Caroni HTR 1997-2018 - 20 Year Old - Cadenheads Rum - Single Cask

Caroni was a Trinidadian rum distillery that closed in 2003. The distillery has subsequently become extremely famous thanks to a raft of long-aged single cask and small batch Caroni rums released by a variety of independent bottlers, principally the Italian company Velier. The distillery’s intense, heavy, high ester rums are particularly celebrated.

Caroni distillery began production in an old sugar factory shortly after the end of WWI. The distillery was equipped with both pot and column stills and was nationalised in 1975 by the Trinidad government, who closed down the facility shortly after the millennium.  Caroni’s story might have ended there were it not for the Italian independent bottler Luca Gargano of Velier, who visited the closed distillery at the end of 2004 and became captivated by the rum he tasted there, some of which dated back to the 1970s. Velier subsequently bought over a thousand Caroni casks and have released them steadily ever since, usually at cask strength.

In 1842 George Duncan established a wine merchant and distillery agency business in Aberdeen. Duncan was joined in the early 1850s by his brother-in-law William Cadenhead, who took over the business after Duncan’s death in 1858, changing the company’s name to Wm. Cadenhead. When Cadenhead died in 1904 the company passed to his nephew Robert Duthie, who developed the spirits side of the business.

Duthie died suddenly in 1931, and employee Ann Oliver was put in charge of Cadenhead’s. Sadly, Oliver’s tenure ended in financial difficulty and on her retirement in 1972 the business was forced to sell its entire inventory. Cadenhead’s was acquired soon afterwards by J & A Mitchell, proprietors of Springbank distillery, who relocated the business to Campbeltown. Cadenhead’s has flourished under Mitchell’s stewardship, releasing many legendary single malt bottlings in the 1980s and 1990s and now has outlets in Edinburgh and London as well as Campbeltown.