This iconic Jamaican distillery is famous for intense pot still rums with a pronounced fruity and funky character. Hampden produces a range of different styles – or ‘marques’ – with different levels of esters. These flavour compounds are developed during fermentation and can evoke pineapples and mangoes, or olives and petrol, depending on the concentration. That might sound a little strange, but there’s a good reason this distillery is legendary among spirits enthusiasts the world over. Once you’ve acquired a taste for this style of rum, you’ll always go back to it.

The story of Angostura begins in 1824, with the creation of the world-famous cocktail bitters in their namesake town in Venezuela. By the late 19th century, the Angostura company was buying, blending and selling rum from across the Caribbean, and in 1947 that the brand’s owners established their own distillery in Trinidad. Today, it produces rich and rounded molasses rums, as well as more than 2 million bottles of bitters every year. This is the perfect place to look for sweet and mellow rum that’s bold but still accessible.