The main part of the Rumelier's Rum collection are his full size bottles collected from all over the Caribbean. His favourites being the premium aged sipping rums followed closely by his gold, amber and dark rums.
His collection now stands at well over 440 bottles of full sized bottles, augmented by over 160 mini bottles. Of course this does cause storage problems. It was thought that storing the rums in a storage unit would work, but unfortunately you cannot taste the rums while they are in storage and for some reason the local rodent population took a liking to the rum labels (the glue) and the older cork stoppers, aswell as any of the French rhum bottles that had a palm wrapping.
This is when a decision was made to store the large collection at home with some special shelving. This also turned out to be a complete disaster, (see below) something The Rumelier's rum collection will never fully recover from.
These bottles come in many different shapes, sizes and colours. The collection also includes numerous mini barrels of various types and sizes which are excellent for ageing The Rumelier's favourite rums even longer than the original producer.

Unfortunately since 9-11 collecting rum from the Islands has become more difficult. You can no longer carry rum bottles in your carry-on luggage for yourself or for gifts for your friends. As a result, this has affected the Rumelier's collection, as he relied a great deal on friends travelling around the Caribbean picking up bottles of rum for his collection. A special thanks for all friends and family who have bought back bottles of rum for The Rumelier's collection.

The islands of the Caribbean appear close together on a map, but are often not linked together by direct airline or boat routes, making trade between the islands very difficult at times. This is often compounded by the fact that the islands differ from English speaking islands to French, Spanish, and Dutch. This is made more complicated when politics get involved and governments will not trade with each other ie. Cuba and the USA. Then there is the on-going dispute between Bacardi and Havana Club. That alone is worth a page on this website!

Cuba is one of the leading rum producers in the world who make some of the finest rums available. The Rumelier has a variety of Cuban rums often collected in far away countries and not the Turks and Caicos Islands. In a recent trip to the UK The Rumelier was able to buy Havana Club rum 100 yards from his mother's house and in all the bars and liquor stores, but cannot buy it 90 miles away across the Caribbean. This is mainly due to the fact that there once again is no direct shipping routes between Cuba and the Turks and Caicos Islands. There are lots of Cuban cigars here, but very few rums and these are in great demand by American tourists who cannot buy them at home. Also, there are no direct flights to Cuba anymore, as there was in the past. This has made it really difficult to obtain Cuban rum these days.
New charges introduced recently at the only port of entry into Providenciales has meant that many of the small boats who used to bring in rum from other neighbouring countries, can no longer afford to dock their boats in the Turks and Caicos Islands. This will have a long term effect on the ammount of Domincan rums coming into the country.

A great deal of rum in now available for purchase on line, whether it be on eBay or various liquor merchants in numerous countries around the world. This has made it somewhat easier to increase The Rumelier's rum collection.

The Rumelier was running ouf of space to store his rum collection, so he asked a colleagues cousin to build him some new shelves. After a basic design had been decided upon, construction began on a "sturdy" set of shelves for the main part of the rum collection.
Upon arrival of the shelves they were stocked with the finest bottles of rum from all over the world. Included in this were pre-Castro bottles of Bacardi and numerous other old bottles of Mount Gay, Bacardi, Ron Rico, etc and all sorts of vintage and rare bottles of rum.
Not long after the shelves had been filled it was decided that another was needed and was subsequently ordered.
However early one Sunday morning The Rumelier was awoken by a very loud crashing sound. He jumped out of bed and ran into the living room only to find most of his prized rums had fallen down and broken on the hard tile floor after the shelves had collapsed.
The rum was flowing down into one corner of the room leaving an irrisistable aroma behind it. Broken pieces of glass covered the tile floor. Unfortunately the cheaper least collectable bottles of rum had been on the lower shelves, while all the rare desirable ones had been arranged high up on the shelves for visibility. These were the ones not to survive the fall.
The Rumelier was heart broken watching all his broken bottles going into the garbage. Nothing was saved, not even the labels could be salvaged. The broken bottles were left in the garbage bin for over a year before The Rumelier could bring himself to finally throw them out for good.
Trying to replace the broken bottles has proved almost impossible, but The Rumelier keeps trying to add to his ever growing collection.
In the picture above you will notice that the shelves are bowing, but it wasn't the shelves that gave way but the base. The weight of the rum had caused the base to sink in on it. The builder of the shelves had only used staples to join the pieces of wood together.

  



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