Cuvée presentation
FSA Partners Sale: This bottle is presented for sale by Aux Secrets des Vins and will be displayed at Whisky Live Paris at the Grande Halle de La Villette from September 28 to 30.
A single cask (#R5620) Caroni distilled in 1996 and bottled in 2017 in a 1.5-litre magnum to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the most famous rum bottler. Velier was founded by Casimir Chaix in Genoa in 1947. It was a small family business that imported and distributed wine and spirits. In 1986, Luca Gargano, a former representative of Saint James and a great connoisseur and collector of rum, acquired the company and launched its trading activities, initially with whisky in 1992 and rum in 1996. Gargano bottled its first Demerara that same year. In 2004 his friend Yesu Persaud, then Chairman of DDL, invited Gargano to Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL) in Guyana to select casks. This partnership came to an end in 2015 when Mr Persaud retired, but all the rums bottled, in the meantime, have become iconic. The same applies to the casks of Caroni, which he bought in 2005, two years after the distillery had closed, following a visit to Trinidad to take photographs with Fredi Marcarini the previous year. These two bottling lineages have established Velier’s reputation, and the company is now also renowned for its work in other Caribbean territories such as Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti and Marie-Galante. The distinctive feature of the rums selected by Velier is that they have only been matured in a tropical climate, resulting in considerable aromatic concentration and a considerable angels’ share. He generally bottles them either at cask strength or with slight reductions. Limited edition of 119 bottles.
The distillery Caroni
The Caribbean, Trinidad. Distillery closed, site dismantled.
In 1975, under pressure from across the country, the government of Trinidad nationalized a number of companies, including Tate & Lyle, the English giant of sugar production and owner of Caroni Ltd since 1937. The very competitive economic context, however, led to the closure of the island's sugar refineries and the collapse of the molasses production required for the production of rum. In 2001, the government sold its shares in Rum Distillers Ltd (Caroni) to Angostura and closed the distillery in 2002. Caroni Ltd would be definitively liquidated on 31 July 2003. In October 2004, Luca Gargano, the CEO of the Italian spirit distributor Velier and a passionate rum enthusiast and photographer, visited Trinidad to carry out research for a future report. There he found the site abandoned and, within its cellars, a huge stock of barrels, some distilled in 1974. The story of Caroni began in 2005 and the distillery immediately became the subject of lore.
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