Rum Style

Fiji has no distinct style with its own name and rulebook. What it does have is a house style: molasses as the raw material, distillate blended from pot still and column still, aging in used bourbon barrels, and finally, according to the house, charcoal filtration. The result is a smooth, rather round rum without sharp edges.

This only partly matches the Spanish style, as practiced in Cuba or Puerto Rico. There, too, molasses comes from the column still, but in Lautoka, pot stills also operate under the same roof. Under the private classification system developed by Luca Gargano and Richard Seale, a rum made from both pot still and column still at a single distillery would be called a Single Blended Rum, a category also found in Barbados.

Within Fiji, two lines can be distinguished. Bati, aged two years, is the light entry point. Ratu, at five, eight, and ten years, is the darker, bolder style with more wood influence. Bounty, the brand that made the distillery famous, is the oldest of the three names and was established before the house's 2015 rebranding.

Anyone comparing styles should pay attention to three things: how much body comes from the pot still, how much oak comes from the bourbon barrel, and how much smoothness comes from filtration. The longer the aging, the more wood and toasted notes come forward over the molasses flavors.

There is no designation of origin for Fiji, such as Demerara Rum or Jamaica Rum. Style is therefore a matter for each distillery rather than a regulatory framework, which explains why the lines within a single house can differ from one another more than two countries might.