On Vanuatu’s main island, Efate, there’s a distillery, cleverly named 83 Islands Distillery (after the 83 islands that make up the archipelago). So, buoyed up by our successful chocolate-eating mission, we decided to pay them a visit. The place is stunning, and everyone there was as friendly as we have now come to expect from the Ni-Vanuatu.
Michael (above, in the featured image!) took us on a tour of the place, starting with the sugar cane. Much of what 83 Islands makes is rum, distilled from cane. And, Michael tells us, cane (like corn/maize), loses its sugars very quickly after harvesting, so it all comes from Efate. First the cane goes through a pulverising machine, which extracts the liquids and leaves woody solids. (Those solids make great compost.)
Because they are a growing concern, 83 Islands is helping to create a sugar cane industry on the island.
The liquid sugar is boiled and distilled, and then it ferments for different lengths of time. 83 Islands makes a variety of rums, aged for two, three, or more years. They are stored in brandy, rye, bourbon, chardonnay, and red wine casks. There are white rums and spiced rums and a pineapple rum. Lots of rum!! Plus one with a smoky taste we absolutely loved.
Note too that the heat and humidity makes rums age faster in this part of the world, so even the two-year-old rum was fairly sophisticated.
But wait, there’s more! 83 Islands also makes two different kinds of gin (one, flavoured with coriander, was amazing!), vodka, bitters, and fruit liqueurs. We are suckers for flavoured booze, and we had a hard time picking our favourite from among orangecello, pamplemello, and pomellelo. But there were also coffee, chocolate (two kinds, one from each of the chocolate makers on the island) and kava-flavoured liquors. The juniper berries and potato are not from around here, but the rest of the ingredients are.
Handed over to the excellent bartender Emil, we tasted pretty much every one of the things listed above. (It was a very long morning… or at least, it felt long!) We would very much recommend this experience to any visitor who likes alcohol. It all tasted great but, more importantly, we loved chatting with Michael and Emil about all of the experiments they are doing. For instance: they had a spiced rum recipe, now forgotten, that they are trying to recreate. And they’ve been exploring the use of other local ingredients to add to their rums.
Then we purchased an embarrassingly large amount of alcohol given our number of persons and the length of our stay. We figure the worst thing that will happen is that we’ll share it with some of the very nice people who work in our hotel.
To make sure you don’t miss a single moment of meandering, minimalist, magic, why not sign up for our fortnightly newsletter?
