Danimal the Rum Guy
 

Me and the infamous Jet
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This is a webpage about me. I'm a rumrunner. I import rum from the Caribbean. I'd also like to write about Belize where I get my rum, and also about rum in general and One Barrel rum in particular.

Click here to see about my wanderings.       Click here to read about my various baseball gigs.       Here for my scuba diving webpage.

I got into importing rum by the back door. I hadn't been in the liquor industry, but I had been travalling in the Caribbean and heard lots of people saying "it's a shame that nobody imports One Barrel". So, I decided to do it myself. I had no idea what a pain it would be to get this all going-I just assumed that I'd buy some rum and figure out a way to get it shipped to the USA. Well, that's the short story, but the long story included:

It took years for me to learn how to do all this stuff. It took lots of money to do things like rent warehouse space and get my first liquor license. Have you ever looked at how expensive liquor licenses are? In New York, for example, a wholesale liquor license is about $30,000 and has to be renewed every few years. Other states charge less, but there's still an unbelievable ammount of bureaucracy to go through in each and every state that you want to do business in. At first I had thought that I'd get a few cases into the US and sell most of the rum to recover my expenses, but because of the high setup cost I was stuck with getting a ful-blown business started. I couldn't start small without torching tens of thousands of dollars, which was more than I was willing to lose. To recover the initial expenses I was going to have to get started on a larger, more organized basis than I had originally planned.

I got my first shipment in July of 2005. I had been on the web for a while and several people had expressed and interest in the brand. My first really big break came when somebody out in California recommended their local liquor store as a middleman so that they could buy some rum. The retailer is required because I am an importer and I can't hold a retail license, and all unlicensed customers must buy from a licensed retailer. As luck would have it, the retailer has an internet store, so people all over the USA were able to buy the rum. At first, the retailer ordered a case, then several, and after a while they were averaging a case per day, or thirty cases per month. These guys were my bread-and-butter account.

Enough writing about the liquor business, or boozeness as I like to call it. I'd like to write about Belize for a while. Belize was once called British Honduras. The British were here for over a century, exporting sugar and mohagany while importing slaves. That's right, the Caribbean was the hub of the British slave trade. The country was home to pirates and privateers, who used the barrier reef as a defence while raiding Spanish convoys headed to Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico. It's hard to imagine, but in colonial days sugar was a highly valuable spice, and the British made fortunes on the backs of slaves who grew the cane and worked the mills. A byproduct of sugar refining is a tar-like substance called molasses, which is fermented and distilled to manufacture rum.

 


Romel Perdomo, with vats of molasses wine that will be distilled into rum.

Now, Belize is an interesting counrty for more than its history. Geographically, the place is very cool, too. It's on the Caribbean coast of the Central American mainland, and you can look at Belize as either the most "Central American" of any Caribbean country, or as the most Caribbean of any Central American country. It's a funky combination of the two. For one thing, the english language is commonly spoken. That's unique in Central America, at least outside of tourist towns. However, there are plenty of other Caribbean nations that are primarily english-speaking, such as Jamaica. Belize has mountains, islands, atolls, reefs, rainforests, savanah and Maya ruins. There are many things to do and see in Belize.

 


The three column continuous still that makes One Barrel rum.

Belize is still a sugar producing country, and from sugar comes rum. One Barrel rum is distilled in Belize, using the British style. Of the three styles of rum, British, Spanish and French, British rum is known for its darker, heavier brands like Mount Gay and Appleton. On the contrary, US rum drinkers are more accustomed to the Spanish types of rum made famous by the Bacardi family of Cuba, and later of Puerto Rico. In general, British rums have more complex flavor and are even good on ice or straight. Spanish rums are usually mixed, often in the generic Rum & Coke.

One Barrel, or 1 Barrel as it's shown on the label, is a British rum in the classic style. It's a little darker than your usual Bacardi, and it has a very distinct flavor profile. It smells good, too, which really helps. After all, you have to put your nose close to the rum before you can drink it, so having a plesant aroma is important. The flavors are unique, sometimes I remember cocoa or butterscotch when I taste the rum, other times maple or carmel. The flavor is in the background and never take center stage. This rum is great mixed-It actually makes Coke taste better than it does without the rum. Honestly, when have you ever heard anyone say the they liked the way their rum tasted? Most folks who are drinking rum just put enough mixer into the drink to cover the taste, but with One Barrel you try not to overpower the rum's flavor with mixer. It really is that good.

 

No personal webpage of mine would be complete without a pointer to my dogs.