RUM FESTIVAL LONDON 24th – 25th October
St Nicholas Abbey Rum, part of the Vanquish Brand Management Portfolio One of the first brands to be taken on by the Vanquish Brand Management team is St Nicholas Abbey Rum – a premium 10 year old rum from Barbados.
An amber coloured rum distilled in Barbados from a 350 year old plantation, it has received outstanding reviews from industry experts such as Dave Broom, one of the UK’s leading experts on Rum who commented “..Elegant and complex, this is a must stock”. A product such as this with true quality and provenance fits perfectly within the Vanquish Brand Management Model. Built in 1658, St Nicholas Abbey is one of only 3 Jacobean mansions remaining in the Western Hemisphere.
The old plantation house sits in over 400 acres of sugar cane fields and has been restored to its former glory by local architect and current owner Larry Warren. The rum is produced exclusively for the plantation by Richard Seale at Foursquare Distillery who age it for the first 8 years in oak Bourbon casks at 65% abv. It is then batched and re-barrelled into the same casks at bottle strength and aged for a further 2 years at the Abbey. After 10 years the rum is bottled straight from the cask by hand at the Abbey into specially designed decanters which have an image of St Nicholas Abbey frosted onto each one. Each bottle is topped with a mahogany cork and hand engraved with a number and dated.
Only 4,000 bottles are produced each year (other brands produce up to 400,000 bottles an hour). A new state of the art hybrid pot/column still has been installed at the Abbey by Larry Warren to produce their own rum on site – the rum produced will be ready to be bottled in 2017 after 8 years ageing. A syrup evaporator has also been installed to produce fresh sugar syrup to make the rum rather than Molasses – a by-product of the sugar making industry; this means St Nicholas Abbey will be a Rhum Agricole. You can see the juice being extracted by the only surviving steam mill in Barbados, built in 1890, that is still in working order at St Nicholas Abbey.
Because of the way it is made, St Nicholas Abbey Rum will be more like a traditional Barbadian Rum than a Rhum Agricole. It will be made using batch distillation rather than continuous distillation and at a higher abv than Rhum Agricole – 90%+ rather than 65%-75%, this means it is much lighter in style. When the rum is eventually bottled it will be mixed with Barbadian water to reduce it. This makes it unique as the water has naturally been filtered through coral as Barbados is a coral island and not volcanic like the other Caribbean islands. Finally, the hand crafting of small, single batches will set it apart from other rums. In the long-term St Nicholas Abbey will produce a maximum of 20,000 bottles a year.
St Nicholas Abbey Rum now comes under the West Indies Run & Spirits Producers Association umbrella (WIRSPA). This means it fulfils the criteria and production standards of the industry and is genuine Caribbean rum produced from sugar-cane juice or molasses in the Authentic Caribbean Rum Region (ACR). Tasting Notes St Nicholas Abbey Rum is deep amber in colour with sweet aromas on the nose of fudge, vanilla, chocolate and cinnamon. The palate is incredibly smooth with notes of dried fruits, oranges and spice. As a quality premium rum it is a great introduction to the category for whisky and cognac drinkers. RumFest This year Larry and St Nicholas Abbey Rum will be at Rumfest in London on Saturday 24th – Sunday 25th October. They are bringing with them a 220 litre barrel of the 10 year old St Nicholas Abbey Rum and will be hand bottling and labelling bottles to be purchased by visitors.
You will also be able to see them hand engraving each bottle with the name of the buyer showing how truly artisanal St Nicholas Abbey Rum is. St Nicholas Abbey Rum is available in the UK wholesale via Vanquish Wine Ltd and is part of the Vanquish Brand Management Portfolio headed by Jenny Gardener.
Vanquish have already gained listings for St Nicholas Abbey in premium outlets LAB, Zuma, Callooh Callay, Movida, Tramp and Boujis to name a few. RRP £89 – available from Vanquish Wine. w
St Nicholas Abbey website: www.stnicholasabbey.com Vanquish Brand Management Portfolio The Vanquish Brand Management Portfolio is an innovative business structure designed to launch new premium drinks brands into the UK luxury drinks market. Being at the centre of the Luxury Drinks Trade in the UK, Vanquish Wine Ltd distributes premium drinks products to the top clubs, bars and restaurants in London from their base in Soho. They therefore offer an immediate advantage to a new luxury brand launching in the UK, with the network, industry knowledge, turnkey logistics and a direct route to market for their products. The aim of the Brand Management Portfolio is to build a brand with longevity and credibility using a top-down approach, starting with key luxury outlets and filtering the brand down from the exclusive to the more main-stream over a long term period. Alongside sales, Vanquish also focus on tasting and training sessions for staff at venues – essential for a product’s success in London’s bar and club scene.
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