The Long Pond distillery was founded in Trelawny in 1753, some 12 miles from Hampden, and is named after a mountain in the north of Jamaica. Seagram’‘s CEO Samuel Bronfman bought the distillery from the Jamaican government in the 1940s and began producing Captain Morgan there in 1944. After Seagram was disbanded and the Captain Morgan brand bought by Diageo, Long Pond joined National Rum of Jamaica, a company owned by the Jamaican government, Demerara Distillers Limited and Maison Ferrand. The distillery was closed from 2012 to 2017 and was almost destroyed in a fire in 2018. Thankfully, the damage was not too serious and the distillery’‘s John Dore pot stills and Blair column still continue to operate today, producing various profiles of very popular rums.

Vale Royal is a rum distilled at Long Pond in 2006 and bottled at cask strength by Velier in 2018, after ageing for 12 years. It reproduces the style of the Vale Royal distillery, which closed in 1959. VRW stands for Vale Royal Wedderburn, a mark applied to rums with 150 to 250 grams of esters per hectolitre of pure alcohol, whereas the Wedderburn style—one of the four categories used in Jamaica—gives a range of 200 to 300 g/hlpa. It is a blend of 11 casks that produced 3,412 bottles. Velier was founded in Genoa by Casimir Chaix in 1947. It was originally a small, family-run business specializing in the import and distribution of wine and spirits. Luca Gargano, a former representative for Saint James and serious rum collector and enthusiast, bought the business in 1986 and began bottling whisky first in 1992 and then rum in 1996. Rums selected by Velier are only ever aged in a tropical climate, which explains both their concentration and the high angels’’ share. They are generally bottled at cask strength or just below. The company’’s selections from Diamond’’s vaults as well as the Caroni bottlings and the bottlings from various distilleries in Jamaica, Barbados and other countries have played a key role in rum’’s history and are today some of the most sought-after in the category.