Ian Burrell wears many hats: organizer of the London Rum Fest, ex-professional basketball player, singer, judge, writer, consultant, bartender, trainer, entertainer, and more generally: the one and only global ambassador for rum. However, one string was missing from his bow: having his own brand of rum. This is now a reality with Equiano , recently arrived in France, about which we asked him a few questions. But first, here is some good news:
As COVID conditions improve, we can surely look forward to attending the London Rum Fest…
It is held in October. Last year, we offered a reduced version, online, in order to maintain the event. We did not want to interrupt the series of the oldest Rhum Fest in the world! This year will be the 15th year. It will take place on October 15, 16 and 18. There will be the pro day, the public day, and Sunday will be dedicated to spiced rums.
This Sunday will therefore be more dedicated to cocktails and mixology…
There will be cocktails and mixology on all days. With a classic rum or a premium rum, we can also make premium cocktails. During the professional days, there will of course be all the bartenders, who will want to discover new rums for their cocktails, but also learn about rum . For this purpose we will also have a "university" part, for in-depth learning on distillation, fermentation... all led by master distillers, cellar masters, etc.
And so there's a new day which is Spiced Rum Day. They're becoming more and more popular, and I'd like to make people understand that spiced rums are different from rums. That's why we wanted to create a separate lounge. On public days, a lot of people just want to come and have fun, enjoy a spiced rum in a cocktail, so there will be a lounge dedicated entirely to that.
There will also be London Rum Week, with lots of events, from October 11th to 17th. There will be dinners, tastings, bar nights, rum clubs… lots of different events.
So spiced rums are enjoying greater success recently?
Yes, and quite a bit! Particularly here in the UK, because we now have quite a few distilleries that make spiced rums. Last year, during the pandemic, 100 distillery licences were handed out. Some of them make gin, and a lot of them also make rum. Most of them make spiced rum because it's a category that doesn't really have a definition. You just get some molasses, ferment it, distill it, add some spices, and there you have it, a spiced rum. There's no need to age it or anything.
So right now, when people drink these products, they think they're drinking rum. They're drinking spiced rum, which is not the same thing. We need to educate consumers that yes, there are good spiced rums (there are bad ones too), but they're not rums. They're rums with spices added to them, so you can't legally call them "rums."
Moreover, the European Union says that they will now have to be called "spirited beverages". From the moment spices or other things are added, the name rum can no longer be used. It can be "Caribbean spirits", "cane spirits" etc. but not "rum".
This is also the case for rums that contain more than 20g/L of sugar.
Absolutely, in fact some brands have already changed their labels. Others have changed their recipe, to stay below 20 grams. Personally, I think that 20g/L is already too much, but I can't say that a rum with 20g of sugar per liter is bad, because I like some of them.
I like to drink an El Dorado , a Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva, whether it's an Old Fashioned, or a very sweet Manhattan. They are very good in cocktails, or even for tasting, it is sipped with pleasure. But you have to know how to differentiate them from a Hampden for example, which will not be sweet at all. They are two opposites, but two very good products in their genre. One is a rum, the other is a rum liqueur or a spirit made from rum.
My philosophy in this area is: enjoy what you like, but know what you drink.
Can you tell us how the Equiano project came about?
It started when I met my partners in the adventure, in early 2019. They were already in whisky , and they realized that rum was very trendy. Someone said to them "you should talk to Ian about this". So they came to me, saying they wanted to make a rum, that they had an idea, a concept etc. But I said to them "no, it's not going to work. I can help you, take your money, but it's not going to work." I explained to them why their concept couldn't work, and that if they wanted to make a rum, they had to go about it in this way and that way.
And they said to me "let's do this together then"! Finally I said to myself "I've never made rum, I've always waited for the right moment, I like their passion, their ideas, so let's go for it!".
I suggested some ideas, and added that if I were to make a rum, I would love it to be a rum that had never been made before.
Africa has never really been explored from an international rum perspective. Outside of the islands off the continent, there are a few countries that make cane spirits, locally. But on the international scene, the only rums I see at trade shows are from Mauritius, Reunion, Madagascar , Seychelles, South Africa. They are trying to make themselves known, but are not yet as highly regarded as those from the Caribbean.
