This has to be the most beautiful distillery I have ever visited. Situated at Cherry Tree Hill in the parish of Saint Peter, St Nicholas Abbey is not only a Jacobean House and museum but also a craft small batch rum distillery.

REVIEW : ST NICHOLAS ABBEY RUM DISTILLERY, BARBADOS

The plantation house was built in 1658 and is only one of three remaining Jacobean mansions in the Western hemisphere. The house boasts a drawing room, dining room and a study on the first floor with seven bedrooms and two cornerstone fireplaces on the second and third floors. It seems odd for this house to have fireplaces as temperatures here never get cold enough for one, but the Jacobean/Tudor/Elizabethan styles all called for homes that included elaborate multi-curved gables, Tudor arches, decorative chimneys and casement windows.

St Nicholas Abbey covers 400 acres of sugar cane fields, lush tropical gullies, mahogany forests and formal gardens. It is currently owned and maintained by the Warren Family, who purchased the property from the last descendant of the Cave Family in 2006. It is the family's mission to develop St. Nicholas Abbey as a self-sustaining heritage attraction, cultural centre and self-supporting plantation as a legacy for Barbados.

Besides restoring and preserving the plantation house, they have also installed a Heritage Railway which take you around the estate and up to Cherry Tree Hill, one of the most amazing viewing platforms on Barbados!

St. Nicholas Abbey has a long tradition of producing rum, and the Warren Family has rebuilt the plantation’s distillery as part of their ongoing restoration process.  One of just four distilleries in Barbados, St. Nicholas Abbey has shunned mass production and complex mechanical systems in favour of the traditional distillation process that made Barbadian rum famous over 350 years ago.

St. Nicholas Abbey Rum is made exclusively from sugar cane juice, which is stored as syrup to ensure year-round production since the Barbados crop season has a short run lasting from February to June. The plantation cultivates and harvests by hand a select variety of sugar cane unique to St. Nicholas Abbey. It is the first plantation to start harvesting early in January, and the only independent processor of sugar cane for the production of cane syrup.

The freshly cut cane is hand-fed into the steam mill where it is crushed just once to extract the sweetest juice possible.  Within minutes, the juice is fed to the vacuum evaporator which reduces it to syrup; this can be stored for future rehydration during the production of rum in the fermentation pots to ensure premium freshness and quality.

The distillery employs the traditional pot still method with a rectifying column, producing a hand-crafted, highly distilled rum, preserving the essences and nuanced flavours of the pot still fermentation process.

The fermented cane juice is vacuum evaporated at low temperatures to pasturise the syrup used in the making of the rum, which is distilled in small, carefully controlled quantities using the traditional pot still. ‘Annabelle’ has been customised to St. Nicholas’ specific requirements, producing a superior light rum (highly distilled) spirit worthy of the plantation’s heritage and pedigree.

The well and mill pump provide clean water to the distillery to ensure highest purity.

After distillation, the 15-year old aged rum is barreled in the finest bourbon oak casks and aged to perfection in the St. Nicholas Abbey rum bond. Located in the highlands, the plantation enjoys cooling tradewind breezes that enhance the maturation of the rum.

After three years in oak, the contents of the barrels are removed and re-barrelled to ensure an even characteristic to the vintage.

Continued attention throughout the ageing process has established St. Nicholas Abbey’s selection of rums as a premium brand, consistently lauded as the best in its class.

St. Nicholas Abbey Rum is genuine, unblended liquor best enjoyed straight, with a smooth taste and a lively, sharp finish.

The aged rums are hand-bottled in their unblended form straight from the barrel. St. Nicholas Abbey uses elegant glass decanters individually etched with an image of the St. Nicholas Abbey great house.

The decanter is sealed with a mahogany capped cork topped with hand-embossed leather, symbolic of the island’s first mahogany trees, planted by Sir John Gay Alleyne on Cherry Tree Hill over 250 years ago. The label is applied by hand and each decanter is engraved with both a number and date to ensure authenticity.

St Nicholas Abbey run Rum Tours and Tastings but you are also free to wander around. They have a large cafe area, visitor centre and shop.

St Nicholas Abbey produces five rums :

• 5 year old - ages in bourbon barrels you’ll pick up vanilla, fudge and coffee on the nose and palate.

• 8 year old - ex bourbon white oak barrels with flavours of cinnamon, dried fruit and tobacco.

• 15 year old - it is initially aged in oak Bourbon casks at 65% abv for the first 8 years, after which it is batched and re-barreled into the same casks at bottle strength to be aged for a further 7 years at the Abbey. It has flavours of tropical fruit, smoky wood and maple sugar with some nutmeg and coconut thrown in.

• 22 year old - single cask rum which is packed with cinnamon, spices, dried fruits and vanilla.

• White Rum - made from sugar cane syrup fermented in their pot and column still, producing the original Barbadian ‘see-through’ rum of years gone by. The fresh, clean spirit sits in stainless steel for 3 months before bottling. It is not chill filtered and in colder climes the rum may appear slightly cloudy as a result. It’s sweet with an overwhelming aroma of marshmallows; expect vanilla, creamy fudge and overripe bananas on the palate and finish.

This heritage house and distillery is idyllic. The palm trees sway in the warm breeze, the bird song is sweet mixed with the ‘hello baby’ and vocal chatter from Lance & Baby, two Moluccan Cockatoos or Salmon Crested Cockatoos, who reside in a spacious bird cage close to where you’ll find Annabelle - the still!; and the rum, ah the rum - Welcome to Barbados!

St Nicholas Abbey, Cherry Tree Hill, St. Peter, BB 26007, Barbados, West Indies www.stnicholasabbey.com