There's sediment in my bottle - what's that about? Captain Gregg Distiller explains.

Many people wonder what those floaties are in the bottle they purchased. The product may have appeared clear when they brought it home and yet when they reach for it at a later date - behold there is something floating about.

We call them Flavour Crystals.

First off - let's go back to basics and talk about our process - bear with us, it gets a little nerdy — but in a good way.

As far as I'm concerned, there are only two legitimate ways to make fine rum:

1. From cane syrup

2. From mélasse — and before anyone reaches for the keyboard, no, that is not the same thing as molasses. Different beast entirely.

   
   

Now, I'll be the first to admit: despite the many unusual decisions we've made as a distillery, planting sugarcane in our climate was not one of them. Global warming is moving fast, but not that fast - thank goodness !

So my solution was to find the best possible proxy for cane syrup. Here's the thing most people don't know: modern sugar production takes cane syrup, dehydrates it, and ships it to refineries around the world. That dehydrated cane syrup? That's what we use. Simple, logical, and — crucially — it makes excellent rum.

From day one, we've used a solera system, and we specifically sought out ex-Caribbean barrels. These are heavily charred and quite old — not the kind of barrels that punch you in the face with oak and bourbon notes, but the kind that quietly coax out extraordinary softness and surprising depth of flavour. Which is, frankly, exactly what we want.

You may have been told those floaties are char - so what is char?

Char is carbon. Carbon, left to its own devices, forms chains — it's basically a social creature on a molecular level. This means that a clear, sediment-filtered rum, once bottled, may develop small particles over time.

As I noted above, we call these "flavour crystals". They are not a flaw. They are chemistry doing its thing. If you'd like to go down that particular rabbit hole: Orbital Hybridisation — sp². Don't say we didn't warn you.

So next time you see some sediment in your bottle take a moment to acknowledge that your spirit was properly made - from scratch - and without additives. Cheers !