“I thought I would like to make an African rum, and why not blend it with a Caribbean rum.”
In the UK, my ethnicity is 'African-Caribbean', so why not make a rum that reflects that? My partners thought it was a great idea. And it's never been done: on bar menus you see 'Barbados rum', 'Jamaica rum', 'Mauritius rum', but never 'Afro-Caribbean rum'.
The time had come to work on the origin of the rums. For me, at the moment, the best rums in Africa are those from Mauritius or Reunion.
We chose Gray's Distillery because I had worked with them before, so I knew their rums were very good. I also knew that they would pair well with a Caribbean rum that had a more "classic" side, pot-still or column blend, with fruity aromas, which you would expect to find in a rum from Barbados or Jamaica for example. These are the main islands (with Saint Lucia) that are the cradle of rum, at least from an English point of view 😉
From France's point of view, it's more Martinique and Guadeloupe!
That's true, but it's changing. Our rum culture developed in France, and we now know Barbados, Jamaica, and Latin American rums quite well. From our point of view, these are the standard molasses rums, which we differentiate well from agricultural rums, but whose traditions we also know.
It's the same in the UK (and certainly Germany too) where we're starting to appreciate pure juice rums . The agricoles or pure juices from around the world have never really had a chance to shine in our country. They've never been promoted, or touted, or sold, except in a few cocktail bars. One reason for this is that most people who drink rum drink it with cola, and they don't like the taste of it mixed with the agricole. It's true that it works very well with citrus, but much less so with these cola flavours.
But people discovered things like ti'punch, and started using agricole in their daiquiris, mixing it with passion fruit, grapefruit… They also started mixing it with molasses rum, in a Mai Tai, or in other cocktails, to add layers of flavor.
Coming back to Equiano: So we had our African component. As for the Caribbean component, being Jamaican, I think we make the best rum in the world (laughs).
“But to me, in the world of rum, Jamaicans are like Islay whiskies.”
You love them, you hate them, or it's a taste that you acquire, which takes a little time. Personally I've never acquired that taste, it's too smoky and peaty for me. I respect it, I understand it, but I can't drink that. I drink Speyside, Macallan, Glenfiddich, things like that, I'm not a big fan of smoky spirits.
But you could compare it to Jamaican rums, which have different levels, from light rum to very heavy high ester. A lot of people associate Jamaican rums only with high esters, with their complexity and the backbone they give to the rums. Like Appleton for example: it's a blend of rums with a backbone made of high esters. There's a lot of column rum and some fairly light pot-still rum in the blend, but there's still that backbone. Hampden is mostly heavy rums. You could say Hampden is the Laphroaig of Jamaica.
I really wanted to make a rum that everyone could drink, from the beginner to the experienced amateur, from those who like cask strength to those who prefer 40% rums.
“I thought turning to Barbados would be the best choice, to have a rum that everyone could enjoy.”
The other reason is that for me, the best rum producer (currently!) is in Barbados: Richard Seale. I told him about it, saying "if I create a brand, I would love for you to produce the rum". And he said okay, no problem! So I told him about my idea of importing rum from Africa, to him, for him to blend it and we create this new brand.
He was up for it right away, but it had to be a rum he liked! I knew he liked New Grove because we had tasted some of their rums together in Hong Kong. He said, "That's not bad!" and I kept that in the back of my mind.
Yet Richard must be difficult to convince during the tasting...
Yes, very difficult! (laughs) He smells, he tastes, and he finds all the faults in a rum, he is very good at that. But if the rum is good, he will tell you and talk about it, he will defend it. It will not necessarily be a rum that he will drink himself, but if it is well made he will say so.
Bacardi for example: A lot of people criticize the Bacardi Carta Blanca, but you can't say it's poorly made. The only thing is that it's a Puerto Rican style, so not as complex as a Jamaican, Barbadian or Saint Lucian style.
