When Hurricane Maria struck Dominica in 2017, the storm wreaked havoc across the small Caribbean island, killing dozens, destroying a majority of buildings, and leveling entire fields of sugarcane, including those of the island’s last commercial distillery. In addition to the devastating human impact, the storm also brought hardship for Dominica’s already vulnerable wild animal population. Now, a group of locals, conservationists, and craft distillers are working to help revive the local economy, protect wildlife, and bring back Dominican cane rum with Rosalie Bay Distillery.
Rebuilding with Rum
Dominica is home to a staggering variety of wildlife due to its rainforest interior and abundance of coral reefs. The animals who call these places home struggle with habitat loss, poaching, pollution, and other man-made challenges. These issues were exacerbated by the string of hurricanes that have struck the island over the past few decades, especially the devastating Maria. One group working to protect local wildlife is Oceans Forward, a nonprofit organization researching and conserving habitat for turtles, whales, and coral reefs. This work became even more challenging after Hurricane Maria. “Basically everything was destroyed, plus everyone’s homes were destroyed,” explains Jake Levenson, executive director for Oceans Forward. “We really needed to find a way to rebuild. But we had to help people as well as animals.”
Yet, as a small island in the process of rebuilding infrastructure after a natural disaster, fundraising opportunities were limited. Ecotourism is a popular option in some places but can be a challenge for a country like Dominica. Draws like sperm whales and sea turtles, which travel great distances, may not always be willing to put on a show for tourists. The uncertain appearance of these creatures can make ecotourism a risky proposition that’s hard for locals to buy into when they’re in a struggling economy. “You can talk until you’re blue in the face about protecting endangered species, but until it impacts people, it really doesn’t do much good,” says Levenson.
Eventually, the Oceans Forward team struck on the idea of making rum to raise funds. “The farmers [in Dominica] would tell me about sugarcane and how easy it was to grow, but I knew nothing about distilling or rum,” admits Levenson, “So I would start stopping into distilleries and saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got this crazy idea. What if, to support my nonprofit, we made a rum?’ And I got laughed at. I got laughed at a lot.” But soon, Levenson connected with Jaime Windon of Lyon Rum in St. Michaels, Maryland. “Her reply was, ‘I’m in, how can we help?’”
Windon soon reached out to Lyon’s head distiller, Brett Steigerwaldt. “A few months later I was flying to the Caribbean,” recalls Steigerwaldt, “to an island I had never been to and didn’t really even know where it was on the map.” The craft distiller helped the team on Dominica acquire equipment, perform preliminary fermentations and distillations, and plan an entirely new distillery. The distillery’s rum proceeds would eventually support Oceans Forward’s conservation work while also providing long-term employment to farmers and distillery workers.
“It was Jaime and Brett who really got the idea that we could do what I wanted to do,” explains Levenson, “which was to use rum as a means to accomplish so much more and build these communities and help people.” But starting a distillery from scratch is challenging enough under the best of circumstances. To do so on a recently devastated small island is no day at the beach.
Finding a Supply of Fresh Sugarcane
Although sugarcane grows well on Dominica, the island was never a rum powerhouse like some of its Caribbean neighbors. By 2018, the only remaining commercial distillery on the island was Macoucherie, which produced rum in a decidedly “old-fashioned” way, with local wood feeding its furnaces and local sugarcane feeding its fermenters. Macoucherie rum was akin to a French agricole style, understandable because it was planters from nearby Guadeloupe who founded Dominica’s first sugar plantations. Unfortunately, this last Dominican vestige of old school, commercially produced rum ended when Macoucherie was destroyed by Hurricane Maria. The distillery was eventually rebuilt and the spirit flowed once more, but it is now made with imported molasses and produces rum which stays almost entirely on the island.
Yet this was merely the demise of sugarcane rum on a commercial level. Locals have continued to make “bush rum” with locally grown cane. “Bush rum is very common on the island. Some people even use it as a form of medicine,” explains Kernean George, site manager for Rosalie Bay Distillery. Although all are made locally, bush rums across the island can taste wildly different because each distiller adds their own ingredients to flavor the spirit. According to George, these additives can include “cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and other herbs known by their local names.”
