The Caribbean’s leading celebration of rum is returning to St Barth next year for another week-long festival featuring the best of Caribbean rum and rhum agricole.

The Caribbean Rum Awards, a partnership of Caribbean Journal and the Saint Barth Rum Festival, will be held Nov. 10-15, 2020.

The festival will run alongside St Barth’s acclaimed Gourmet Festival, a week-long slate of Michelin-star meals and dining experiences across the island. 

“We are excited to come back to St Barth for the 2020 edition of the Caribbean Rum Awards,” said Alexander Britell, editor and publisher of Caribbean Journal. “St Barth is the natural home for an event focused on the most exclusive, artisanal rums from the Caribbean.”

2020 will be the third edition of the Caribbean Rum Awards, the centerpiece of which is a blind-tasting competition featuring rum and rhum agricole across seven different categories. 

Next year’s event will again be held in partnership with the Saint Barth Rum Festival. 

It will be hosted at the Rhum Room and the Quarter Kitchen and Cocktail Lab in Gustavia, the island’s epicenter of gastronomy and fine spirits.

The 2019 edition was topped by Don Q Reserva de la Familia Serralles from Puerto Rico, which came in first in an “uber-premium” category comprised of some of the most expensive Caribbean rums on the market. 

“After our first year of the Saint Barth Rum Festival hosting the Caribbean Rum Awards, we are very excited to work with them for their 3rd edition,” said Christopher Davis, proprietor of the Rhum Room and the Quarter Kitchen and Cocktail Lab. “We had a number of firsts in 2019, Uber Premium Rum Category, People’s choice panel etc, now to add some more distillers and additional consumer-focused activities to really introduce quality rum to the guests who visit St Barth from around the world.”

The 2020 event will again include the competition, a Rum Expo in Gustavia featuring distillers from across the Caribbean sampling their products to consumers, a schedule of rum-and-cocktail dinners at Quarter Kitchen & Cocktali Lab and a ti’ punch workshop and happy hour. 

Each night’s events will be punctuated by a special VIP after-party at the Rhum Room, home to the biggest selection of rum of any bar in the Caribbean. 

This year’s sponsors included Tradewind Aviation, WIMCO Villas, Les Ilets de la Plage, SC Capital and St Barth Properties. 

For more, visit the Caribbean Rum Awards, email rum@caribjournal.com or Hello@25sbh.com.

— CJ