Luca Gargano

Philosophy and advocacy

Gargano believes that the best rums are made in batches at a single distillery, aged in the climate of that distillery, or preferably, in the distillery itself, and then bottled without blending or additives, and that a rum containing additives such as sugar will never be a great rum.^[9] He has been a vocal critic of industrial rum production, which he argues prioritizes volume and cheapness over flavor and authenticity. Gargano has criticized the practice of using specific distillery or country-of-origin names on bottles when the rum has not been fully aged in that location, arguing that differences in climate make aging location a meaningful quality distinction that consumers deserve to know.^[14] In an interview, Gargano said "the AOC, which comes from the culture of wine in France and Italy, is not born to protect. It's born to recognize ... a specific quality of a product. ... So, it's not Barbados rum [if it's aged outside of Barbados]. We have this understanding for other spirits, so why not for rum?"^[6] Gargano considers himself the opposite of most independent bottlers, claiming that they just email distilleries in the Caribbean from Europe, while he has spent decades traveling to Caribbean distilleries in person.^[2]

Bottling pure single rum

In 1999, Gargano visited Demerara Distillers Ltd. (DDL) for the first time, and was impressed by the 250 year old pot stills present at the distillery, finding the production very artisanal, unlike the industrial manufacturing of Spanish-style rums.^[4] After meeting with DDL chairman Yesu Persaud, Gargano befriended him and gained access to very old DDL stock. This allowed him to bottle and release a series of Demerara rums that were single estate, pot still, and fully aged in the tropics. This was the first time that Velier released such a rum, though this type of relationship would come to define the rums that Velier distributes.^[15] It also created an increase in demand for Demerara rum in Italy, a precursor to the "Caroni mania" that would come a few years later.^[16]

Acquisition of the last stocks of Caroni

Caroni distillery officially began operations in 1918 in the Caroni plain region of Trinidad & Tobago, and was a significant supplier of intensely flavored heavy rum for the Royal Navy, with sailors showing a preference for heavier, higher-ester, "funky" rums.^[17][18][19] However, it was a relatively unknown distillery, mostly selling bulk rum to blenders.^[17][19] Caroni distillery was closed down in 2002, representing a significant loss of rum heritage for Trinidad & Tobago and the Caribbean.^[5] In 2004, Gargano, while exploring Trinidad, found the distillery abandoned, but with a large stock of barrels still filled with rum dating back to the 1980s, aging in the hot tropical climate.^[17][18] Described as the "epitome" of heavy rum, Caroni rums are described as "thick, deep, oily, tropical profile with toffees, treacle and even a hint of tar".^[17] Shortly before the distillery's demolition in 2005,^[18] Gargano purchased most of the known stock of Caroni rum, and bottled it for the international market.^[17] However, unlike the common practice in Europe of transporting the rum back home, Gargano was adamant that any rum not for immediate bottling should remain in the tropics and continue aging there (due to the distillery's abandonment and perceived danger of leaving them, they were moved to DDL in Guyana).^[19][4] Also, instead of diluting the rum to the standard 40%, the rum was sold at cask-strength, as high as 66%.^[8] The unique terroir and high ester profile captured the attention of rum enthusiasts, and, along with the limited supply, and each release being the unblended product of a single barrel, caused "Caroni mania", where these rums fetch some of the highest prices at auctions.^[17][18] This launched Velier as a major player in the European rum market,^[10] and elevated the Caroni distillery from relatively unknown to widely sought by rum enthusiasts.^[17]

Popularization of Haitian clairins

Since their creation centuries ago, clairins were obscure outside of the country of Haiti.^[20] When Gargano went to Haiti for the first time in 2012, he discovered both dozens of authentic small, "real" clairin distilleries, but also several continuous column industrial operations producing products named clairins, though Gargano claims that these are not clairins. Velier created a subsidiary, The Spirit of Haiti, and in 2014 released five continuous bottlings of unaged Haitian clairins: Casimir, Sajous, Vaval, and later Le Rocher and Sonson.^[21][10] With these international releases, Valier was credited with popularizing the spirit abroad.^[20] Since 2018, Gargano worked with Slow Food and the Clairin Presidium and the government of Haiti to establish a geographical indication (GI) for Haitian clairin, and in 2021, the Haitian government created HaïRum, which is a certification mark granted to clairins which meet certain criteria.^[22]

Popularization of Hampden Estate

Gargano is credited with introducing the world to Hampden Estate, a previously unknown bulk rum producing distillery, like Caroni.^[1][14] In 2017 or 2018, Velier became the exclusive distributor for Hampden Estate, when the company bought exclusive global distribution rights, as well as Hampden's entire stock of rum, including their entire stock of aged rum.^[1][10] Gargano's investment into Hampden greatly increased the reputation of the distillery.^[1] In 2022, a Hampden single rum and a Hampden blend both won gold medals at the 2022 IWSC awards.^[23]

Gargano described his project with Hampden Estate as an end of a colonial era, where European traders used to buy marks for cheap, blend them, then sell them.^[2] In collaboration with Velier, Hampden released several single estate rums, and some rare offerings, including the 1780 Harewood House rum, where each bottle sold for several thousand pounds.^[14]

Co-bottling the Appleton Hearts series

In 2020, Velier entered into a collaboration with Campari, the company that owns J. Wray and Nephew Ltd. to release a pure single rum from Appleton Estate.^[24] Following the success of this collaboration, the following year in 2021, Gargano and Joy Spence released a series of the Appleton Hearts Collection, a series of pure single rums.^[24]

Gargano rum classification

Unsatisfied with the typical categorization of rums by color, Gargano proposed a new method, which has become an international standard by which some of the world's largest online retailers and auctioneers of rum categorize rum.^[7][5] His classification method divides rums based on 4 criteria:

• Ingredients: The base fermentable of the rum has a significant effect on the taste. Sugarcane rum has a significantly different taste from molasses rum, which is by far the most common type of rum. Whether the cane juice is organic, hybridized, and whether it is fresh or cooked down to a syrup also has an effect.^[25]
• Fermentation: The final product is affected by the fermentation depending on the yeast used for producing the wine, how much water is added, and also whether additional substances, such as dunder, bagasse, or vinegar are added.^[25]
• Aging: The factors that affect aging are the type of wood, the ABV of the spirit being aged, and whether the barrel is new, or was previously used for aging other wines or spirits. Likewise, whether it was aged in a hot tropical climate, or in a cooler, moist climate, will have a large effect on the aging process.^[25]
• Distillation: Rum can be distilled in a variety of stills. It can be distilled in batch stills (such as in a pot still), in a Coffey or Creole still, or a blend of several types of stills. Gargano notes that all of these can produce rums of high quality. The only exception is rums distilled to a high proof in multi-column stills. This practice is common with Spanish-style rum which, Gargano says, are made to produce as much ethanol as possible, as cheaply as possible.^[25] According to Gargano, "... if you distill in a multi column, you lose everything".^[6]

The earliest version, first created in 2012,^[10] divided rum into four categories:^[19]

• Pure Single Rum – 100 percent batch (pot) still rum from one distillery
• Single Blended Rum – a blend of only pot still and traditional column still rums from one distillery
• Rum – Rum from a traditional column still
• Industrial Rum – Rum from a multicolumn still