Antigua

The Antigua distillery was built in 1933 on Rat Island in the harbour of Saint John's. Its owner, Antigua Distillery Limited (ADL) had been established the year prior by a consortium of eight local businessmen who were looking to cut costs by buying molasses in bulk and control the distillation process of their shops' rum brands.

In the early days of the distillery, rum was sold unaged to merchants who would bottle their own third-party labels with it. The molasses was acquired mostly from the state-owned Antigua Sugar Factory, and smaller amounts from the independent Montpelier sugar factory which ADL eventually bought in 1944. With the local sugar industry all but killed off by the 1970s, the distillery nowadays imports molasses from Guyana and Nicaragua which are pumped directly from ships in the harbour using underground pipes.

The distillery's first in-house brand was called Cavalier, launched in 1947 with a unique flavour profile derived from the use of muscovado sugar molasses and 100% copper stills. Its historic four-column Savalle still was installed in 1966 before being replaced with a three-column John Dore still in 1991. Rather than the scrap the Savalle entirely, a single column was taken and fused to the new still to function as its rectifier, creating what is today the only entirely copper hybrid still in the Caribbean.

The new still allowed for increased production and diversification of its portfolio, and the now flagship English Harbour brand was introduced in 1994. As popularity of it and rum in general has grown, the distillery has increasingly added experimental cask finishes to its maturation programme alongside its traditional ex-bourbon casks.