that you can have all the romance, the small, hands-on production, and the intimate environment, but you still might not have a good product. Mount Gay doesn't have the romance (which is why they've been keeping us away from their production), but their rum is still superior.

As we headed into the gift shop we noticed some aged expressions. "What are these?" we asked. Lo and behold, St. Abbey is bottling pure pot still rum at both ten and fifteen years of age – and they're not cheap. The fifteen year old will set you back about $130 a bottle. Where are they getting this aged rum?

St. Nicholas Abbey is following the old High West business model. Make your own rum, but sell someone else's in the meantime. There are two other distilleries on the island of Barbados: West Indies, which used to make Malibu rum before it was sold to Pernod-Ricard, and Foursquare, which makes a number of other rums sold on the island. The rum was quite good – round and supple, but nothing super special. Nothing that justified the high price tag, at least. I'd rather have the Mount Gay Extra Old or 1703, especially since I could buy multiple bottles for that price. It's clear, however, that the other two distilleries on the island are willing to sell off their stocks to any distillery in need of extra inventory and that there are serious rums being made elsewhere in Barbados. Just in case another company was running low on supply, wanted to buy some, or blend some into their own stock, there is some good rum to be had. Who else would need to do that, however?

More news from Barbados later tonight as we head back to RemyLand for a cocktail competition and more Mount Gay

-David Driscoll