NOSE: Rich chocolate and orange cake, with a touch of vanilla ice cream.

TASTE: Warm spiced pear, with sticky honeyed figs.

FINISH: Aged tobacco and sugared prunes, with layers of marzipan.

This 2023 Winter Release is our inaugural bottling, the first of a series of exceptional rums drawn from single casks at our distillery in Hertfordshire

We are meticulous when it comes to barrel selection. We only use the highest quality barrels from outstanding producers. We look for different wood types, sizes, grains and history of use to ensure the perfect conditions in which our spirit will mature.

These bottles were drawn from a single French 225 litre oak cask in the Autumn of 2023. The wood was sourced exclusively from sustainably managed French forests and handmade by the expert coopers at Maison Demptos, in the heart of the Bordeaux region. The cask spent its formative years maturing an exquisite muscat wine, before making its way to Hertfordshire where it was filled with our rum distillate in 2020.

We utilise the traditional methods of producing a full-flavoured rum by scrutinising all the possible variables that can impact flavour development in the fermentation. We combine the highest grade of molasses, which contain an unmatched depth of flavour, with pure mineral-rich water from our onsite well. To each batch of liquid we add different yeasts selected from an extraordinarily diverse range of strains, enabling the curation of a rich and complex series of ferments. By taking a small-scale approach to many different individual fermentations, we have complete freedom to adjust every detail; temperature, acidity, gravity and oxygenation, which all influence a rum’s unique character. To encourage further complexity in these batches, we add the remnants of previous distillation, drawn fresh from the stills, known in rum distilling as dunder. The addition of dunder increases the acidity of the ferment, which supports critical flavour development. This Winter 2023 release was created using three very different yeast strains fermented over 14 days in naturally acidic conditions during the Spring of 2020.

We use only copper pot stills, which are renowned for their ability to create heavier, richer rums. Our stills are truly artisanal as they are hand-hammered copper stills made bespoke to our specifications. By distilling each ferment individually, and heating the copper pot stills slowly, we are able to draw out all the possible flavours from each ferment. After the first distillation the resulting liquids, all varying in character, are blended in two 500 litre oak casks that previously held Scotch whisky. This blend of distillates is then distilled for a second time. It is from this second distillation that cuts are taken, by hand and taste, to determine quality and suitability for the selected cask it will spend years maturing in. Though it is common practice to only take middle cuts, we take our cuts from across the whole spectrum of the distillation, differing each time. This results in a unique and flavourful rum, which is then paired with an equally exceptional cask.

Limited to three hundred bottles, this is our first edition of our single cask releases. Only a small amount of our distillery’s production has ever been bottled and sold in the UK, making these bottles a rare find.

We have given Berry Bros. & Rudd and Harrods the exclusivity to sell this release in their stores and through their websites.