Caroni 1998-2015 - 17 Year Old - Extra Strong Rum

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.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.