#86 British Rum Special - Dropworks, Outlier, J. Gow: History, Production, GI, Tasting, Rum Market, Future of Rum, British vs. Caribbean

<p>We sat down — hungover, under-slept, and drinking before nine in the morning — with three of the people actually building British rum from the ground up: Lewis Hayes of DropWorks, Collin van Schayk of J. Gow, and Gergo Murath of Outlier. Between them they cover the full range of what this young category can be — Lewis running Europe&#39;s largest rum distillery out of Sherwood Forest with England&#39;s first copper double retort still, Collin fermenting wild yeast isolated from orchids beside a 2,000-litre pot still on an uninhabited Orkney island, and Gergo repping Outlier&#39;s wine-yeast, high-gravity, unfiltered rum out of the Isle of Man after thirteen years behind some of London&#39;s best bars. We trace how strange it is that Britain drank rum for centuries without distilling a drop of it until 2012, and dig into what&#39;s actually stopping British rum from having an identity yet — the fact that of roughly a hundred brands calling themselves British rum, only a third are fermenting and distilling here, and what a Geographical Indication might do about that. We get into the guts of production — dunder, backset, battonage, cane honey, double retorts versus double pot stills — and challenge the assumption that British ageing must be slower or lesser than tropical: DropWorks is releasing gold-medal-winning rum at a single year old, while J. Gow has just put out the oldest UK-distilled rum in existence, an eight-year-old matured through Orkney winters that regularly bottom out at two degrees. We talk about Haiti and clairin as a model of rum untouched by commoditisation, about the uncomfortable history British producers have to reckon with honestly, and about whether the long-promised rum boom is finally, slowly, arriving — and why slow might be exactly what keeps it from crashing the way gin did. Along the way we taste through six rums, including a whiskey-cask DropWorks expression built to provoke whiskey drinkers, And Outlier rum finished in Sauternes casks, and J. Gow&#39;s newest wild yeast release. We close by asking where each of them sees British rum in ten years — and get answers ranging from international distribution to a British &quot;Japanese whiskey&quot; moment.</p><p><br></p><p>📷 ⁠Follow me on Instagram⁠</p><p>📚 I&#39;ve written <a href="https://www.thecuriousbartender.com/">⁠quite a few books⁠</a> on spirits and cocktails</p><p><br></p><p>🥃 Get 15% off the world&#39;s best drinking vessels at <a href="https://denverandliely.com/">⁠Denver &amp; Liely⁠</a> using the discount code CURIOUS15 at checkout</p><p>☕ Get 15% off the best coffee liqueur I have tried at <a href="https://www.algebradrinks.com/">⁠Algebra Drinks ⁠</a>with code CURIOUS15</p><p><br></p>