Caroni

The last Caroni distillery was established around 1918, though rum from earlier Caroni stills is recorded back to 1887. Tate & Lyle bought the sugar and rum operations in 1936, and the Trinidad government nationalised the company in stages through the 1970s. Caroni's heavy style fed the British Royal Navy's blend in the mid-20th century, and that dark, tarry character is what collectors chase today.

The diesel reputation is only half the story. Over the decades Caroni ran a cast-iron still, a wooden Coffey still, a column from the Esperanza estate, a Blair two-column, a pot still and a German Gebr. Herrmann column, making rum from very heavy to very light. A 1950s advert even called it more like whisky, dry and delicate. The cult favourite, though, is the heavy mark, the one bottled today as HTR, Heavy Trinidad Rum.

With Trinidad's sugar industry bleeding money, the government tried to sell 49 percent of Caroni around 2000. Angostura was the preferred bidder, but the deal collapsed, so Angostura never owned the distillery. In 2003 the rum side was restructured as RDTT, the equipment was hauled away, and distillation never resumed. A bitter fight followed over the stock's value: one valuation put 18,000 casks at 3.3 million dollars, others claimed many times more.

The stock was sold off piece by piece. Angostura took some casks, The Main Rum Company took more, and Italy's Velier bought a large share, moving its Caroni casks to Demerara Distillers in Guyana to age them further. Velier's releases, including heavy-mark vintages like the HTR 1992, turned Caroni from a forgotten Trinidad workhorse into the most mythologised name in rum.

Caroni is one of the most-rated distilleries on RumX, with over 600 bottles and thousands of ratings, almost all of them independent. Velier dominates the top: the Paradise #6 reaches 9.7/10, and the famous 39th Release, The Last is among the most reviewed rums on the whole platform. For a distillery that has not made rum in two decades, that is a remarkable afterlife.