Trade day MASTERCLASS Timetable
Lower Ground Floor - London Bridge Arches – Registration Required
1-1.45pm Rum has no rules - Discuss!
One of the, unfair, accusations that gets levelled at the whole rum category is that it is the wild west of spirits. Terms like white, gold and dark provide very little insight into what the rum itself might be like.
However, for spirits with such a strong sense of place there are, unsurprisingly a growing number of GIs and champions campaigning for better transparency and regulation. Join Dawn Davies MW to dig into the rules of rum.
2-2.45pm Cuban rum and classic Cuban Cocktails
(Note this session will take place in the River Room - Ground Floor)
It is not an understatement to say that the story of Cuba is also the story of its rums. Since the arrival of sugar cane under Spanish imperial rule, the by-products of the sugar industry have been put to work and transformed into aguardientes and rums by the people of Cuba.
Those in turn have been transformed into a fantastic, thrilling canon of cocktails including classics such as the Daiquiri, the mojito, the el presidente that have their roots in the cocktail culture of 1920s Havana.
Join Georgi Radev for a dive into this cocktail revolution and the rums behind it.
3-4pm To be or not to be - Solera and rum, the great debate
One of the greatest systems for developing and maturing any alcoholic drink, the solera has great potential for the world of rum.
Originating in Jerez in southern Spain, soleras are at the heart of sherry production. There, a solera consists of a system of casks which a wine will gradually be racked through. At the bottom of the solera are the oldest wines, the winemaker will at most draw a third off, and then top that cask up with wine from the next cask of slightly younger wine, which in turn is topped up by younger wine from higher up the solera, and so on and so forth until fresh wine is introduced at the very top.
This is a system of perpetual blending which achieves a staggering consistency while also allowing the wines to develop. This system has increasingly caught the eye of spirits makers, join Dawn Davies MW to discover more.