What do we have here? Talk about blast from the past!

Y'know how sometimes a bar has a new bottle on pour that gets the whole town buzzing? That's one of those times.

Through the nondescript and subtle back channels of Whatsapp, a simple photo of a Mount Gay Eclipse from the 1990's was shared by Bar Madame's Nic Jens (he really is the guy who can find you anything) was enough to create such a gravitational force of attraction that every rum maniac in the city knew that they had to make their pilgrimage down to the Singapore bar. This informed me of a few things - the first being that a star bartender simply has such a good grasp on the community's pulse that they know exactly what sort of bait gets the people going, heck, they know it with a near surgical precision, and two, if a bar really wanted to draw folks in, they don't need fancy table lamps or even a massive backbar, what they really need is to be the link up (or the gateway) for folks to access a whole new world, and that means sussing out bottles (or creating drinks) that take people on a journey and offers the drinker a storied experience by the glass. It's no easy task for sure, but boy when you see it in action, and everyone's immediately hooked, it never fails to amaze me just how, I suppose efficient it is - everything falls into place, and it's like watching a hot knife through butter.

It reads: The Legend of Mount Gay

Based on a tattered deed dated 1703, it is MOUNT GAY Rum is one of the oldest rums in the world. For almost 300 years our rum has been handcrafted at the same location, using the finest Barbados sugar cane coral filtered spring water.

Savouring the smooth and rich character of MOUNT GAY Rum has been a "rite of passage" among the world’s finest sailors, which has earned it the reputation as the "quintessential spirit of the seas".

MOUNT GAY's heritage and legendary quality continue to flourish today as it is savoured by rum connoisseurs the world over. Enjoy MOUNT GAY Rum with cola, your favorite mixer, or on the rocks...

Taste the legend...

But anyway, we really should get back to the Mount Gay at hand - it's been out here for three decades past the time it really was designed to be cracked opened and enjoyed.

So about that Mount Gay - this is not just Barbados' oldest active rum distillery, it's accepted that this is the world's oldest active rum distillery, that's been established in 1703! It's therefore incredibly impressive that the distillery has managed to stay fairly relevant to the rum community, the everyday drinker and bartenders as well. It's certainly not something that many distilleries much younger than themselves can even boast of.

It is said that the little red star at the bottom-left corner of the Mount Gay logo represents not the location of the Mount Gay distillery (which is actually up north), but instead the capital Bridgetown.

And sure, the distillery is not at the absolute frontier that's been heralded by craft distillers and larger-than-life bottlers, but it has done a spectacular job of staying on top of things by keeping themselves the refuge of the standard grocery store's alcohol aisle. It's quite uniquely all at once appealing to the value conscious everyday drinker by being so accessible (you can readily find it easily), the aficionados who check the specs and make sure this is pure rum with nothing added to it, and even the bartenders who rely on Mount Gay to lend a little tropical touch. Mount Gay does it all, 300 years young. As I continue to laud them for it, few can remain so versatile and yet highly respected after centuries.

And so before we delve into the three expressions we have today, let's do a quick introduction to Mount Gay.

Before there was Mount Gay there was Mount Gilboa, the name under which the distillery operated under, where Barbados rum was amongst the earliest cane spirits to be produced. The distillery itself was said to be established by a William Sandiford who had helped to consolidate numerous estates into one. As you might guess with a 300-plus-year-old distillery, it's swapped hands numerous times, at one point owned by the Sober family who had engaged a neighbouring distiller, John Gay Alleyne, to help to manage the estate. Allegedly, Alleyne had done such a good job that the Sober family had renamed the estate after him - hence Mount Gay. Alleyne would eventually be elected to the Parliament of Barbados, where he would serve for 40 years, and would also be well known for his philanthropy and fight against slavery.

The Mount Gay distillery.

As an interesting sidenote, Barbados had long imposed a law that distilleries and brands had to be separate, and thus distilleries could not bottle rum under their own name. This was an early example of the now common practice of independent bottling, where bottlers purchase rum from a distillery, and then bottling it under their own brand.

Back to Mount Gay, it would eventually come to be owned by an Englishman Aubrey Ward, who took it upon himself to spruce up the distillery and make a proper effort of distributing the rum worldwide. Just a mere seven decades later, French spirits giant Remy Martin would come knocking on the door, asking to acquire the distillery. By 2014, the now Remy Cointreau (formerly Remy Martin) would finally fully acquire the Mount Gay distillery.

Over the years, Mount Gay would strongly align itself with sailors - thereby contributing to the oft association of sailors and rum - as Barbados was often the first landfall for ships during the era of trade between Europe and the Caribbeans. Till this day, Mount Gay Rum remains a sponsor for the United States Sailing Association, continuing to sponsor over 100 regatta events worldwide. Fun Fact: Mount Gay gives out red hats to competitors at these regattas!

