Every rum worth crossing an island for. And what the tasting actually pours.
Which Jamaican estate walks you through the still house. What a Barbados flight costs before noon. Whether Casa Bacardí earns a morning in San Juan. Reviews of the distillery tours, tastings and cane-field days you can book.
Four rum days that talk everyone else into the trip.
A visitor centre built for tasting, an estate bar with one flight, a table in Nassau and a full day across Grenada. What each pours, and what it costs.
01The big houseRum Tasting Tour at Casa BACARDÍ in Puerto RicoCataño, across the bay from Old San Juan. Mixology and a tasting rather than a factory walk, and it runs all day.
02The oldest nameMount Gay Signature Rum Tasting ExperienceA seated flight at Mount Gay in Barbados, the island where rum was first distilled. Small bar, few seats.
03The Nassau tableRum Tasting and Food Walking Tour in Nassau BahamasTastings strung along a food walk through the old town, so the rum arrives with conch and pastry between glasses.
04The whole islandFull-Day Tour: Concord Waterfall, Chocolate Factory, Rum Distillery, Grand EtangConcord waterfall, a cocoa estate and a rum distillery in one Grenadian day. The one that fills a memory card.
The distillery tour is the warm-up. The tasting is the point.
Every rum tasting →
A flight is usually three: the white the bartenders buy, the aged one the estate is known for, and something cask-strength poured last so you remember it. These are the rooms that pour it properly.
What a rum day actually costs, from the flight to the private car.
Every rum tour on the site, grouped by price. A tasting at the estate bar costs less than the taxi that gets you there.
Estate tours, seated flights, a bar crawl through the old town and the walking tours that stop for a glass.
The full days: cane fields and falls, cocoa estates, tasting-and-food walks, cocktail routes with a mixologist.
Private cars with a driver who waits, blending sessions with your own bottle at the end, and the island-wide days.
Six islands that each make rum their own way.
Barbados distils from molasses and has done since the 1600s. Jamaica ferments long and loud. Grenada presses cane beside a cocoa estate, Puerto Rico built a visitor centre the size of a terminal. Six places, and the best day out in each.
Four islands, four shapes of rum day. Pick your morning.
The Caribbean is where nearly all of this is made, and each island runs its rum day differently. What each one puts in front of you, and what it costs to get on board.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Mount Gay Signature Rum Tasting Experience
The Jamaica dayEstate tour in the valley, a waterfall on the drive home.
The Barbados dayA seated flight, a great house, then twenty minutes of beach.
The Dominican dayFactory floor, cigars rolled at the table, pickup included.
The Puerto Rico dayA visitor centre built for tasting, then Old San Juan.
All 235 rum tours →
The rum tours more travellers book than any others.
Open the whole rum shelf →Visitor centres with timed slots, estate bars with eight seats, and the island days that run whether it rains or not.
1
Rum Tasting Tour at Casa BACARDÍ in Puerto Rico
Review of Casa BACARDÍ’s 75-minute Puerto Rico rum tasting, with four premium pours, chocolate pairing, tram tour, tips, and value advice.
From · $89
Read our review →
2
Rum Tasting and Food Walking Tour in Nassau Bahamas
from $98
3
Pub Crawl in Lapa with Cachaça Tasting and Live Samba
from $33
4
Full-Day Tour: Concord Waterfall, Chocolate Factory, Rum Distillery, Grand Etang
from $115
5
Topper’s Rhum Distillery Tour in St Maarten
from $39
6
Bundaberg Rum Behind The Scenes Distillery Tour And Museum Experience
from $21
7
Rum Reggae and Rhythms Tour: Dancing and Cocktails
from $73
8
Mount Gay Signature Rum Tasting Experience
from $36
In Jamaica the rum day comes with a waterfall attached.
Appleton sits inland in the Nassau Valley, an hour and a half of cane fields from the coast, and almost nobody drives out there for the still house alone. The good tours bolt on YS Falls, the Black River or a beach bar on stilts, and hand you the rum at the halfway point.
A working distillery keeps factory hours, and somebody has to drive.
Rum tours happen inside plants that are making rum, which sets most of the rules for you. Read the four below before you pick a day, because they decide more itineraries than the weather does.
- 01Weekdays, mostlyProduction stops at the weekend and so do many estate tours. Sunday is the thinnest day of the week for a still house visit.
- 02ID at the barTastings are 18 and over across most of the Caribbean and 21 in the USA and Puerto Rico. Under-age guests can usually walk the plant, they just do not get the flight.
- 03Shoes on the floorA live still house means closed-toe shoes, no loose sandals, and no photographs in some bond houses.
