Europe’s largest rum distillery brings out Britpop-inspired spirit
DropWorks Distillery has launched its first product, a new genre of British rum, to retailers and hospitality venues.
Created in what’s set to be Europe’s largest rum distillery located within Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, the new spirit is described as clear, velvet smooth rum, and aptly named Clear Drop Rum.
Founded by industry expert, Lewis Hayes, the brand was inspired by cultural movements such as Britpop, and is positioned as a new genre of British rum (coined as Brit-rum).
According to the distillery, the aim behind DropWorks, and the inspiration for its name, is the introduction of limited edition releases of rum, named ‘Drops’, using a fermentation and distillation process to create different styles of rum. The idea is that, alongside its core range of products, everyone can find a rum they love.
Clear Drop Rum is produced selecting only the highest quality cuts from a long slow distillation process, the first product Drop contains rich flavours of fresh blueberries, vanilla ice cream and banana created from DropWorks own cultivated yeast strain, Trinity Yeast, which, says DropWorks, is the world’s first three strain symbiotic yeast.
The DropWorks Distillery creates Clear Drop Rum using three custom-made, bespoke stills including a Double Retort still which is the first of its kind in England, alongside the two different raw materials – Molasses and Organic Cane Juice Honey, which are fermented, distilled and blended on site. Additionally, Clear Drop Rum is smooth due to the excessive copper interaction and elongated reflux afforded by a deflagmator at the top of an eight plate column.
Since 2020, DropWorks has received £1.8m in private funding which has been invested into the distillery, flavour development and top of the range bespoke copper equipment is used in the distillation process.
Lewis Hayes, founder and owner of DropWorks said rum has so much more to offer the world than what it does at the moment.
“At DropWorks we are excited to launch a truly high-quality and unique rum that is accessible,” added Hayes. “We want to deconstruct rum and create something new, exciting and better with no unnecessary additives. At DropWorks we are creating the new face of rum by injecting a new lease of life into the category through added vibrancy and innovation. DropWorks is about defining a new genre of rum that is built on diversity and quality which is inspired by similar British cultural movements such as Britpop.”
The DropWorks Distillery, spans 17,000 sq ft production facility, and a further 8,000 sq ft barrel store and three mile underground tunnel for storing the casks, allowing for a long consistent maturation and three different barrel ageing environments. The brand new facility can now produce up to two million bottles of rum a year and up to ten barrels of rum a day.
Britrum is seeing a huge growth in production, due to the temperate climate, abundant water and proximity to the polar jet stream, which forms a unique environment to distil and age rum within Britain. Rums can be slow barrel-aged, benefiting from lower average temperature and dramatic swings in atmospheric pressure, to create exciting spirits that challenge preconceptions about what rum is and when it can be consumed.
Lewis, added: “At The DropWorks Distillery we have invested heavily in producing bespoke products which allows us to make Rum that is as light as Vodka, fruit driven as Cognac, funky as tequila, as smoky as Mezcal, as oaky as Whisky or as spiced as Gin. All without the need for additional flavourings. The team have decades of experience in distilling spirits and are committed to continuously bringing new and innovative rum products to the market through new processes and ways of flavouring products.”
Each 70cl bottle of Clear Drop Rum contains 45% alcohol and will retail at £35.00. For more information on DropWorks, please visit: https://dropworks.co.uk.
