St. Antoine Rum Distillery

Abandoned Soviet-era planes at Pearls airport

Pearls Airport is just a couple of miles north of Grenville. Lennox turned off onto a potholed access road and onto the runway. To our left were the corpses of two airplanes. One is an old Russian Aeroflot plane, the other a Cuban aircraft that was sent just before the US invasion and damaged during that episode. It is eerie to drive by them. Lennox let me out onto the airstrip. At one time, it was possible to visit the duty-free shop, abandoned with its specials still posted. Now the buildings have been taken over by businesses.

Pearls Airport runway

From Pearls Airport, Lennox took us further north to see the St. Antoine Rum Distillery. My guidebook said there would be no tours on a Saturday, but we went to take a look anyway. We were pleasantly surprised, therefore, when a woman came forward and said, “We’ve been giving Saturday tours for a long time now.” She proceeded to lead us around and, in the same I’ve-memorized-this-information-for-tourists voice Lennox would adopt from time to time, gave us the tour.

This is the oldest water-powered distillery in the Caribbean. Its water wheel was installed in 1785 and it has been crushing locally grown sugar cane ever since. But, to save on your word-weary eyes, here’s the place in pictures...

The huge water wheel that runs the crusher

Our guide beside the crusher

Conveyor belt carries sugar to the crusher

The water wheel connection to the crusher

Sugar cane residue (has a special name I've forgotten) is used as fuel to run the boilers

Entry to the boiling room

The proto-rum is manually moved from dish to dish using massive ladles

Fermentation tanks

Wood is also burned to heat the syrup

How to make rum

Boilers...

...and

...condensers

WW checks the specific gravity of the current batch

The final product