Halley's Comet.

A testament to how historic Mount Gay is, the Mount Gay Eclipse (which is what we're trying today) dates its origins back to 1911, when it was named after a total solar eclipse during the passage of Halley's comet in 1910! 

And so it's worth noting that a number of fateful hands have taken the helm to producing the iconic Mount Gay Eclipse, passed on from one generation to the next of Mount Gay's Master Blenders. And for this bottle from the 1990's, we can thank one Allen Smith for it!

Allen Smith.

Allen Smith was the Master Blender for Mount Gay for 28 years! He had served from 1991 to 2019, most recently passing on the baton to the rum-maker's first female Master Blender Trudiann Branker. Allen Smith is responsible for creating the now equally well-known Mount Gay Black Barrel, the Mount Gay 1703 Master Select, as well as having kickstarted the Mount Gay Master Blender series (with Branker now continuing on that series) - it's crazy then to think that all this almost didn't happen because his visa to Barbados was almost rejected!

Alittle bit about Smith - he is after all the person behind the rum we're tasting today - he was born in the UK to Barbadian parents, after which he and his family would move to Jamaica for his father's work in helping to set-up the electricity grid there. And so Smith would spend the better part of his youth in yet another critically important and iconic rum-making country, before eventually going to the UK for his degree in biochemistry and microbiology. 

“I’m a history buff. The history of rum is a fascinating story which impacted so many lives."

Mount Gay distillery.

Yet, after some ten years in the UK, Smith had yearned to return to the Caribbeans, and so he had bought a one-way ticket back to Barbados. What had initially been meant to be a surprise to his mum who was already back in Barbados, was instead a visa rejection at the immigration counter when he had gotten to Barbados. As it turns out, his British passport wasn't enough to justify his one-way ticket, and without an official place of residence, Smith was not allowed in the country. He ended up having to call his mum, who in turn vouched for her son, and so Smith would move back in with his family, and would get a job at Mount Gay's labs.

In a little bit of a detour, as Smith had needed the money, he would head off for Coca-Cola after a short stint at Mount Gay, and yet within just a year, he had gotten so incredibly bored of the job that he returned back to Mount Gay - which was just as well considering that for a history buff, Mount Gay was as historical as it gets. "After a year [at Coca-cola] I was bored to tears. They work with manuals, and you just follow the manual. I am more into research." Over the course of 7 years, Smith would work his way up from lab assistant to Mount Gay's Master Blender, cementing himself as part of the oldest rum-maker's history! Now, it's worth pointing out that the Master Blender role is hugely important to Mount Gay as the distillery produces two types of spirits - a column-still spirit and a pot-still spirit, both of which have clearly different characters, and thus it is the job of the Master Blender to combine them and maintain now just the consistency of the legacy expressions, but to also create new expressions.

Mount Gay's stills.

"There is no average day for me. I don't go into the same office and do the same job day in, day out. Which is what makes my job so interesting, and worthwhile. Under the overarching brand of Mount Gay I wear a lot of different hats; sometimes I'm looking at samples, checking how the rum is aging, other days I can be found in the lab, researching and developing new styles and expressions. 

The Caribbean is my home, I grew up in Jamaica and even though I left in 1981 for university in England, I always wanted to come home. Having studied biochemistry and microbiology I ended up staying in the UK until 1990 when I decided to come back and make a future on one of the islands.

Being a Master Blender has so many facets, but easily my favourite part of the job is creating new products. We do a lot of product development, now more so than ever. Once I know what the marketers and experts are looking for, when they see the gap in the market, then it's very easy to start running. Of course I do my own developments and hope that someday soon I'll have created a blend that the market is ready and waiting for. I've certainly got a few tricks up my sleeve.

Mount Gay has been around for 300 years, so there's a big legacy to live up to. But I hope my part of this legacy is more than one product. I'm hoping for more than that. Never sleep, never rest on your laurels just because once you've done something. I love what I do, and Mount Gay is a company I'd like to reach retirement working for. After that, well in Barbados, anything could happen."

And so Smith has been an essential part of Mount Gay, and really quintessentially Mount Gay as is typically the case for any bonafide Master Blender for that matter. When asked what life was like outside of Mount Gay, Smith has this to share, "When I'm not aging and blending rum I really enjoy table tennis. I used to play football and cricket but nowadays I'm mostly a spectator of those sports. I cook every Sunday and the kids always look forward to my meals. So that's what I do, watch the kids grow up, go to the beach, enjoy the Caribbean life."

It's always incredible to hear from the folks behind the labels, isn't it?

