The Duppy Share Special PART TWO - Sharing Is Caring, Spiced and White
...Intermission Music Plays...The waves wash in and roll out...
And there we are, back in the room. I hope those of you who had already read it have made themselves a suitable drink in that time.
The Duppy Share Spiced Rum is a sweetly spiced rum and flavourful addition to the Duppy Share family. It’s made from a blend of 2 year old rums from Jamaica and Barbados. Leading with vibrant pineapple and kola nut, the rum also holds 10 natural Caribbean botanicals and spices, and you get supporting notes of ginger, vanilla, clove and nutmeg.
This is a punchy, yet perfectly balanced rum that is accessible for everyone. Accessibility is a word that’s come up a lot for me in recent years. You can make a great product, but when you can make a great product that a lot of people can appreciate, then you’re onto a winner. Though, don’t just take their word for it, in 2020, they have rated the best spiced rum in the UK by Great Taste Awards, and those guys know their stuff when it comes to taste. This award winning aromatic blend is perfectly paired with simple mixers like coke, ginger ale and soda. Simple mixers are all it needs due to its wonderfully delicious and rounded flavour. Why overcomplicate things? Let it shine for what it is.
As well as creating good rum, the team are keen to share the rum love. Sharing is in the name and is also an important pillar in what they do. They thirst to get rum into as many hands as possible and that thirst is only matched by their desire to help as many people as possible.
There are contributions to the local community, with the Duppy Share being the official partner of the Notting Hill Carnival, which is amazing! Do go if you ever get the chance, it’s an incredible celebration of culture, as well as a damn good time! They have been supporting the Notting Hill Carnival Trust for the past four years by providing rum and running bars to contribute some much needed funds back into the community. They also provide support for the development of Caribbean arts and culture in London.
And, they are also involved in the Portobello Rugby Trust, volunteering at their local youth club, which has a proud heritage of supporting the local community’s young people learn critical skills, feel safe and develop into promising adults. The newly refurbished Amplify Studio allows young people access to training and elite equipment to develop their artistic talents and the skills needed to forge career opportunities in the music industry.
And, Duppy Share also support BAME access to hospitality. The founders have signed up to the Equal Measures Programme - a London based charity providing mentoring and training to BAME people looking to advance their careers in hospitality.
And, as well as local support, Duppy extend support to help the areas where the rums they use are distilled. So, they are partnering with the Alpha Boys School of Music in Kingston. The team recognise that they take so much from the Caribbean. Firstly the wonderful, award winning rum. And, they owe so much to this. The craft and experience here comes from Worthy Park, established in Jamaica in 1670, and FourSquare, which was established in 1920 and has been named ‘World’s Best Distiller’ for the 7th year in a row.
Secondly, they also take their name and the inspiration for the product design from the rich folklore and beautiful topography of the Caribbean. By sponsoring scholarships at the Alpha Boys School of Music, they can enable young people in Jamaica to learn the skills needed to succeed in the music industry, be it songwriting, production, A&R or performance. Since September this year, they have been enabling £1 from every order on the website to contribute towards this donation fund.
This leads us nicely into Duppy White, which isn’t in either of the boxes but is a new release and an important release to talk about. Duppy White, produced & co-founded with musical pioneer Kano, is a rum five years in the making; born
from the memories, smells and flavours that reflect his Jamaican roots and the profound impact of Jamaican culture on London and the world. The first white rum that’s designed to be drunk neat and in shots, as well as starring in classic white rum cocktails, Duppy White has flavours of mango, pimento and fresh thyme, for 100% Jamaican flavour. I took the opportunity to ask about this. What was the experience of working with Kano and making this rum like?
“This was such an exciting opportunity for us and for Kano...Duppy White, produced & co-founded with musical pioneer Kano; born from the memories, smells and flavours that reflect his Jamaican roots and the profound impact of Jamaican culture on London and the world".
The genesis of Duppy White came about in October 2016, when Duppy Share founder George Frost spotted a post from Kano on Instagram. With the relationship growing from there, it was in lockdown that Frost asked Kano if he would be interested in working on a new rum together. The partnership saw the pair focus on the creation of an approachable white rum with the complexity of the world’s best gins; refreshing, smooth and never overbearing. With Duppy Share’s other rums blended from both Jamaica and Barbados, the pair decided on a rum that would be 100%Jamaican, inspired from conception to fruition by Kano’s heritage and experiences. Describing the process of creating a rum as similar to mixing a track, constantly tweaking the blend to get the perfect result, the creation of the distinctive Duppy White taste was personal for Kano. To help create the unique flavour, during the trial process Kano drew from the sensory experiences of his childhood memories, with a visit to his family’s home in Brownstown, Jamaica to help pinpoint the flavours that would make up the liquid. The memories varied from biting into Guinep shells, to the coconut drops bought by his mum along road journeys, Devon House vanilla and raisin ice cream and his mum’s favourite Julie Mangoes, before landing on the perfect blend. The overall process culminated in a rich, caramel sweetness, and full texture rum. On the nose you get bright banana, mango and green thyme. As you taste, smooth caramel sweetness and lively tropical fruits give way to pimento spice and a lively pot still rum finish. Unusually for a white rum, the rum’s unparalleled quality means it is delicious when consumed neat or as a shot. The Jamaican inspiration behind Duppy White is clearly visible in the bottle design. The label is inspired by a 7-inch vinyl, depicting scenes integral to Kano’s life, with Jamaica on the one side and London on the other-from visual references of Manor Road, his barbershop in East Ham, Rex club in Stratford where he performed his early sets. When looking through the cut out on the front label you see an illustration of the Empire Windrush Ship as well as a lyric of Kano’s - ‘Every entrance to a door has a footprint left by the ones that came before. Let’s talk about the day the wind was rushed up on the shore’–an acknowledgement of the countless untold stories and cultural influence of the Windrush generation on London and the UK.
Duppy White co-founder and creator Kano says, “For me, whatever I do has to be the real deal. This drink comes from me. This is my life, my family’s story inside this bottle, and wrapped around this bottle. This is something I believe in and genuinely love as a product. That was a major thing for me, creating something that I would like to buy myself, drink myself. I’ve been going out of my way to test it with family members and friends to see if they feel the same. People really, really enjoy it. Some people that don’t even drink rum, or it’s not their thing–they drink it and they’re a fan. It's been a fun experience getting friends and family and peers to taste it. I can’t wait for the whole world to get their hands on it.”
Releases like this are so important, because they use the delivery of a great product to educate on the heritage of rum. And, the more understanding we have of the roots of something, the more we can appreciate it.
Thank you to the team at the Duppy Share for working with me to provide information additional to the website, to answer questions and allow me to create these two articles especially for you. I hope it’s got you interested in the brand and all the work they do.
