OUR STORY
Sundowners, sunsets, sparkling seas, crystal clear waters, golden sands, wonderful people, community spirit, history and natural ingredients are all found in abundance in Cornwall, The Isles of Scilly and the Caribbean. We wanted a word that connects all of these things and that word is rum!
Having started our mission to enter the world of rum, a great deal of research, family chatter and travels went into creating our product and branding to get us to where we are today. Obviously the best part was the research as this involved tasting a large number of great rums from across the globe including the UK, Caribbean islands, Venezuela, Australia, Portugal, Spain and the United States. We also experienced personal tasting lessons in one of the worlds finest Rum manufacturers - the Mount Gay Distillery in Barbados. All of this was a complete education but a necessary background to help us understand the complexity of the drink and indeed the difficulty in manufacturing a quality product. We were taught that the hallmark of a good spirit is if it doesn’t burn when you sip it neat!
We were fortunate to be introduced to one of the most experienced, respected and award winning distillers Dr John Walters from the English Spirit Distillery. Several coincidences and fateful happenings lead us to agreeing to go into partnership with Dr John, not least that he had just purchased a large property near Launceston, Cornwall and was looking for a product to distill from there. The English Spirit Distillery is one of the only UK based distilleries to manufacture the product from cradle to grave including the spirit, something which is very important to the taste quality.
We were inspired by the Caribbean and Isles of Scilly and very much used these to help us with our flavours and branding, combining these the Cornish production. St Martins on the Isles of Scilly is where we have owned a family home for circa 40 years and where we handpicked the samphire grown on the waters edge at the bottom of the garden.
The branding comes from an iconic Cornish tin mine, the Caribbean sunshine (so important for the ripening of ingredients) and Daymark on St Martins from which the rum takes its name. The poem on the rear label was a joint effort from the family and encapsulates and describes the ethos of our brand.
It has been a labour of love and taken some considerable time to get to where we are today, which is extremely exciting. Ours is very much a family effort in conjunction with close friends. We are totally self funded and looking forward to starting on this journey. We very much hope you enjoy our product and would welcome any feedback that you wish to share , good or bad!
