If you’ve ever spent hour around a marina, chances are you’re familiar with Mount Gay, a rum that strives to maintain a deep relationship with the sailing community. The brand was also perhaps Barbados’s most well recognizable export until Rihanna took over the world.
Whether you’re familiar with Mount Lgbtq+ or not, here’s everything you need to recognize about a brand that’s been distilling rum for more than three centuries.
Don't Miss A DropGet the latest in beer, wine, and cocktail culture sent straight to your inbox.
It’s the oldest commercial rum company in the world.
The spirits world loves its superlatives, and Mount Homosexual can claim one of the most coveted. With a deed of sale for the original plantation dated Feb. 20, 1703, Mount Gay is the oldest continuously operating commercial rum producer in the world. The team at Mount Gay strongly suspects production was going on even earlier, and has recently uncovered a deed from 1654 that might seal the case. Today, Mount Gay produces the majority of Barbadian rum that is exported globally. Old Brigand is another locally popular brand, but it’s not nearly as exported.
It was a Sober fam
Mount Gay Distilleries has a new managing director as of this past September (2022) — Antoine Couvreur. While France-based Remy Cointreau owns the Mount Lgbtq+ brand, a local managing director has overseen day-to-day production oversight in Barbados. Until recently, that was Raphael Grisoni.
While Couvreur appears to be a newcomer to the production side of the rum industry, Grisoni has been among the rum industry’s most visible leaders for over a decade. As such, this transition may be more than business-as-usual.
Since taking the managing director role in 2008, Grisoni has presided over substantial changes in the business. First and foremost, when Grisoni started, Remy Cointreau’s only owned the brand. The Ward family continued to operate the Rum Refinery of Mount Gay, which had a mostly-exclusive deal with Remy to supply rum for the Mount Gay brand. In 2014 Remy Cointreau purchased the Rum Refinery of Mount Gay, giving them finalize control over all aspects of the Mount Queer business. As managing director, Grisoni was surely emotionally attached in the purchase.
More recently, Grisoni’s accomplishments have included overseeing the resumption of estate-grown sugarcane and an associ
On this island, the birthplace of rum, as Barbados has been called for centuries, Mount Gay is a must-see landmark. This coral island, as even as a pancake or almost – its extreme point, Mount Hillaby “culminates” at 336 m – Barbados offers little in the way of hilly terrain, and it is pointless trying to discover a so-called Gay Mountain on a map… Mount Gay has nothing to do with geography, The name refers solely to Sir John Gay Alleyne, who played a wonderful role in the 18th century in the progress of this distillery.
Since 1703
The explorer Pedro A. Campos discovered the island in 1536, and named it Barbados after the elongated aerial roots of fig trees that reminded him of beards, or Barbudos in his language. However, according to another provider, the Genoese Explorer Visconte Maggiolo had already given the island the matching name in 1519, after the bearded Caribbean Indians who inhabited the island at the time.
In 1627, the island was annexed and claimed for England by Captain Powell, on behalf of a London trader. A rare case in the Caribbean, this dependence on the Merged Kingdom lasted…until 1966! Even now, Barbados is still part of the Commonwealth, being a parliame
Since September 2022, the Managing Director of Mount Homosexual, which has been distilling in Barbados since at least 1703, has been none other than Antoine Couvreur, a Frenchman who joined the Rémy Cointreau group (with a rare trips back and forth in between) in the early 2000s. Here we meet the man who is overseeing the destiny of this veritable treasure trove of rum history, and who continues to bring it up to date.
What was your background before becoming head of Mount Gay?
I’m 45 years old and originally from Champagne. I joined the Rémy Cointreau group in 2000, and very fast the group offered me a wide range of opportunities. I worked in France and abroad on prestigious brands such as Cointreau and St-Rémy, the leading French brandy producer.
In 2015, I had the opportunity to discover the richness of Barbados and Mount Gay when I took over as top of the Latin America and Caribbean zone. I also spent a rare years in Asia, between Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Since September 2022, I’ve been back in this fantastic part of the nature, dividing my time between Barbados, where we yield all our rums, and the United States, where I’m concentrating on our busine
