After visiting the Rum Bar on Duval Street, it’s time to discover Key West’s first legal rum distillery in a former groghouse.
Tasting rum at the Rum Bar on Duval Street
The default setting in Key West is merrily drunk. It is the sort of place where a frozen daiquiri for breakfast is not only perfectly reasonable, but eminently sensible. The delicious wooziness of the wilfully different island at the end of the Florida Keys chain is a strong part of its isolated appeal.
But inside the Rum Bar at the more demure end of notorious bacchanalian strip, Duval Street, there can at least be a pretence at seeking an education.
Learning about different rums in Key West
For anyone whose knowledge of rum starts and finishes with pouring Coke on top of Bacardi, this is the place to open up a world of magic. There are hundreds of bottles on the shelves, from all over the rum-making world. You want Guyanese, or Anguillan, or Trinidadian? Then you can have it.
More to the point, the bar staff really know their stuff, and will merrily select tasting flights of five different rums according to your – and their – particular preferences. (The Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva from Venezuela and Centenario 25 from Costa Rica are astounding, by the way). Deep, warming flavours, some packing a real punch, others winning over with honeyed mellowness, make the idea of using a mixer to disguise the taste of the rum ever again sound like appalling behaviour.
The Prohibition rum runners of Key West
Key West has a long history with rum. It’s closer to Cuba than it is to Miami and, during the Prohibition era, the rum runners who gave their name to the potent local cocktail would spirit rum over the sub-90 mile sea crossing. They’d hide the bottles and casks in the sea around the island, then fish them out when required. Key West became the traditional entrance route of rum into the States.
Legal distilling in Key West
But for all the rum coming in, no rum was being made in Key West (legally, at least) until December 5th, 2013.
Paul Menta, the chef behind Key West Legal Rum, says the date was fitting, as it was the anniversary of when Prohibition laws came into force. But that first batch was a long time in the making.
He and his colleagues had to spend 18 months battling the state legislature to change the law, allowing them to distill the rum and sell it to the public on the premises.
“We wanted it to be downtown so people could see it being made,” says Paul. Tours of the distillery are open to the public, and many historical elements of the building have been kept. It was once a Coca-Cola factory, and the bottles and cups dug up during the refit have been saved.
Key West groghouses
Before then, it was Jack’s Saloon, considered the posh option amongst all the fighty groghouses. There’s a large blown-up photo on the wall of the groghouse bartenders. “Jack watered down his high proof stuff, but when the bartenders came in, he’d take them into the back and let them have the real version.”
Menta insists that he approaches the rum-making with a chef’s eye. Madagascan vanilla is sauced for the vanilla-flavoured rum, while key limes from local back yards go into the key lime variety.
“But the important thing is that you can smell being made from down the street,” he says. “And when we launched, it was the first time that the local mayor and navy commandant had drunk rum in Key West with the guy who made it. Well, legally at least…”
More Florida travel ideas
Other Key West experiences where you can taste rum include a sunset cruise, a reef snorkelling tour with an open bar and a tiki cocktail class.
If you enjoyed this story about rum in Key West, there are other Florida articles on Planet Whitley. These include:
- Visiting the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers.
- Seeing manatees at the Big Bend Power Station near Tampa.
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