When in Rum: Fun in the Sun—and Rain—at the Barbados Food & Rum Festival

The idea of starting a huge party at 5 am sounded insane to me. But sunrise parties aren’t uncommon in the Caribbean, especially at the Barbados Food & Rum Festival. When we entered the expansive beachside grounds of Harbour Lights along the Southeast coast of Barbados near Bridgetown, we were greeted by a beautiful array of rum punches sparkling in the darkness in their novel containers. I grabbed a plastic pineapple and took the first sip of the many, many rum drinks I’d taste over the next five-and-a-half hours, along with coffee, water and culinary delights.

Guests were encouraged to wear yellow, and a parade of locals and tourists decked in their finest sun dresses and tropical shirts flowed into the meticulously arranged and decorated areas of the Rise & Rum fest, sampling bites like Chef Kiara Riley’s Da Fuh Lick Yuh (a sticky brown sugar pork taco infused with Mount Gay XO Rum and topped with green papaya slaw); Chef Nicholas Ifill’s “De Bajan Benny” (pork belly, cassava salt bread, smoky tomatoes, cured egg yolk, Scotch bonnet hollandaise); or Chef Marvin Applewhite’s tri-citrus prawn ceviche, spice-scented sweet potato purée with mango bobas.

Our Rise & Rum welcome

The coffee came courtesy of Wyndham’s, a Bajan family-owned roaster on the island, who also provided espresso martinis to the partygoers. A ticket to Rise & Rum covered all the food and drink you could consume, a limit I proceeded to put to the test, taking advantage of a free massage during one of the many rain showers in order to get my second wind around 9am.

My kind of coconut rum

Sponsors Mount Gay and Cocksure, as well as local mixologists, offered an almost impossible variety of rum cocktails, though one of my favorites was simply a freshly cut coconut with an airplane bottle of Mount Gay Black Barrel stuck upside down into a hole in the top. The first sip was wonderfully refreshing and began the infusion of rum, so that the last sip was wonderfully potent. Another stall offered fresh cut pineapple soaked in—wait for it… more rum—and served in the pineapple’s husk.

Rise & Rum guests were decked out in yellow

DJs kept the party going down on the beach, playing all this year’s soca hits with revelers dancing through each new downpour, equally rain-soaked and rum-soaked. But Saturday’s Rise & Rum was just one of the weekend’s events at the 2023 Barbados Food & Rum festival.

The party kicked off on Thursday night at Oistins, a southern coastal town known for its local cuisine. Pat’s and Moe’s each offer their competing take on the national dish of flying fish and cou cou, along with macaroni pie and an assortment of other Bajan foods. One of the International guest chefs, Food Network’s Anne Burrell, presented a cooking demonstration for attendees, while local distilleries gave out samples of their various rums. My favorite of the night was the Plantation XO 20th Anniversary, aged in bourbon casks for 12 to 20 years and finished in French oak for more than a year.

Welcome to Moe’s at Oastins

On Friday, I made my way to Foursquare, the youngest of the island’s four rum distilleries, for a tour and tasting. Despite its founding in 1996, the distillery sits on an historic sugar plantation dating back to the 1600s and is owned and operated by the Seale family, whose own history blending and bottling rum goes back to the 1800s. The industry has seen significant consolidation since the 1980s, and Foursquare now produces beloved local brands Old Brigand, Alleyne Arthur’s Special Barbados Rum and E.S.A. Field, as well as their own R.L. Seale label and other contract distillation. Foursquare has made significant efforts at sustainability, sourcing their sugar right on the island and even installing their own CO2 capturing plant on site. They currently have rum aging in approximately 40,000 barrels at the facility—mostly former bourbon barrels, but also madeira, port, zinfandel, sherry and cognac.

Your intrepid reporter at Foursquare

Though a relative newcomer—especially compared to the 320-year-old Mount Gay—Foursquare has quickly become one of the most sought-after rum brands, releasing special small batches for limited distribution. For BDs$70 (US$35), I sampled several “select” offerings: the 2021 Indelible, aged for 11 years on ex-bourbon and ex-zinfandel casks; a 12-year-old private cask selection aged in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks, released in Canada; Diadem, a 12-year-old private cask selection aged in ex-bourbon and ex-madeira casks, released in the UK; a 2010 exceptional cask selection, aged for 12 years and released in 2022; the Plenipotenziario and Sassafras, two overproof selections only released in Italy; and the Crisma cream liqueur that served as the perfect dessert finish.

On Friday night, a half dozen party busses followed the evenings “Rum Route” to a cocktail demonstration at Mount Gay’s bottling facility, karaoke at a Stade’s Rum bar, and a tasting of a trio of Mount Gay rums with food pairings. Our bus kept our own party going with traveling karaoke and a late-night stop at Barbados’ ubiquitous fast-food chain Chefette (I recommend the two-piece roasted chicken snack box and the thick chocolate shake, but maybe not if you have to get up at 4am for a sunrise party).

One stop on the Rum Route

Saturday’s events also included a Bajan Fair and the Jr. Chef Cook-Off finale before the festival concluded Sunday night with the Liquid Gold party, a black-tie affair that includes food and cocktail competitions with partygoers serving as the judges. We sampled foods ranging from Chef Ann-Marie Leach’s tasty fried okra and cornmeal cake with spicy vegan ‘crab’ salad to Chef Damian Leach’s exquisite shrimp and saltfish coconut ginger bisque. Chef Trevon Stoute got my vote, though, for his otherworldly sweet potato and spiny lobster eclair.

On the cocktail side, I did my best to sample as many of the dozens of concoctions the island’s best mixologists had to offer, like Natasha Jules refreshing watermelon-and-guave Mellow Water, but my favorite was from Dameain Williams. Featuring States Beach Vat #1, cilantro-black pepper syrup, pink grapefruit juice and Himalayan salt, garnished with lemongrass twist and grapefruit, the drink is called Chef Javon’s Fav, and I have to agree with Chef Javon.

Chef Trevon Stoute

From the time I arrived in Barbados and a Food & Rum festival representative at the airport handed me a rum punch to the time I arrived to my hotel at the Savannah Beach Club and was handed another rum punch, to my final dinner at Champer’s, it was a delightful long weekend of rum on the island where the spirit was born.

The Green Monkeys of Barbados

Josh Jackson co-founded Paste Magazine in 2002, where he serves as president and editor-in-chief. Follow him on Twitter at @joshjackson or his bird photography @BirdsAtl on Twitter and atl_birds on Instagram.