The Curious Bartender's Rum Revolution by Tristan Stephenson

Author:Tristan Stephenson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc.
Published: 2017-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

Green cane at dusk at the Hampden Estate. No other island identifies with rum and sugar at such a fundamental level as Jamaica and the Jamaicans.

APPLETON ESTATE

We find the Appleton Estate in the southwestern district of Jamaica, known as St. Elizabeth. It’s accurate to call Appleton an estate rather than a just a distillery, since there are 400 hectares (1,000 acres) of sugarcane plantation here as well as the Appleton Sugar Refinery. All of the rum that is made at the distillery is produced from one of the 10 varieties of Appleton Estate cane that is grown there, which makes the brand unique among Jamaican rums. But to reach the Estate it’s first necessary to penetrate the green heart of the island, through dense forest, up steep inclines, and through Cockpit County, which contains some of the most unique geology in the Caribbean.

The “karst” of Cockpit County are a range of cone-shaped mountains in miniature. Only known to occur in a handful of countries besides Jamaica, these green goosebumps besiege the Appleton Estate’s northern front. They whip up odd pressure systems in the area, creating an entirely unique ecosystem. During the wet season, when the cane is flourishing, the rain falls daily in sharp bursts, almost to the same minute. This means the plantation is irrigated on a strict schedule, and over time the sugarcane takes on an unusually vivid shade of green. This, in turn, produces a better quality, higher yield sugar, and even reflects right down to the molasses itself. Tall tales of terroir are too often tenuous in respect of molasses-based rums, but if there’s tenability to be found anywhere, it’s at Appleton Estate.

Don’t believe me? Joy Spence has been Appleton’s master blender for 20 years, and she told me that “the orange peel top note that is the hallmark of Appleton Estate rums, is a result of our unique sugarcane plantation”. It has to come from somewhere, I suppose, why not the karst?

Perhaps that’s why Cockpit County was chosen for the plantation in the first place. The oldest reference to the estate goes back to 1749, when it was less than 4 hectares (10 acres) in size but known to be producing both sugar and rum. A few years later, the estate was bought by the Dickinson family, descendants of Frances Dickinson, an officer involved in the 1655 capture of Jamaica from the Spanish. Appleton was sold in 1845 to one William Hill, and at the time comprised 7 hectares (17 acres). By 1900, it had increased to 23 hectares (56 acres) when it was sold to A. McDowell Nathan, one of Jamaica’s most prominent businessmen. Ten years later it had quadrupled in size and, in 1916, the current owners J. Wray & Nephew bought the property. All 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres) of it.

The company began when founder John Wray bought the Shakespeare Tavern in Kingston in 1825, and they later began blending rums. By the 1870s, J. Wray (then headed up by his nephew) was

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