Meet the Producers: J. Gow Rum
When talking about rum there is no escaping pirates, so what better name for a rum distillery than your local historic pirate!
Named after Orkneys very own 18th century pirate John Gow, J. Gow Rum Distillery sits metres away from the sea on Lamb Holm, a 0.15 square mile uninhabited island, making it (probably) the smallest rum producing island in the world. John Gows short, violent career began in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and ended in Orkney. He was imprisoned, tried and hanged. Not once, but twice, (the rope snapped the first time). The second hanging took place at London’s execution dock on the 11th of June 1725. J. Gow was one of the last pirates to be hanged in London.
After returning to Orkney from Edinburgh to re-join the family business in 2013, I worked several years for the Orkney Wine Company (making fruit wines), with my dad ultimately priming me to take over the business. Instead of taking over, I edged my way into half of the building, put a 2000L pot still in it and started making rum in 2017.
Every part of the rum making process is done on site at the distillery in Orkney. The molasses is imported, mixed with water and yeast and fermented to around 8%, for 3 to 14 days depending on the recipe. It’s then distilled twice taking the final spirit to around 65% ABV. The rum is then aged and (for the spiced rum) it is spiced, or left in casks for several years to mature. Once ready it’s bottled and labelled by hand. The labels are even hand drawn by myself!
We produce several different rums with various recipes and fermentation techniques. Some are made with backset - waste left in the still from a stripping run - instead of water in the ferment. Some have a percentage of dunder added, which is bacterially fermented still waste that helps add esters to the spirit creating heavier more complex rums.
Our first release J. Gow Spiced rum was launched in October 2017. It is a dry spiced rum with only 5g of sugar per litre, using 7 different whole spices, 2 of which are top secret and grown in Orkney. In 2018, at the International Wine and Spirit Competition it was awarded Silver Outstanding in the rum category, and won the trophy for the Rum & Ginger Beer Category.
November 2018 saw the release of our first cask aged rum Fading Light, which is aged in chestnut casks for a minimum of one year. Fading Light is a pure single rum with no added sugar or colouring. Chestnut casks were chosen for being more porous, pairing perfectly with Orkney’s cold climate. Oak casks have an Angel’s share of around 1% in Orkney, whereas Chestnut casks give an Angel’s Share of around 9%, meaning you get a slightly faster maturation.
J. Gow has several different styles of rum maturing in casks. Our first three-year old rum will be released at the end of 2020 as a limited single cask, cask strength release. Our standard three-year old will follow in 2021. J. Gow will also release 8 and 12 year old rums in the future.
Going forward as a category, I hope we can move away from classing rum by colour, as it is so easy to add molasses or colouring to an unaged rum and call it dark rum. Ideally, we would move towards classing it by still type, fermentation or maturation length or cask type. This would really help to explain to customers exactly what is in the bottle.
Scottish rum is still in its infancy, but there’s a lot of great stuff being made here already, the Scottish Rum Festival will be an ideal opportunity to get to know these passionate producers right on our doorstep.
