How Bounty Rum is made

Molasses

Due to the closure of the last sugar processing plant in the 60s, banana plantations have now replaced sugar on Saint Lucia, so the distillery sources its sugar cane molasses, the raw material to make its rums, predominantly from the Dominican Republic. The molasses are shipped into a jetty in Roseau Bay below the distillery from where the viscous syrup is pumped onto shore and then up to the storage tanks at the distillery via a half-mile underground pipe. The distiller's molasses needs are satisfied by four to five such shipments a year - from which it produces one million litres of pure alcohol.

Fermentation

Fermentation uses two different third-party sourced distillers' yeast strains, which are used independently to produce two different washes. One of these strains yields a wash with a particularly strong butterscotch flavour, which can be found in many of the distillery's rums. The yeasts are propagated with gradually more molasses introduced in two consecutive mother tanks, then a stainless steel propagation tank before finally being pumped into one of eight open concrete fermenters. Fermentation takes 24 hours, with temperatures up to 34°C to produce a wash of 7% - 8.5% abv.

Distillation

The wash is distilled in one of St. Lucia Distiller's two different McMillan Ltd Continuous column stills which ere made in Prestonpans, Scotland (commissioned in 1985) and produce a distillate at 95% alc./vol.. (The distillery also boasts three different pot stills used to produce distillates for rums other than Bounty.)

Maturation

St. Lucia Distillers mostly source white American oak casks from the Kentucky bourbon industry but additionally use port pipes for final "polishing" of some rums.

Due to the tropical temperatures, maturation is extremely quick - said to be two-and-a-half times faster than the equivalent in Europe. St Lucia tries to avoid the overly woody notes that can come from extended ageing in such conditions, so they closely monitor the ageing of their rums to judge when mature - rather than being governed by strict age statements. Thus the philosophy at St Lucia is to gain complexity through the blending of older complex rums with fresher, yet characterful rums and so there are no age statements declared on any of their blends.

Blending & bottling

With the exception of caramel for colour-correcting purposes they do not add sugar or other additives to their rums. The water used for hydration prior to bottling is filtered and treated by reverse osmosis.