Barbados – Part 7 – The Rum – Mount Gay

We did two rum tours on our trip. The first was the self-guided tour at Foursquare Distillery Barbados – Part 6 – The Rum – Foursquare Distillery and the second was a guided tour at Mount Gay. The Foursquare tour was interesting, but the tour at Mount Gay was much better. It should be at $55 per person vs. free though. We learned so much about rum and rum production, and our guide, Ramal was a wealth of knowledge. He was a lot of fun too.

Mount Gay has a very long history, and is the oldest rum distillery in the world. It has been producing world class rums since 1705.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the rum distilleries were originally on private plantations, where the people actually lived. Mount Gay was no different. This used to the be the family’s private residence. Today, it is used as the meeting rooms for tours and parties.

Ramal preparing our welcome rum cocktail before starting the tour.

Different flavors often found in rums.

After giving us the history of Mount Gay Distillery, Ramal led us into the actual factory, where the rum is made, and gave us a very thorough rum lesson. Before entering the rum factory, we all had to don our hard hats.

If you can see the no smoking sign behind me, there is a story for that too. Rum, is alcohol, and alcohol is highly volatile. There are NO SMOKING signs all over the premises and Ramal clearly stated there is NO SMOKING allowed anywhere on the premises. Fire hazards are very real at a rum factory.

This is the meeting place in case of a fire.

However, there is always going to be that one stupid person that thinks the rules don’t apply to them. Sure enough, there was one stupid man that left for a cigarette or two. By so doing, he endangered all of us, the employees and the rum factory itself. Fortunately, he was caught and escorted out. At first he said he had been arrested, but then he rejoined the group towards the end of the tour. I have no idea what his punishment was, but I hope it was a strong one. I just hate stupid people like this.

Anyway. Back to the tour.

These are all the ingredients actually used to make the rum. The main ingredient is molasses. They use molasses from Barbados itself and from other Caribbean countries. There is a very distinct difference in the tastes. Ramal let us all taste both kinds of molasses.

This is the mixing room. We could not get any other pictures of the blending itself. That is a trademark secret and no photos were allowed.

The processing room. These tanks are in operation 24/7, around the clock.

The aging rooms.

Each of these buildings is filled with rum aging in barrels until it is ready to bottle.

After touring the grounds, we all went back to the meeting rooms to do some sampling. These are the rums we all sampled.

All of the rums were very good. Again, I liked the higher end rums. Surprise, surprise! The picture behind Ramal is a picture of the current rum blender. He told us that there is only one blender at a time, and each blender adds their own personal styles and techniques to the rums.

Ramal showing off his fun personality along with an expensive, top shelf bottle of rum. We didn’t get to try this one though. Darn. It only sells for about $400 per bottle. 🙂

Taking this tour is a definite must-do while in Barbados, even if you are not a rum drinker. It is very interesting and informative, giving lots of history about rum and the island itself.

While in the area, after the tour, we went to the Wildlife Animal Reserve too, but more on that later.