Last weekend The Spice Isle (aka Grenada) had the honor of hosting a pretty unique event, the 2013 Caribbean Rum & Beer Festival. The two day event was jam-packed with a variety of activities and entertainment. A ticket for the Festival, held at the Grenada Youth and Cultural Center in Grand Anse, cost $25 EC (or $9.62 US).



On Saturday, Barry and I boarded a local bus to check out the rum and fun at the Festival. We were joined by our friends Jan on s/v Hanna and Gary on s/v Inspiration.



The Festival was not big, there were around 17-18 different rum vendors, three beer venders, and a rum cake vendor. On the plus side, there were also not a lot of people when we were there in the afternoon. This was really great because it gave us the time to talk with each vendors about their rums and distilling processes. All while sampling a never ending supply of their products!



As I am sure you can imagine, we had a wonderful time sampling the rums, some from as far away as Guyana and Suriname on the northeast coast of South American, Barbados, Cuba, Florida and of course Grenada to name a few. If was interesting to taste the differences between the different brands of rum - once you got past that burning sensation traveling down you esophagus! It turns out that as much as I love rum, and I do, I prefer mine with Diet Coke. Apparently, I'm not cut out for sipping or swilling, as the case may be, straight rum. I discovered the white rums were by far the roughest - burning, take your breath away rough. The gold rums were much smoother and the aged rums smoother still. I could almost drink the rum from Barbados by Mount Gay that was aged for twelve years in oak barrels. Of course, that smoothness comes with a price - the aged rum of twelve plus years is 2.2 times more expensive than the average white rum.





The festival also had wonderful entertainment. While we were there the Angel Harps Steel Pan Orchestra performed. Absolutely no one can sit still once the steel pans start playing - even Barry was tapping his toe! There were cooking demonstrations by the students from T.A. Marryshow Community College and, you guessed it, the recipes had to include rum. They made a very tasty chicken saute flambeed with rum and an excellent rum cake that had to have been 100 proof. Also, there were rum cocktail wars between local bartenders and last but not least, the rum tasting competition.





Meanwhile, Gary was really, really having fun making friends with the Festival Girls! These very beautiful (and tall) young women were from a local modeling agency (sorry, didn't get the name).





The most surprising thing I learned at the Festival was than most of the rum distilleries do not grow their own sugar cane. They import it from a number of countries in the form of sugar cane juice or molasses. The one exception to this are the rums made in Barbados. Barbados is one of the few Caribbean islands that still grow sugar cane.