Richard is an honest person, and I wanted Equiano to be an honest rum too. So that's how it started, how the team came together and the concept took shape.
Then it was time to think about the taste! So I took a little bit of New Grove, a little bit of Foursquare, put them together in my kitchen and chose the best combinations. Again, Richard makes rums that he himself would like to drink, and if everyone else likes them too, that's even better! I did the same thing, and chose the one I would like to drink, and it turns out I would drink a lot of it! (laughs)
I gave him some assembly formulas, we chose one, and voila, Equiano was born.
I didn’t need to send him samples, he had the rums at his disposal and he developed the recipe on site. Before shipping the rums from Mauritius, we had an idea of what we wanted to create. It was a long and expensive process to send rums from Africa to Barbados, it would have been easier to go through Europe, but we wanted the journey and the story to be authentic, but also rooted in our identity.
"Olaudah Equiano was an African who was enslaved at the age of 11."
It came from Africa to Barbados, the same route that our rum took. Then it went from Barbados to America, then to England. Again, it's the same route for our rum. It leaves Barbados, where it's blended and bottled, to be sold in America and the United Kingdom. So Olaudah Equiano's journey is an important part of our story.
He was born in the mid-18th century, in West Africa, in what is now southern Nigeria. Like many Africans at the time, he was kidnapped by the British and taken on a ship to Barbados to be sold. If you weren't sold in Barbados, you were taken to America to be sold again. He was young, only 11, so he wasn't sold the first time. So he was taken to America, where he was sold to a captain who was sailing to England.
During the crossing that lasted 3 to 4 months, in 1757, he learned a lot, and in particular began to speak English. When he arrived in England, he was adopted by a family who taught him English. It was quite rare to come across a black face for an Englishman, because people did not travel. The only people who met black people were those who visited the colonies, so they only knew the slaves on the plantations.
"Olaudah was baptized, he was given several jobs, but he loved boats and wanted to go back to sea."
When he got back on a boat, he came back to the Caribbean and actually saw slavery and all of its horrors. It affected him greatly.
But during this stay he learned many things, such as the spice and rum trade. He was again sold to a captain, but he told him: "If you can earn enough money, you can buy your freedom."
It was unlikely that he would succeed, and yet he managed to earn £40, the equivalent of 3 years of a good salary, in a single year! Once free, he returned to England and met people who encouraged him to write a book about his story. This book became a bestseller, which changed people's perceptions of slavery. He died in 1797, and 10 years later, the transatlantic slave trade was abolished. It is fair to say that he contributed to that.
He's a very important character, and we really wanted to tell his story, his influence as an entrepreneur, as a writer. He gave money to charities, worked to improve things, and for equality. A lot of people don't know that story. That's a good thing and a bad thing, because it also means we have a good story to tell. And when we do it with a good glass of rum (sometimes it's the best time, when we're with friends, sharing stories, like we did before the internet!) it's a good opportunity to discover.
On the Equiano bottle it says “A journey of discovery”.
“Rum, its history, are opportunities for us to cultivate ourselves, to discover about ourselves through the story of this man.”
The takeaway from this is that if you want to do something, to be the best, nothing can stop you but yourself. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do this or that. That's what he did, and that's what we want people to take away.
Also, when we created the brand, we wanted to instill an idea of philanthropy, charity, and a desire to give back. Even before we had a name, we decided to donate 5% of our profits to charities. While we wait to make these profits, £2 per bottle sold on our site will go to charities. The first charity we donated to is Anti Slavery International, which is the oldest anti-slavery organisation. They work in Africa, Asia, Europe, on issues of modern slavery, which particularly concerns children. So we try to participate in making the world a better place, with a glass of rum in hand!
Is this your first rum? (apart from the two legendary Foursquares!)
(During the UK Rum Fest 2019, only two copies of Foursquare's "The Burrell" blend were bottled and auctioned off for charity, editor's note)
Yes, this is the first rum I created for myself. I have already made rums, worked on blends, concepts, for other people but not for myself.
This is the end of this first part, dedicated to the genesis of Equiano rum. We will see you very soon for the technical part, which will be just as dense!