- 04Getting backNobody drives after a flight of three. Hotel pickup is worth more than it looks, and cruise passengers are the ones with the real deadline.
Three things that happen nowhere else in a glass.
Whisky has its distilleries and wine has its cellars. An estate that ferments in open vats beside its own cane, a spirit pressed from juice instead of molasses, and a bench where you blend and cork your own bottle belong to rum.
The Appleton Estate
Appleton has been distilling in the same Jamaican valley since the eighteenth century, and the tour is a proper working walk: the cane, the mill, the copper pot stills and the warehouse where the barrels lose a share to the heat every year. The valley is limestone, the water comes up through it, and the estate makes a great deal of that. Nearly every visit is sold as a day out of Montego Bay with a river or a waterfall on the way back.
- 1YS Falls, Black River Safari, Appleton Rum Tour OR Pelican Bar (Choose Up to 3)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 90 reviews
- 2Appleton Estate Rum and Ys Falls Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 17 reviews
- 3Appleton Estate Rum Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 15 reviews
Cachaça and Rhum Agricole
Most rum is fermented from molasses, the syrup left after sugar is milled. Press the cane instead and ferment the fresh juice and you get something grassier and sharper: rhum agricole in the French islands, cachaça in Brazil. Around Paraty the small stills sit up in the forest behind the colonial town, reached by jeep, and the tasting comes with the caipirinha it was invented for.
- 1Pub Crawl in Lapa with Cachaça Tasting and Live Samba★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 881 reviews
- 2Topper’s Rhum Distillery Tour in St Maarten★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 784 reviews
- 3Jungle Waterfalls and Cachaça Distillery Jeep Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 491 reviews
Blending Workshops
A blending bench is the one rum experience you take home. You are given the components the distillery blends from, white and aged and something heavy, a pipette and a sheet to record what you did, and an hour later you cork, label and seal a bottle nobody else owns. Antigua and Puerto Rico run the best-reviewed sessions, usually two people to a station.
- 1Rum Making Masterclass Galleon Beach Antigua 2 People per Station★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 165 reviews
- 2Rum Making Masterclass Galleon Beach Antigua for 1 Person★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 68 reviews
- 3Shared Gin, Vodka & Rum Making Experience at Nelson’s Distillery★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 64 reviews
Cane country is waterfall country, and the tours know it.
The estates sit inland, which means an hour of green either side of the tasting. Operators fill it with the thing the interior is actually famous for: a rope swing over the YS river, the cascades above Paraty, Concord in Grenada. Swimwear under the clothes, and a dry bag for the bottle you buy.
Every falls-and-rum day →Four rum bookings that will not wait for you to land.
Most of a Caribbean week can be arranged from a bar stool the night before. These four cannot: they run in timed groups, on small daily rosters, or on the cruise-ship calendar, and they sell out in that order.
- 01Rum Tasting Tour at Casa BACARDÍ in Puerto RicoTastings run in timed groups with a cap on each one, and the last group of the day starts early in the afternoon.
- 02YS Falls, Black River Safari, Appleton Rum Tour OR Pelican Bar (Choose Up to 3)Estate tours leave on a fixed timetable, and the Montego Bay cruise days take the good slots first.
- 03Mount Gay Signature Rum Tasting ExperienceThe signature tasting is a seated flight at one bar, which means a handful of seats per sitting.
- 04Bundaberg Rum Behind The Scenes Distillery Tour And Museum ExperienceBehind-the-scenes access caps the group and closes bookings before the day itself.
By place, island by island
By kind of day, from the bond house to the bar stool
Barbados to the Bahamas: the run that follows the rum.
Fresh on the rum shelf.
The rest of the new ones →
Appleton Estate Rum Tour and Tasting from Falmouth
Read our review →
Rum & Chocolate Tasting Tour : Journey into Flavor
Read our review →
Old San Juan Private Tour with Barrilito Rum Experience
Read our review →
Appleton Estate Rum Tour and Tasting from Runaway Bay
Read our review →
Discover Dominican Treasures: Rum, Cigars, Coffee & Chocolate
Read our review →
Guided Shopping Tour – Rum tasting, chocolate factory, Cigar factory
Read our review →
Sabor Dominicano: Rum, Chocolate and Culture Private Tour
Read our review →
Rum Tasting: History, Tradition, Burgers and Mojitos!
Read our review →
Cigar Demo and Rum Tasting at Graycliff Cigar Company
Read our review →
Historic Island Tour Plus Rum Cake Sample and Local Beer
Read our review →
