Mount Gay Rum is produced by Mount Gay Distilleries of Barbados, the easternmost island of the West Indies. The company’s oldest surviving deed dates from 1703, making Mount Gay the oldest existing brand of rum in the world. Today it is sold in 110 countries, with the United States its principal export market.
The island’s rum tradition reaches back to the early seventeenth century: small-scale distillation is evidenced on Barbados as early as 1637, and the first recorded written use of the word rum appears there in 1651. By 1667, stills were at work on the site that would become the Mount Gay Plantation.
The muddled rum drinks of the eighteenth century were the beginnings of the modern cocktail. Today, blending with the complex character of Mount Gay rums is nothing short of a fine art.
