A Scottish Rum Story
The words Scottish and Rum aren’t often used together, but this little bottle of white rum distilled in a historic farm by a guy with a great story made me wonder if we’d be seeing some more craft spirits like this soon.
Ninefold is an artisanal Scottish Rum distillery handmade in small batches by Kit Carruthers, owner and head distiller. I went to visit Kit and his distillery as part of a Scottish Summer Vacation. The distillery itself is set in the most beautiful setting, on old land that’s been owned by the Carruthers family for over 450 years. Although parts of it have gone into disrepair it’s a dramatic setting which screams ‘Scotland’ and makes this Rum even more interesting.
The six winged angel as part of the Ninefold distillery branding is the Carruthers family crest. Portrayed with a modern twist , clean lines and bold colours.
Now, we don’t grow sugar cane in the UK, so Kit imports his molasses from across the world - with ambition to keep the rum trade moving towards always sourcing sustainable and ethically produced ingredients.
Once the molasses have been fermented to produce the ‘wash’ essentially a sugar beer , Kit moves his product over to his Scottish, hand crafted copper still (both pot and column) where the distillation happens. This process takes the weak alcohol ‘wash’ and through a procedure of constant transformation between liquid and vapor states (remember alcohol boils at a much lower temperature than water), and a smooth distilled rum is created (now at a much higher abv percentage).
The distillers craft is to assess when that time has come, when the distillation process is complete and when to start extracting the core product. This timing is imperative and is a skill honed over much reading, passion, experience and knowledge in your craft.
One of the things that struck me about Kit was his honesty on the business, his humbleness that he still has things to learn, to experiment with and to try. I think it’s an important value to have, one that I share, that we can’t all be masters of everything - and even after years of training and experience there will always be something new to learn.
The rum itself was a pleasure to drink. Designed to be a cocktail spirit, it still held true when drank neat exhibiting sweet toffee and caramel flavours with a pleasant lemony and spicy, long finish.
As we are coming into Autumn I’m going to be making some Winter inspired cocktails with this as my key ingredient!
If you are interested in visiting Ninefold and meeting with Kit then go to https://www.ninefolddistillery.com/ and book onto one of their tours (£10 for 1 hour). You can also buy his rum direct, here.