Despite the abundance and variety of locally made rum on the island, finding enough sugarcane for large-scale production was difficult. Home distillers typically grow only enough for themselves, while local “juice men,” who press cane to sell as fresh juice, don’t require the kind of scale of a commercial distillery. “My biggest challenge was convincing the farmers to plant cane,” says George. “I traveled a lot in order to do so, most of the time in remote areas by foot.”
Once the cane started rolling in by the cart- and truckload, it was clear that Dominica is indeed rich in agricultural diversity. Farmers across the island bring in different kinds of cane from different soil types to create a complex array of fermentable juice. “The field blend we distill is made up of three or four cane varieties,” explains Steigerwaldt. “I would say it’s predominantly Malewa. But then there are other kinds like Black Sam, which is really thick and red and has the highest sugar concentration.” George agrees that the cane is all very different. “Black Sam is sweet and really juicy, and as soon as you bite into it the flavor just let’s you know what’s up!” she says. “Even when you cut into it, you will start seeing the juice clumping together to form crystal sugar balls, dark red in color.”
Connecting to Community
This abundance of cane brought with it the next challenge: How to press it all in a timely manner? Sugarcane is naturally covered in its own colony of wild yeast and bacteria that will kick off the fermentation process almost as soon as the stalks are cut and hit the ground. The first mill the team used was prone to breakdowns and was terribly slow. “It would take us 15 or 16 hours to crush enough cane for one fermentation,” remembers Steigerwaldt. “So you’ve already got fermentation happening. We were still able to make rum from it, and some of that’s in barrels now.” While looking for an affordable but faster small-scale cane mill, help arrived from the nearby island of Barbados. “Thanks to the global rum family, we were able to reach out to Richard Seale at Foursquare,” says Steigerwaldt. Seale helped direct the Rosalie team to a mill manufacturer in Brazil. “Now we can crush enough cane in about three and a half hours,” explains the head distiller.
Assistance also came from a vocal defender of authentic Caribbean rum, the West Indies Rum & Spirits Producers’ Association, or WIRSPA. This organization promotes member distilleries and ensures their quality while also providing technical support to the distillers. This is why the team at Rosalie Bay was able to reach out to brainstorm the rum making process. “Brett reached out to me when he started working on this project for the distillery in Dominica,” remembers Shernell Layne, technical manager for Lallemand Biofuels and Distilled Spirits, who also provides support for WIRSPA members. “He was looking for some ideas on how to get their fermentation process to run efficiently, what were the best types of yeast strains to use, how to do their cuts, their distillation process and things like that, to give them a unique spirit.”
The uniqueness of the spirit produced at Rosalie Bay is partly due to the use of Dominica’s local sugarcane. Today, most rum is made from molasses, much of which is imported from places like Brazil. That’s often true at well-known and well-loved distilleries in the Caribbean. Not only is the rum at Rosalie Bay made from locally grown cane, but all of the details about that cane are meticulously recorded. “We have ‘field-to-flask’ traceability,” says Steigerwaldt, “so we know exactly which farms go into every single bottle. It’s very complicated to keep track of, but we know who grew it, who was involved in the harvesting, who was involved in crushing. So, literally, the entire start to finish is entirely documented and traceable.”
While this kind of in-depth terroir information may appeal to rum geeks, it also underlines how important the distillery has already become to many Dominicans. Farmers, distillers, and sperm whales are already experiencing the benefits of the endeavor. “This project definitely puts bread on the tables of families,” explains Kernean George. “Everyone wants to know more and wishes it big success.” Those benefits to the people on the island are the key to the entire project. It’s important to “bring in the human side of this,” explains Steigerwaldt. “Making rum to help save sea turtles is great, but this is also a wonderful thing for the island because, after Maria, nobody has been making rum from Dominica sugarcane, so it’s just really nice to play a small role to bring that back.”
When a stalk of sugarcane is cut for juicing, it can seem as if the life of the plant is over. But, in reality, the plant will grow back in just a few months, springing up from the earth stronger than ever. The same is true of creatures who have suffered over-hunting and habitat loss — with a little help, their populations can often recover quickly. Now, an island devastated by storms is growing back with native rum and a desire to rebuild for both humans and wildlife.
