Modern Caribbean rum – Trinidad (preview chapter)

Below is a preview of the Trinidad chapter of Modern Caribbean Rum, by Matt Pietrek and Carrie Smith. Available at Wonk Press and select international retailers outside the US.

Distilleries

Trinidad Distillers Ltd. (Angostura)

The island of Trinidad lies Just nine miles off South America’s northern coast. Christopher Columbus was the first European explorer to note the island on July 31, 1498, during his third voyage.[1]

In 1588 the Spanish assumed control of Trinidad, enslaved the indigenous population, and began colonizing in earnest. Seven years later, the famed British poet, soldier, and explorer Walter Raleigh set out to find El Dorado, the mythical South American city of gold. Although Raleigh didn’t locate El Dorado, he stopped twice on Trinidad, commenting favorably on its tobacco and sugarcane cultivation.

The Spanish controlled Trinidad for another two centuries, although its population and agriculture declined substantially. Toward the end of the Spanish occupation, Caribbean geopolitical changes led the Spanish crown to renew its investments on the island, and Trinidad’s first sugarcane plantation appeared in 1787. Seven years later, 159 sugarcane plantations dotted Trinidad’s landscape.

Trinidad’s revitalization attracted the attention of the British, who were flexing their naval dominance in the Caribbean. British admiral Henry Harvey and an attached army force took control of Trinidad in 1797 with little opposition. Trinidad formally became a British colony when Spain ceded control as part of the 1802 Treaty of Amiens.

Trinidad was well-positioned along Caribbean trade routes, and its capital, Port of Spain, became a major trade hub; it remains so today.

The UK’s colonial authority merged Trinidad and nearby Tobago in 1889, creating Trinidad and Tobago as a single colony. In the early 1800s, Tobago made as much or more rum than Trinidad but makes no rum today. Trinidad asserted its independence in 1962, the same year as Jamaica.

This chapter uses “Trinidad” rather than the full country name, Trinidad and Tobago, for reasons of brevity.

Trinidad’s Colonial Rum History

As a British colony for 160 years, Trinidad’s colonial-era rum history followed an arc similar to many other colonies such as British Guiana.

In the early days, agriculturally viable land was carved into hundreds of sugarcane plantations, each with a small sugar factory and usually a small rum distillery using the mill’s byproducts. The industrial revolution drove efficiencies in manufacturing and transportation, causing the consolidation of many small plantations into fewer, larger plantations.

Relative to other British colonies, Trinidad was a mid-sized rum producer. Production statistics from the 1800s show that Trinidad’s yearly rum output varied wildly, from nearly nothing to nearly 4.5 million liters in 1808. In contrast, Jamaica and British Guiana distilled about an order of magnitude more rum than Trinidad, on average.

Trinidad’s Twentieth-Century Rum Making

In the twentieth century, Trinidad’s rum production continued to fluctuate wildly. Prior to World War I, the island exported around 450,000 liters (100,000 gallons) of rum yearly, a figure that jumped to 4.2 million liters during the war—the vast majority exported to the UK for military consumption. When the war ended, exports plunged to around 230,000 liters each year and stayed at those levels for many years.

World War II also ramped up demand for Trinidad rum, with much of the island’s sugarcane crop used to produce it. In 1941 Trinidad’s five distilleries made nearly six million liters of rum.

Trinidad’s twentieth-century rum industry had three key distilleries:

Caroni
Fernandes
Angostura

Caroni

In today’s rum world, few names incur as much excitement among collectors as Caroni. Although not a drop of rum has emerged from the shuttered distillery in two decades, the substantial stocks of rum left behind have slowly dribbled out to consumers via independent bottlers and now command an ever-growing premium price.

Caroni is much more than a brand or distillery; it’s also a geographical term, e.g., Caroni County, the Caroni river, the Caroni Plain, and the Caroni swamp.