It's also interesting to note that Smith was a great believer in terroir when it came to rums. In an interview, Smith had mentioned, "Different cane from different fields is going to have a different elemental analysis. Molasses contains caramel, calcium, magnesium, manganese, potassium, phosphorus… all sorts of minerals which are present during fermentation. They convert the sugars into alcohol but there are other biochemical pathways. For instance, if there is more phosphorus or sulphur they may end up producing other aromatic compounds. We are pretty sure a terroir effect can be detected and that is going to be playing a bigger role in our business in the future. I think if we knew then what we know now, terroir would have been a factor many years ago.”

Which makes for a good segue into the person who has since carried on Smith's work after his retirement - meet Mount Gay's first female Master Blender, Trudiann Branker.

Mount Gay's Master Distiller Trudiann Branker who's been making great big moves at the distillery.

Branker had worked closely under Smith, and would be appointed to the role in 2019. Just 5 years into the role, Branker has already done much to help the distillery and brand keep up to date and relevant. Under her, she's refreshed the distillery's flagship range, most notably including more pot-still rums to the previous column-still focused recipes - this was very positively received as the rum community has taken a big liking to pot-still rums which are said to preserve more body and flavour, as compared to the more commercially efficient column-still distillation which tends to strip out texture.

Yet perhaps most importantly, tapping on Smith's belief about the unique Barbadian terroir, a major (yet highly underappreciated) initiative that Branker has kickstarted is the Single Estate Series, where she's brought back sugarcane growing to the Mount Gay estate (which had been gone for decades following the collapse of the sugar-making industry, of which rum had emerged as an offshoot), and has thus began bottling rums that completely express the Mount Gay terroir with the use of its own estate grown sugarcane. Incredibly impressive effort!

The Mount Gay Single Estate series which will be looked back upon as a gamechanger for the distillery.

I'm sure there's more to come from Mount Gay under Branker - where it looks like she's bringing a much more artisanal and craft dimension to the heritage distillery, whilst delivering big on amping up its flavours.

But for today, it's back to the a blast from the past with Mount Gay's Eclipse from the 1990's.

PS. Shoutout to Nic Jens from Bar Madame (Singapore) who has once again proved that if anyone can get the people going - it's him.

Rum Review: Mount Gay Eclipse Barbados Rum, 1990's

Tasting Notes

Colour: Light Gold

Aroma: It opens incredibly vibrant and aromatic, with an immediate richness of honey and heaps of brown sugar, topped off with toasted coconut flakes and desiccated coconut. It's backed up by quite some earthiness of sarsaparilla, black licorice and root beer syrup, yet nothing takes the cake quite like the immense earthy and rich, almost slightly herbal brown sugar, together with the coconuts and sarsaparilla. It comes together to evoke quite the tropical feel to it.

Taste: Medium-bodied yet superbly rich, with this energetic liveliness from the really nice punchiness. It's not over the top, but definitely makes you pay attention. We're back to lots of honey and herbal jellies, as in traditional Asian tortoiseshell jellies (guilingao) - unsweetened, conveying this almost root herbal bitterness and medicinal-ness most similar to sarsaparilla. The flavour intensity here is dialled to the max. All at the same time it's super honeyed and super herbal. The herbal bitterness here is backed up by loads of richness that is really what gives it this incredible depth and richness to the flavour intensity.

Finish: The intense herbal jellies here is drizzle with honey carries all the way through, still incredibly rich, honeyed and herbal, with such persistent power. It's seamless through the finish, with just a lingering quality of root beer syrup, sarsaparilla, brown sugar, and a touch of coffee grounds giving this earthy bitterness.

My Thoughts

This was absolutely amazing! It's packed with aromatic and flavour intensity, with all those earthy and herbal flavours that we love. Although on the nose it almost gives a sort of overly on the nose tropical quality - to the point of almost being comically stereotypical in linking rum with all those tropical imagery - it was nevertheless incredibly perfumed and with a good richness to it. That aside, sipping it gave an immediate liveliness to the otherwise richness that made it incredibly compelling. It's a sort of oh my god, pound the table, I want somemore, quality to it, because it's just a flavour explosion on the palate and it's delivered with such vibrance and heated excitement. For me, it's this liveliness coupled with the richness and concentration of flavours that really nails it - it's not mellow, thin or flabby. This puts you upright and gets you going! This power is persistent through the entire tasting experience, always carrying this massive backing of earthy and herbal brown sugars, along with garnishes of coconut flakes and sarsaparilla.

It's somewhat straightforward, it clearly doesn't try to be something it's not, and yet it's utterly as it states on the label, truly refined in simply concentrating on bringing out the very best of it. It feels intentional in its creation and comes off designed for maximum delivery of that Bajan DNA - nothing more, nothing less, yet intensified.

What an absolutely lovely rum!

Kanpai!

@111hotpot