St Barth Is Hosting a Five-Day Rum Festival With Beach Parties and a World Championship
The tables are lined with bottles from across the Caribbean. Some are aged molasses rums, dark and complex after years in oak. Others are rhums agricoles made from fresh sugarcane juice, carrying the distinct character of Martinique, Guadeloupe and the French Caribbean. Outside, St. Barth is doing what St. Barth does: long lunches, white-sand beaches, […] The post St Barth Is Hosting a Five-
Gustavia, St Barth. The tables are lined with bottles from across the Caribbean. Some are aged molasses rums, dark and complex after years in oak. Others are rhums agricoles made from fresh sugarcane juice, carrying the distinct character of Martinique, Guadeloupe and the French Caribbean.
Outside, St. Barth is doing what St. Barth does: long lunches, white-sand beaches, villa terraces and evenings spread across some of the Caribbean’s most celebrated restaurants.
This October, the tiny French Caribbean island is turning into the center of the rum world.
The Caribbean Rum Awards are returning to St. Barth from Oct. 26-30, bringing five days of blind judging, beachfront parties, rare-rum tastings and chef-driven dinners to the eight-square-mile island.
Now entering its ninth year, the Caribbean Journal-owned event has developed into one of the region’s leading celebrations of Caribbean rum, bringing together distillers, master blenders, sommeliers, collectors, hospitality executives and enthusiasts.
At the center is an international competition featuring rums from across the region. Around it is a full St. Barth experience: a White Party beside the beach, the official judging, a major beach celebration, an invitation-only tasting and a final multi-course pairing dinner.
The result is part spirits competition, part culinary festival and part St. Barth vacation.
The festival begins Monday with the White Party at Les Îlets de la Plage, the beachfront hotel near St. Jean that has become the traditional opening setting for Caribbean Rum Awards week.
It is the social beginning of the event, bringing together visiting rum producers, judges, partners and attendees beside one of St. Barth’s best-known stretches of sand.
During the official Rum Judging, an international panel evaluates entries in a closed blind tasting. Labels are concealed, reputations are removed from the equation and every bottle is assessed solely on what is in the glass.
The judging spans eight categories covering the broad range of Caribbean rum, from white and aged molasses expressions to rhum agricole, the sugarcane-juice spirit associated most closely with islands such as Martinique and Guadeloupe.
Wednesday brings the Beach Party, one of the most popular evenings of the week and a chance to experience the festival away from the judging table.
Thursday is devoted to the VIP Rum Tasting, an invitation-only event featuring bottles from the competition alongside other significant Caribbean expressions.
The week concludes Friday with the Rum Pairing Dinner, a multi-course culinary event matching Caribbean rums with a menu created specifically for the evening.
The dinner has become one of the signature experiences of the awards, demonstrating how aged rum and rhum agricole can work at the table in much the same way as wine, whisky or Cognac.
The competition’s most closely watched bottles appear in two categories: Uber-Premium Molasses Rum and Uber-Premium Rhum Agricole.
Every entry in those divisions retails for more than $400 per bottle, creating a field of rare releases, prestige bottlings and long-aged expressions from some of the Caribbean’s most respected producers.
The winner of each category then advances to the Caribbean Rum Awards’ final contest.
One molasses rum and one rhum agricole go head-to-head for the World Championship, the event’s highest award.
The matchup reflects the two great traditions of Caribbean rum.