The last Caroni distillery was established circa 1918. However, there are references to Caroni rum made at prior Caroni distilleries as early as 1887.[2]

In 1936, British sugar refiners Tate & Lyle purchased Caroni’s sugar and rum operations. It became their base for further expansions as they acquired several more estates along the way to becoming Trinidad’s dominant sugar operator.

Caroni’s Demise

Amidst a hemorrhaging sugar industry, Trinidad’s government acquired 51 percent of Caroni in 1970. Tate & Lyle managed the operations and held the remaining 49 percent. Unfortunately, the sugar industry continued to bleed money, so the government took full ownership in 1975 along with other related regional holdings to create “Caroni (1975) Ltd.”

A quarter-century later, the government attempted to partially divest its ownership stake by selling a 49 percent stake; Angostura was declared the preferred bidder by the government. However, the purchase agreement was subsequently scuttled; Angostura never owned any portion of the Caroni distillery, despite some premature news reports to the contrary.

In 2003, Caroni 1975’s rum operations were restructured into the Rum Distillers of Trinidad and Tobago (RDTT). The company’s mission was to find a way to continue distilling and sell off the large volume of rum sitting in Caroni’s bonded warehouse. Distilling never resumed, and the distillery equipment was hauled away. Today, the distillery site has almost returned to nature, with just the battered shells of the distillery and aging bonds remaining. Visiting the site is a pilgrimage for particularly dedicated enthusiasts.

Caroni’s Rum Stock

A dispute over the value of Caroni’s rum stock poisoned the partial sale of Caroni and led to its eventual closure.

In 2000, the government selected The Main Rum Company (see Chapter 13) to assess and value Caroni’s rum stock. The company’s valuation was approximately US $3.3 million for the 18,000-plus casks.[3] However, another source reported that Caroni’s rum stock was worth far more— between US $150 million and $1 billion.[4]

The kerfuffle over the rum’s value included charges of government cronyism and backroom deals. Some alleged the government tried to sell Caroni to Angostura at far less than market value.

In the end, Caroni’s rum was sold off piecemeal. Angostura got an early look at the casks and acquired some; other purchasers included The Main Rum Company and Italy’s Velier.[5] Velier subsequently moved its Caroni casks to Demerara Distillers in Guyana, where they aged for several more years.

In 2008, Trinidad’s government held an auction for the remaining stock, but no one bid, as the reserve was too high.[6] The remaining casks were sold off shortly thereafter. The value of Caroni’s stock remains a highly contentious issue in Trinidad today.

Caroni’s Rums

While today’s enthusiasts associate Caroni with very heavy, oily, diesel-like rum, the distillery used a variety of stills to make a range of rums from very light to very heavy:

A cast-iron still was commissioned in 1918.
In 1936, a wooden Coffey still was added.
In 1957, a single-column still from the Esperanza Estate came to Caroni to make high-ester rum for flavoring.
In 1964, the 1918 cast iron and 1936 wooden Coffey still were replaced by a Blair two-column still and a pot still. [7]
In 1980, a four-column still made by German company Gebr. Herrmann came into use, making “very clean alcohol.”

While today’s enthusiasts associate Caroni with very heavy, oily rum, a Caroni advertisement from the 1950s says, “It’s more like whisky, with a dry, light and delicate flavour all its own.”

The UK’s Royal Navy purchased Caroni rum for their rum blend in the mid-1900s. Presumably, it was a heavy style rum. Caroni also sold a consumer navy rum in the mid-twentieth century.

Fernandes Distillers Ltd.

Joseph Bento (“Jo”) Fernandes entered the rum business in the 1920s, purchasing rum from local distilleries for aging, blending, and bottling. His big break came in 1932, when a fire destroyed the government’s bonded rum warehouse.[8] Fernandes purchased the surviving rum at a literal fire sale price.

This rum became the basis of Fernandes’ “1919” rum, named for the year it was distilled; it was Trinidad’s first vintage rum. After the 1919-distilled rum ran out, Fernandes renamed the expression “Vat 19.”

In 1933, Fernandes bought the shuttered Forres Park sugar estate with its defunct rum distillery and wooden still, which Fernandes used to learn how to distill himself.

