The bottles are filled, labelled, waxed and special tags applied. We’re talking about our second bottling, the Red Mill CLASSIC Rum.
With our GOLD Rum, we wanted to look forward. We wanted to create a style and type of Rum that was thoroughly modern. We wanted to answer the question – why can’t rum sit alongside your favourite premium whiskies, brandies or the new wave of luxury agave drinks?
We embodied all of those feelings with our first GOLD rum bottling, and have been overwhelmed with positive support, but we always knew we also wanted to reference and build on our past.
When Red Mill first started in 1933, it was humble. Much of the history of rum is humble – it’s often about convenience and happenstance. Old Bourbon barrels were cheap and plentiful, so that’s how Caribbean Rum was aged. Sailors across the centuries, including through to the Pacific campaign of the WWII, had a taste for rum because it was the one spirit made near the coast. The spirit that inevitably filled the holds and bilges of ships through the ages.
Rum has a million stories like this. Stories that show a drink interwoven with place, time and people.
Red Mill, Sydney Harbour, the Fesq family are no different.
To honour that, we started developing a classic style of rum, but with the new vision for Red Mill baked in. Where the GOLD rum might be about the refinement and craft, the CLASSIC is a rum with character, muscle, soul and more.
The base rums are the same in both, a spirit distilled from a gentle fermentation of refined and unrefined Northern Rivers brown sugar, using a column still. This new-make Rum was sent to various casks throughout 2021 and 2022.
For blending the CLASSIC, we took a selection of casks that were approximately 50% ex-whiskey casks (Bourbon, Scotch and Quarter Casks), and 50% ex-wine casks (Australian Pinot Noir and Red Bordeaux.
We allowed this blend to settle in older American oak for six weeks before bottling by hand at 40%ABV for an easy drinking, versatile style.
The CLASSIC is the rum that tells the story of our past, but asks you to embrace our vision for the future.
Enjoy.
