White Peak Rum

We’ve taken our knowledge of whisky-making and fermentation and used these skills to create an authentic, small-batch Derbyshire rum. Our White Peak Rum project was over 12 months in research and in early 2020 we produced our first spirit. We use traditional methods with nothing added (no colourings, no additives, no added sugars).

We were clear from the outset that we wanted to create the alcohol from scratch here in Derbyshire, as we do for our Wire Works Whisky i.e. the pared-back essence of craft distilling.

In our whisky-making, we place a lot of emphasis on flavour and raw materials, especially during mashing and fermentation. As we learned more about making rum, it became clear that a similar focus is adopted by some of the world’s great rum producers.  There are some real parallels between whisky-making and rum-making but the details are very different.  And so we reached out to international craft rum producers that we respected to learn all we could.  Of course, there are some secrets that no one wants to offer up but we’ve been fortunate to get some great advice from a number of distilleries from across the Americas.

The first decision we took was not to base our rum recipe solely around commercially available molasses, effectively a waste product of the sugar refining process. We wanted to use the best raw materials we could source and get as close as we could to the sugar cane where it all starts. Through partners in South America, we’ve sourced high quality ‘panela’ (or ‘raspadura’) which is a solidified form of sugar cane juice that has NOT been through a commercial refining process. This panela is key to our White Peak Rum.

The entire process of fermentation, distillation, maturation and bottling all happens on-site at the Distillery. The flavour we work hard to create was recognised by the Guild of Fine Food with a Great Taste Award in 2022.

In 2020 we released a limited number of bottles of un-aged white rum, but most of the rum we make is laid down in oak casks to mature. Our latest batch of Derbyshire rum is available now in our online shop and direct from the Distillery shop.