Fernandes had a wide range of business enterprises beyond just rum. Upon his purchase of the Queen’s Park Hotel, the namesake of the Queen’s Park Swizzle cocktail, a 1955 newspaper story dubbed him Trinidad’s richest man.[9]

Fernandes later built a new distillery in Laventille, located on the outskirts of Port of Spain. By the early 1970s, Fernandes produced 85 percent of the rum sold in Trinidad. Perhaps sensing the winds of change, Fernandes sold his distilling operations to Angostura and Bacardi in 1973. Today, Angostura has several offerings referencing old Fernandes expressions.

Angostura / Trinidad Distillers Ltd.

Distillation: Column
Source material: Molasses
Major brands: Angostura
Estimated LAA/year: 13.5 million
Distillery built: 1949
Ownership: CL Financial

Background

The House of Angostura is much more than their iconic bitters; they are also Trinidad’s sole remaining rum producer and one of the Caribbean’s biggest.

Angostura Bitters, Trinidad’s most famous export, came to the island in 1875. Initially devised in 1824 in the Venezuelan town of Angostura,[10] Dr. Johann Siegert’s medicinal tincture found considerable commercial success starting in the 1860s. Following his death, Siegert’s sons moved the operations to Trinidad in 1875.

During its first seven decades on Trinidad, Angostura purchased rum from local distilleries to make bitters. The company bought enough rum that it made economic sense to buy larger quantities for aging and bottling their own rum line. Siegert’s Bouquet was one early expression from Angostura, dating back to at least 1878.[11]

Angostura stepped fully into rum making in the late 1940s by building their own distillery. Technically, the distillery’s name is Trinidad Distillers Ltd. (TDL) and is an Angostura subsidiary. The distillery produces more rum than Angostura needs for their bitters and rum lines, so the remainder is sold as bulk rum.

While Angostura had sold rums for more than a century, it wasn’t until the late 1990s that the Angostura name came front and center as a rum brand.

The Bacardi Era

Angostura endured several ownership changes in its first century in Trinidad. It was at least partially owned by the Siegert family for most of that time.

In 1973 Bacardi was looking to expand their export markets and add to their distilling capacity.[12] Angostura was in a position to help while also benefitting itself. A two-part deal was struck:

Angostura (TDL) purchased Fernandes Distillers, which increased Angostura’s distilling capacity.
Bacardi took a forty percent stake in the merged Angostura and Fernandes distilleries, via a holding company named Rumpro Company Ltd.

Part of Bacardi’s motivation for investing in Angostura may have been related to tariffs. As detailed in Chapter 15, the 1975 Lomé Convention extended preferential tax treatment to rum made in CARICOM countries and imported into Europe. Bacardi’s Puerto Rican rum did not qualify for these tax breaks, but rum made in a CARICOM country like Trinidad did.

Bacardi’s investment in Rumpro lasted until the late 1990s.

CL Financial

In 1997, CL Financial (CLF), a privately held Trinidad-based conglomerate, purchased Rumpro (representing partial ownership of TDL) from Bacardi. Chapter 2 details the CL Financial story, but in brief, it was a holding company that acquired numerous spirit companies, particularly in the rum sector.

The 2007 global financial crisis was a devastating blow to many economies. Many firms were hammered by the financial market when their highly leveraged balance sheets turned negative.

CLF only survived because the Trinidad and Tobago government loaned billions of dollars to the company in 2009 to prevent further financial fallout. Per the agreement, CLF had to divest certain assets and give the government a majority of the company’s board seats. Thus, the Trinidad government has a substantial say over CLF operations.

In the decade after the CLF bailout, the company divested most of its distilled spirit holdings except for Angostura. It’s considered a national treasure, so it’s unlikely to be sold to a foreign owner.

Between its Rumpro stake and additional holdings via a subsidiary, CLF currently owns approximately 77 percent of Angostura’s shares.

