What comes after learning about chocolate making? Learning about rum making, of course 😛 The River Antoine Estate was only a five minute drive away. This unique distillery, started in the 18th century, still operates using equipment and processes from over 200 years ago. This means it does not have pasteurization, cultured yeast strains, steam heat, and temperature controlled fermentation and distillation.
The plant was very quiet as the 90 employees had two weeks off for the holidays. Only the tour guides and bottling employees were at work.
Entrance to River Antoine Estate Distillery.The process starts with harvesting sugar cane from the sugar cane fields. We’re currently in the dry season (Jan-May), which means the concentration of sugar is at its peak, resulting in rum that contains up to 88% alcohol by volume (ABV).We got to much on some sweet sugar cane during our tour.The River Antoine drives a massive water wheel, which was acquired in 1840. It’s still working today! Ironically, in the dry season when the sugar is at its peak, the water is at its lowest so the water wheel is underpowered. Photo by Nolan.Up those stairs is where the river flows towards the water wheel.There is a board that’s lifted or lowered to allow sufficient water to power the water wheel. Simple but effective! It’s blocked off today since the plant is closed for the holidays.The water that is diverted from the water wheel flows down below.Here’s the water wheel that drives the machine that crushes the sugar cane. The sugar cane is loaded at this end.The machine was bought in 1840 from London. The rollers were once grooved, but have worn smooth over years of use.After crushing the sugar cane twice through the rollers, the residue, called ‘bagasse’, is loaded on this railway truck to ride for a short distance to the ‘tip’ where it’s spread out to dry in the sun. The railway truck is the only one on the island. The very short railway track to the tip is also the island’s only railway line!This gives you an idea of the amount of bagasse generated.The sugar cane juice runs through this channel across to the boiling house where it is concentrated.This is where the fires burn to concentrate the juice. Inside the boiling house, the sugar cane juice flows from the channel to the first of the coppers, where it is heated by burning bagasse (and other debris) to concentrate the sugars. There are 5 coppers in the boiling house, and the juice spends 45 mins in each copper before being ladled (using a bowl attached to the end of a stick) to the next copper. The heat increases as it progresses from copper to copper, with the last copper being the hottest. The workers have to be vigilant to ensure the juice doesn’t caramelize during this process. Lime (used in building and fireplaces) is added to the juice to remove impurities.After the 5th copper, the juice is transferred to these cooling tanks where it remains for 2 days.In the past, fermentation occurred in wooden barrels like this one.The wooden barrels were replaced with these open topped concrete tanks on Mar 27, 2002. Fermentation at River Antoine is natural and airborne (no yeast is added). This ‘bacterial fermentation’ provides variety in the flavours of the resulting rum. The tanks are not cleaned after each batch thus each batch is seeded with the remains of the previous batch.After 8 days of fermentation, the juice moves to distillation. Just outside the fermentation building are the double pot stills. The fermented liquid moves to the 600 gallon heat exchanger (the silver tank on the far left), which pre-heats the fermented liquid in preparation for distillation.Below the stills are fireboxes, in which local hardwoods are burned to begin the distillation process. Wood is burned because bagasse does not burn hot enough to super-heat the liquid (up to 250°C). Piles of scavenged hardwood by the distillation area.Beneath the heat exchanger are coils in a pit that cool the rum vapours from the still using water from the river.GPa snapped a picture of us scrutinizing some creatures left behind when the river water evaporated (more details in the video below). The picture also shows you the size of the 600 gallon heat exchanger.At the entrance to the bottling area is this sign for employees. The guide said that employees or others would come with partially drunk pop bottles and ask for them to be topped up with rum. There was a lady seated on a chair beside this sign watching the workers bottling the rum to ensure none was lost. She was one of three owners of the distillery. Bottling is done by hand – the rum is filtered, the bottles are rinsed by rum, and then filled in a very high-tech manner (see the video below).The rum is clear because it is not aged. Aging is done in charred wooden barrels, which imparts the colour to the rum. The blue label on the left is roughly 69% ABV, while the red ribbon is guaranteed to be at least 75% ABV but can be as high as 80% ABV. Airlines typically allow a max of 70% ABV so tourists only taste these ones.Demand is so high that River Antoine Distillery is unable to produce enough – the rum is sold immediately after bottling. Photo by GPa.Lara lounging in a wooden barrel turned seat in the tasting area.
