Trending Now: British Rum

Scratch Spirits is a distillery located in the seemingly unlikely setting of Hertfordshire, housed in a converted stable block at a historic 16th-century country house. Founded in 2016 by self-confessed ‘rum nerds’ Doug Miller and Ellie Taverner, it marries tradition with a dash of contemporary style. Its flagship expression is Golden Rum, an elegant lightly aged spirit with notes of apple, honey and anise, and a long finish. Uncoloured and unsweetened (unlike a good deal of rums), it is one for purists. 

Another rum from the English Spirits Company is its signature Old Salt Rum. “Aged in English oak casks coopered from trees grown on the distillery’s estate, it gives the rum fresh golden tobacco notes, which then give way to darker cocoa and finally vanilla,” Walters explains. “For all our rums, we use stills that we’ve designed and built from scratch, to ensure we get a very clean ‘cut’. We can be very precise about where we take out the good and leave the bad, which means you get a lot less of that spirited ‘burn,’” says Walters.