10 Cane Collaboration

In the early 2000s, French conglomerate LVMH made 10 Cane Rum on Trinidad using local sugarcane juice. Distillation was at Usine St. Madeleine in conjunction with Angostura, who provided logistical support and facilities. Production of 10 Cane later moved to Foursquare on Barbados before LVMH subsequently shuttered the brand.

TDL’s Rum Profile

When Angostura built its distillery in the late 1940s, its primary motivation was supplying its bitters production. Thus, they had no reason for heavy, pot distilled rum like that of other British colonies. Instead, they had a column still from the outset.

Style-wise, Angostura’s rums are closest to the Spanish-heritage tradition, meaning shorter fermentation, column distillation, and making both light and heavy rums for blending. However, some of Angostura’s premium expressions have a healthy share of heavy column rum.

While TDL uses column stills exclusively, in the early 2000s they purchased a small Vendome hybrid still for experimentation. The resulting rum wasn’t what TDL was hoping for, so they sold the still to St. Lucia Distillers, who has used it since.

Distillery Operations

Since Angostura’s distillery is technically known as Trinidad Distillers Ltd. (TDL), what follows use TDL rather than Angostura for accuracy and brevity.

As rum distilleries go, TDL is one of the Caribbean’s largest rum producers, and its operations complex is substantial. Although TDL once made up to 27 million LAA per year, its current waste processing capabilities have capped its annual output to around 13.5 million LAA.

In addition to the distillery structures and aging warehouses, the site also contains a substantial bottling plant for Angostura’s eponymous bitters, rums, and other beverages.

Molasses Matters

Trinidad’s sugar industry once supplied all the molasses its rum distilleries required, but that era ended in the late 1900s; the country’s last operational sugar factory closed in 2007. Like many distilleries that once used local molasses, TDL switched to imported molasses.

TDL currently sources molasses from the Dominican Republic, Fiji, and certain South American countries. The company’s massive molasses storage tanks hold between six and ten thousand tons of molasses in reserve (4.3 to 7.1 million liters).

Fermentation

Starting from less than a liter of yeast inoculum, a proprietary yeast strain passes through three stages (gemination, propagation, growing) to create the thousands of liters of yeast needed for their large-scale fermentation. Each stage takes twelve to eighteen hours. A laboratory verifies the inoculum’s DNA prior to starting propagation.

Meanwhile, municipal water is mixed with molasses in the fermentation tanks to achieve the right Brix for ideal fermentation. When it’s finished propagating, the yeast enters the mix, and fermentation begins.

Ten stainless steel fermenters arranged in two rows provide TDL’s wash. Each tank holds around 150,000 liters and is temperature controlled to keep the fermenting wash at 92°F (33°C). A typical fermentation cycle takes 24 to 36 hours to complete and yields 540,000 liters of wash at eight percent ABV. The fermentation extends for a bit longer when making heavy rum to allow additional flavor congeners to form.

Distillation

TDL’s original 1949 Savalle column was carted off long ago. In its place are three multicolumn stills, each with five columns. According to an Angostura representative, the GH in their names refers to Gebr. Herrmann, a German manufacturer of distillation equipment.

The first (GH1) came in 1975, following Bacardi’s investment and need for more rum; it’s no longer in active use but could be restarted. A decade later, TDL added another multicolumn, GH2. The year 1999 heralded the arrival of GH3, a third multicolumn capable of making up to 60,000 LAA per day. The five columns are described as stripping, hydroselection, rectifying, polishing, and recovery.

TDL’s heavy rum distillation uses just the stripping column and comes off the still at around eighty percent ABV with a congener level in the 300 to 400 gr/hlAA range. TDL’s light rum distillation uses all five columns and is approximately 95 percent ABV. Portions of the light and heavy rum are blended to create several medium-weight rums, as is common in Spanish heritage production.

Small quantities of distillate are taken from plates other than the still’s normal “take-off” plate during distillation. This liquid is known as a side stream;small amounts are blended into the primary distillate prior to aging.

