I’m going to be here for a couple of days in a couple of weeks. I see there’s a Cruzan distillery I’ll try to hit up for sure, and a bunch of bars with rum in the name or tiki theme listed on quick google search. But tough to tell which is really a rum bar, with a bunch of decent offerings, if any. So any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Well, since nobody chimed in I might as well leave my impressions for others who head down.
Basically, there is Cruzan Distillery, and that is more or less the beginning and end of the story. Most bars, especially in Christiansted, have the entire lineup of Cruzan minus the two you can only get at the distillery–the 8 year which costs $75 and the 13 year, which inexplicably costs $50. Not being very impressed with any of other Cruzans I had, I didn’t bother to pick up either of these bottles, so can’t comment.
So, basically most bars in St. Croix have a better selection of rum than your average bar in the U.S. Meaning, the entire Cruzan lineup plus a few extras here and there.
A couple of bars have one or two interesting rums, but there isn’t any one bar that specializes in a rum selection. The Breaker’s Roar advertizes itself as a tiki bar, and has a decent list online of rums, but in practice they have like 3 of this list of 25, plus the Cruzans. I hear they are pivoting to become more of a tiki bar, so hopefully this improves in the future.
Otherwise, a few others have some bottles of rum. Rum Runners basically does not have any rum other than Cruzans and maybe a bacardi and white plantation rum.
If you look around, go to restaurants and stuff, you can sometimes find bottles such as Bones, and hopefully, Cardow Family, which are from the other Virgin Islands.
Overall, your best option is the supermarkets and even gas stations, which have far better selections–though nothing really amazing–than the bars. At these places you might find a couple of things from BVI, like Soggy Dollar, or Bones, Botany Bay or Cardow Family stuff. Aside from that, it’s just your general selection of rums you might find in most decent stores in the U.S. mainland, depending on where you are, with nothing particularly rare or surprising.
Finally, one more distillery is working on opening, but hasn’t yet started bottling rum, as I understand. It’s called Prosperity Farm, so perhaps in a few months it will be making rum. I called them to ask, and they said something about laws and licensing needed to change, and was in the works with local lawmakers. As of now they just made gin and other spirits.
Overall, kind of a disappointing visit to the Caribbean in terms of rum–was hoping for some hidden gems. The best thing I had for sure was a bottle I brought back from Cardow Family, Extra Virgin Navy Rum. They apparently have a couple of other blends, but I only found that one on my visit.
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Since i had to google where St. Coix is in the first place, i was assuming they didnt have the widest selections of Rums. Having one distillery in total is also something special. But probably any other Island in that region would have given you a greater Rum Experience i assume.
Im dreaming of going to Martinique or Barbados, since they have a great selection of working distilleries.
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Ich kann Dir da nur Martinique wärmstens empfehlen…dort gibt es mehr Auswahl als auf Barbados
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Ya, I was there for work, and was hoping to also get some fun rum experiences. I’m into beer as well–there were two microbreweries, one OK and one junk. Another distillery also did island vodka made from breadfruit. I didn’t try though.
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Also, the entire lineup of Cruzan includes every fruit flavor imaginable, so if you just want to bang off some rating tick, I guess it’s good for that. Go to distillery, skip tour, pay $15 for 6 samples. They don’t count very close either, so you can have a few.
That’s also why it seems like every bar on the island has a good rum selection, because they have like 15 Cruzan fruit bottles.
The good news is that by buying Cruzan rum, you are paying into the retirement funds of the island’s civil workers, apparently, lol.
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