09/05/2026
The Mount Gay Distillery in St. Lucy Parish has been distilling rum on the same site since 1703. Not aging it, not bottling it elsewhere and calling it Barbadian. Distilling it, there, for over three hundred years, making it the oldest commercially operating rum distillery in the world.
Barbadian distillers did not just make rum. They invented how the world makes it: copper pot stills, limestone-filtered spring water, oak barrel aging.
There are an estimated 1,500 rum shops across an island this size. For Bajans, the rum shop is more central to daily life than any restaurant or bar.
Ten sisters are learning this in person this week.