Rum, Jamaica. Distillery operational. Owner: Everglades Farms Ltd.

Independent & family-ownedKnown primarily in the rum, perfume and food industries, Hampden began to move out of the shadows in 2009 when the Jamaican government decided to disinvest from the national Jamaica Sugar Company and auctioned off its assets. The family-owned company Everglades Farms Ltd (owned by the Hussey family) secured the lot and became the owner of this gem which is now considered the alter ego of the Scottish distillery Ardbeg. This link with Scotland is no coincidence. Hampden Estate was bought in 1748 by Robert Stirling, who had left Perthshire (Scotland) in 1742. The Hussey family sells two expressions of its rum, including an Overproof which is particularly well-known in the bar and HORECA segment. But it was in 2017, when family-owned Italian (Velier) and French (LMDW) companies began distributing the first old rums, that Hampden really took off, rising to the ranks of the finest rums currently on the market.

A Hampden 7 year old distilled in 2011 and bottled in 2018 for the Habitation Velier range. Distilled in a double-retort Forsyths still depicted on the label, it is marked LFCH, meaning it has an ester content of 85-120 g/hlpa. 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. It was in 1996 that Gargano bottled his first Demerara rums. 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. Its selections from Diamond’’s vaults, the Caroni bottlings and the bottlings from various distilleries in Jamaica, Barbados and other countries are key to rum’’s history and are today some of the most sought-after in the category.