By CINDA CHAVICH

Bajans like to lay claim to a rather auspicious title in the booze business – that their beloved Mount Gay is the oldest rum distillery in the world.

So its no surprise that the golden elixir flows like water around here and that a Barbados “rum safari” is a popular pastime. As we bump along the back roads in an open jeep, stopping at little rural “rum shops” to toss back another “snap” with the locals, I’m starting to see why they like to say life is sweet here.

Winding up across the top of St. Lucy Parish on a narrow dirt road, we are literally lost in a sea of sugar cane, the plants so thick and tall that even our savvy driver has difficulty deciding whether the next turn should be left or right. In fact it’s sugar – the kind that comes from those fields of spiky cane and morphs into big brown crystals and eventually the famed Mount Gay rums – that has long defined the rhythm of life on this Caribbean island. From the spring cane harvest to the colorful calypso street parties of the summer Crop Over festival, Barbados was built on sugar and rum.

And Mount Gay is their brand. Sure, there are others – the new artisan rums from historic St. Nicholas Abbey, the famed Plantation Extra Old and the Cockspur Rum that goes into the posh rum punch alongside the island’s best flying fish sandwiches at Cutters - but from the screaming red and yellow storefronts on almost every corner, its clear that Mount Gay is the local favourite.

Rum may be one of the world’s oldest spirits but it’s having a bit of a renaissance these days. Whether it’s the hip cocktail culture or the growing popularity of Latin-American food, a minty rum mojito or dacquiri is the new life of the party. And like any classic spirit, rum has a story to tell.

Rum is distilled from sugar cane – today often from pure cane juice but originally from the molasses that were the left over after the cane was refined into sugar. Ironically, it was plantation slaves who first discovered the value-added alcohol that could be fermented from this local by-produce, rum being a drink first popularized in the Caribbean and eventually becoming colonial New England’s biggest industry.

Along with the growing demand for sugar, this 17th-century “rum boom” led to greater demand for Caribbean labour, and so the exchange of slaves, molasses and rum grew into a very profitable business between African, Caribbean and British North American traders.

Loaded with hogsheads of molasses and rum, trading ships also carried Caribbean salt north, as ballast, and returned with salted cod, the mainstay of the plantation slave’s meager diet. These links between Nova Scotia and Barbados are still part of our Maritime heritage, and explain why Bajans still enjoy salt cod fritters and Caribbean rum is a mainstay in Nova Scotia.

But rum was made long before that. Mentions of Barbados “rumbullion” and “kill devil” are found in Connecticut court documents dating to 1634 and it was soon after that when planters settled the land that would eventually become the Mount Gay plantation. The oldest written evidence of a distillery on this site is 1703, though it’s likely rum was made here much earlier.

Dark, light or white, rum is made wherever sugar cane grows and today Jamaica, Barbados, Puerto Rico and Cuba are among the largest producers of rum. But Bajans like to say their rum is different, thanks to their top quality sugar cane, coral-filtered water, and tradition of using copper pot stills.

It’s all detailed in the whitewashed Mount Gay Museum, where a guide explains that their double-distilled rum is aged in reclaimed Kentucky bourbon barrels and we stop to taste through the range of products.

Today Master Blender Allen Smith is offering a tutorial in rum tasting.

“Mark you, I said tasting, not drinking,” says Smith as he lifts a special tasting glass a few inches below his nose, closes his eyes and sniffs.

Mount Gay’s rum has been winning gold medals in spirits competitions around the world and his golden Extra Old really is a benchmark for rum aficionados. Like many fine spirits it’s aging that adds the layers of flavour to rum.

                                        At Mount Gay, the nuances of vanilla, coffee, chocolate, caramel, leather, sweet almond and smoke come from the barrels, with the best rums blended from those that have been aged for 10, 20 and 30 years.

Bajans are a religious lot but the tradition of heading down to the local rum shop is just as important as donning your best hat for church on Sunday.

“We have 1,000 churches on the island and there are 1,600 rum shops – 1,200 registered,” says our “rum safari” guide.

For a small country, only 34 km long and 23 km wide, it’s hard to believe there are that many corners to set up a bar where you can “touch one,” as the locals say.

At Braddy’s, one of the popular local haunts, Chesterfield Browne, Mount Gay’s master mixologist and brand ambassador, offers a shot of amber Mount Gay Eclipse.

“That’s how we do it in Barbados,” says Browne, downing the drink quickly. “You buy a drink and your friends will buy you back one.”  Sweet.

©Cinda Chavich 2011

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