Bayou Select & Bayou Spiced Rum - Award Winning Rums From Louisiana

Bayou Rum is handmade in the largest privately-owned rum distillery in the USA, utilising traditional methods with state of the art technology for all four steps of production; fermentation, distillation, maturation and bottling. The beautiful facility in Lacassine, Louisiana offers distillery tours, a rum tasting bar and a gift shop shop for those who visit the home of Bayou Rum. Although Louisiana Spirits is still relatively new (it opened in 2013), the company has made a big impression. For starters, in little over year since it began distilling rum, they had won 50 awards from tasting competitions across the country. Louisiana Spirits has gone on to make this number an unprecedented 83 taste awards; this is more than any other rum in the world! This nearly overnight success has to be partly attributed to Cuban born Reiniel Vicente. Reiniel is a second generation master blender who learned the craft of rum making from his father while working at a rum company in the Dominican Republic for many years. Reiniel’s father was a master blender in Cuba for 25 years and they are generally regarded as the masters of creating light rums. It’s impossible to tell the story of south Louisiana without mentioning the massive sugar plantations that made the region so famous. It’s no surprise that Louisiana Spirits owes a lot of its success to the famous Louisiana sugar cane that it grows on site. For 300 years, the bayou wetlands of Southern Louisiana have been sugarcane country. At the Bayou distillery, they handcraft rum in small copper pot stills from a unique blend of local molasses and fresh raw sugar. The result is a range of Premium Rums from Louisiana, the richest of which is Bayou Select, carefully matured the aforementioned master blender Reiniel Vicente. With a combination of Bourbon and Bordeaux wine casks, he uses the Solera aging process to top up the evaporation from our oldest barrels with younger rums, until the perfect balance of smoothness and character is achieved. Trey Litel, President of Louisiana Spirits explains the provenance of sugar cane growing in Louisiana as follows; ""We are focused on producing world class rum from Louisiana sugarcane. Historically, Louisiana had been making rum dating back to 1764 and up through prohibition. The first settlers in colonial Louisiana were striving to survive and growing cane proved to be their answer. The French Chevalier in charge of the settlement shipped sugar, molasses, and 18 hogsheads of tafia (the French name for rum before the British named it!) to the King of France as proof of their success with the crop in 1764. A monumental “sugar rush” was kicked off a couple decades later after the 1795 growing season when Etienne de Bore crystallized sugar commercially and sold his sugar crystals for $12,000! Word travelled fast and people arrived in Louisiana to buy land up and down the Mississippi river, up and down the bayous, to establish sugarcane farms and plantations. It was fascinating and inspirational to learn that knowledge transfer from the Caribbean assisted Louisiana to become the sugar capital of the USA in the mid 1800s providing up to 90% of sugar consumed then. We celebrate this history with our “sugarhouse” recipe for Bayou Rum.""  

Bayou Select Rum

Bayou Select Rum is the finest expression so far of the unique Louisiana sugarcane rum born from the rich soils of the mighty Mississippi river delta. Distilled in a copper still and aged via a solera system in both ex-bourbon and French Bordeaux oak casks. Fermented with cane yeast, distilled in American copper pot stills and rested in American oak in the Louisiana heat, this classic dark rum is sure to excite rum lovers’ palates with its complex aroma, delicious flavours and sensuous finish. Gold Medal, Best in Class Miami Rum Renaissance Festival 2016 Category Winner World Rum Awards 2016 Nose: Creamy vanilla with hints of apple and cinnamon. Profile: Smooth, vanilla oak with flavours of cinnamon and maple, balancing dryness with sweetness. Mouthfeel: Dry with long-lasting notes of oak and dark fruit. Suggested Serve - Bayou Old Fashioned Stir two measures of Bayou Select over four large ice cubes in a tumbler for two minutes. Add three dashes of Angostura Bitters, 1/3 shot of sugar syrup and two more ice cubes. Stir and garnish with a twist of orange zest.  

Bayou Spiced Spirit Drink

Spiced Bayou Rum is infused with classic traditional spices with a Louisiana twist. Featuring Louisiana grown ingredients, this special gumbo of spices creates a unique and satisfying blend that makes it the perfect rum for mixing. The special blend of spices is soaked in the rum for thirty days so that the flavours really come through upon consumption. Spiced Bayou Rum livens up everything from a rum and cola to unsweetened tea or an ice cube. One sip and you’ll be hooked. Gold Medal Global Rum Masters 2015 Best Spiced Rum World Rum Awards 2016 Nose: Sweet banana, vanilla and cinnamon. Profile: Mild yet complex blend of maple, banana, allspice, clove, vanilla and pepper. Mouthfeel: Full mouth complexity with lingering notes of Creole baking spices. Suggested Serve - Bayou Spiced And Ginger Stir the juice of a fresh lime into a tall glass filled with ice. Add chilled ginger beer before floating two measures of Bayou Spiced on top of the drink. Serve with a wedge of lime.