Gastro

Brugal distills the world’s first smoked rum in a chocolate barrel

The venerable Dominican distillery presents the first bottle of its 'Visionary Collection' dedicated to innovation.

Click here to read the Spanish version.

Brugal has mastered the art of pairing rum and chocolate with the ‘Edition 01‘ of its avant-garde collection that explores new techniques in the creation of the spirit.

This rum aged in toasted oak barrels with Caribbean cocoa, which smells and tastes like hot chocolate with cinnamon, thus debuts in the brand’s ‘Visionary Collection‘ as a series that embodies Brugal’s visionary spirit, its 135-year heritage, and all the liquid concoctions of rum masters who have left their distinctive mark on the brand’s history.

The inspiration behind ’01’

The first edition of this collection takes on a transcendental meaning for Jassil, the Maestra Ronera behind this bottle, as Dominican cocoa symbolizes for her a very deep connection with home and family.

‘One of my fondest memories of my childhood is walking among the cocoa trees that surrounded my family’s home. I remember the lush green cocoa fields, the sweet and sour aroma of the pods and the rich aromas of the roasted beans. It is this memory that I wanted to recreate with the first edition of the Visionary Collection.

Based on this evocative scenario, the rum is aged in toasted barrels with locally sourced organic cocoa beans: a patented technique that imbues the wooden staves with notes of bittersweet chocolate and a robust roasted robe. The containers are then filled with the brand’s signature sugarcane distillate and left to rest for several years in humid tropical climates.

After maturation, the result is an essentially robust rum, which smells of hot chocolate with cinnamon. However, it has a high alcohol percentage, specifically 45%.

This bottle, which is now available for $100 in the U.S., is part of an exclusive edition of which only four batches of the expression were distilled and casked.