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.

A single cask Caroni (SC3) distilled in 1996 and bottled in 2014 by Compagnie des Indes after 18 years of maturation in a first-fill bourbon cask. The rum was first aged for 10 years in Trinidad and Tobago and then for 8 years in Europe. Compagnie des Indes is a rum bottler founded in 2014 by Florent Beuchet. It takes its name from the Portuguese, English, Dutch and French West India Companies of the 17th and 18th centuries, which selected goods in Asia and imported them to their respective countries. A limited edition of 456 bottles.