Aging

TDL ages most of its rum in ex-bourbon casks, and onsite coopers maintain and repair barrels.

Currently, all aging is onsite, although the company has plans for offsite aging. Across the five onsite warehouses, approximately 75,000 casks are stacked upright on pallets. One warehouse is an enormous red brick building that serves as a highly visible landmark within TDL’s extensive facility. Various blends at different ages are mixed across TDL’s warehouses, ensuring that the loss of one warehouse won’t leave their blenders entirely without key components of Angostura’s rum blends.

Light rum goes into casks at around 75 percent ABV and typically ages two years or less. In contrast, heavy rum enters at 55 to 65 percent ABV and ages much longer.

The angel’s share in Trinidad is around six percent annually. Workers periodically consolidate batches of 400 to 800 casks of the same age to reduce the angel’s share.

Blending

Angostura makes its own coloring in an area known as the “Caramel Plant.” Within it are several mid-sized, cubical steel tanks helpfully labeled “Caramel Tank #1” and “Caramel Tank #2”.

TDL makes two types of caramel: One is for adjusting the color of Angostura’s rums; the other for Angostura bitters. Rum caramel is made with inverted white sugar, while the bitters’ caramel uses brown sugar.

The Angostura Bitters Room

No visit to Angostura and TDL is complete without seeing how its world-famous Angostura Bitters are made.

Aside from bottling operations, the entire production process occurs in a large room no bigger than twenty by thirty meters. Most of the space is filled with rows of large tanks, 45,000 liters in size. Each tank is painted with a colossal-sized version of the Angostura Bitters label.

Angostura Bitters is a rum-based infusion. Various botanical ingredients soak in rum to impart their flavors. The botanicals include orange peel, quinine, cassia, gentian, cinnamon, and cascarilla. The complete recipe is a company secret guarded as zealously as Coca-Cola’s. To help maintain the recipe’s secrecy, Trinidad’s customs officials do not open or inspect Angostura’s botanicals during their importation.

To make bitters, employees first empty color-coded botanical bags into a large red chute from a room above the production area. Employees don’t know what the colors mean or what they contain. The chute feeds into a mill that grinds the ingredients so finely that no one can realistically identify the ingredients.

The ground botanicals then go into a squat, round, metal canister about the size of a sofa ottoman. A fine metal screen covers the canister’s bottom. The canister is then placed on top of a metal cylinder containing rum at 55 percent ABV. Over four hours, a pump circulates the rum through the botanicals inside the canister.

When the infusion completes, the infused rum transfers to a 45,000-liter tank, where it’s blended with sugar and caramel. After three months integrating, the high-strength bitters are diluted to 44.7 percent ABV and are ready for bottling.

[1] Montgomery Martin. History of the British Colonies, Vol. 2, 1834.

[2] H. Trueman Wood, “Reports on the Colonial Sections,” 1887.

[3] “CARONI (1975) LIMITED (RUM DISTILLERY DIVISION)”, T&T Parliament (Hansard), October 13, 2000.

[4] Shah, Raffique. “Rum talk from PM, say union leaders.” Retrieved 18 February 2022, from http://trinicenter.com/Raffique/Sept/caroni.htm

[5] Velier purchased its Caroni stock circa 2005. Other companies had previously purchased some of the casks.

[6] “Caroni Rum Auction Fails,” Trinidad and Tobago Express, Oct. 12, 2008.

[7] Mayer, Steffan. Caroni – 100% Trinidad Rum, 2022

[8] “£105,000 FIRE IN THE CITY OF PORT OF SPAIN,” Kingston Daily Gleaner, June 28, 1932.

[9] “Rum magnate in hotel deal,” Kingston Gleaner, Sept. 7, 1955, p. 7.

[10] Now known as Ciudad Bolívar.

[11] G.E. Eyre and W.S. Spottiswoode, “Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878, Catalog of the British Colonies,” 1878.

[12] “An Ancient Potion’s Modern Secret,” Miami Herald, Dec. 20, 1982.