The small island of Barbados is probably best known for having raised the singer Rihanna, but the island's production of rum has also received a lot of attention in recent years. It is perhaps not so strange that it is rum from Barbados that in recent years has received a lot of honors, especially not when you consider that the island actually is the birthplace of rum. The island has a long tradition for rum production, and can prove production as far back as 1650.
There are currently four active distilleries in Barbados today; West Indies Rum Distillery, Mount Gay Rum Distillery, Foursquare Rum Distillery and St. Nicholas Abbey Estate. At Alta Gama Rum, for our Essentia 1 series, we have found a very special rum from Foursquare Rum Distillery. The Foursquare Rum Distillery, now run by Richard, was started back in 1996 by the Seale family, a family of rum merchants for four generations. Today, the distillery is located in an old sugar cane factory, and it is believed that rum was distilled on site back in the 18th century and onwards.
At Foursquare Rum Distillery, you have both distillation equipment of the batch and continuous distillation types. However, continuous distillation was started exclusively before batch distillation was installed in 2000. This means that the rum from Foursquare, which is found in the Essentia 1 series, is one of the few 100% continuously distilled bottlings that can be found from the small distillery in Barbados.