At the weekend it was RumFest (in case you didn’t know) and part of the weekend celebrations included raising a toast to the industry’s finest and the best blends in the business, at the fourth annual Golden Rum Barrel Awards.
Taking place at The May Fair Bar (which we has a great cigar bar FYI), The Rum Experience presented an evening of canapés and cocktails with host Ian Burrell presenting gongs to the best players in the business.
The UK RumFest is the largest rum and sugar cane festival in the world that took place across the weekend at London’s ExCeL Centre.
Winners were carefully selected by Global Rum Ambassador, Ian Burrell and a panel of experts.
The evening kicked off with cocktails from Havana Club and Don Q Rum which set the scene offering more mojitos and daiquiris than you could shake a cocktail stick at.
With a bar full of rum, we mingled with industry people, rum bloggers and even David ‘Hayemaker’ Haye was on hand to enjoy the rum. We were even offered an exclusive teaser that the Hayemaker may be getting involved in the rum business so watch this space for more info.
Having met David Haye a few times, we didn’t do our usual photo opp on this occasion but simply shook hands with the champ and let him enjoy the evening.
As the cocktails began to flow Ian Burrell took to the podium to dish out the awards and here are the winners from the fourth Annual Golden Rum Barrel Awards.
Boutique Rum of the Year sponsored Imbibe Magazine
Virgin Gorda Rum
Rum Distillery of the Year
Destilerias Unidas S.A. (Venezuela)
Master Blender of the Year sponsored by Green Engineering
Tito Cordero
Rum Blogger of the Year sponsored by Don Q Rum
A Mountain Of Crushed Ice
Rum Experience Hall of Fame Award
Lorena Vásquez Ampié
Jose Sanchez Gavito
Laurie Barnard
Richard Seale
Francisco Don Pancho Fernandez
Ian Burrell, Global Rum Ambassador comments, “This year’s Golden Rum Barrel Awards plays tribute to the pioneers within the industry.
Rums rising popularity throughout the world can be attributed to many of these esteemed individuals or brands and we are thrilled to announce such an incredible range of distillers, master blenders, ambassadors and rum blends from all over the world.”
We didn’t win this year, and we didn’t even make it to the cigar bar, but there is always next year.
Bring on Rumfest 2014!!!!