William Hinton 3 Year Old Madeira Rum

The Portuguese island of Madeira is known mainly for its eponymous fortified wine. What's maybe less well known is that they've also grown sugar cane there for hundreds of years, much of which went to make rum that was originally used to fortify Madeira Wine.

In the mid-nineteenth century Englishman William Hinton, a sugar exporter, established a distillery in the island's capital, Funchal, for the production of rum and by the 1920s, at the peak of their produciton, 600 tons of cane per day was being processed. However, in the 1986, European legislation was put forward that prohibited the use of 'Aguardente de Cana' - rum - in the fortification of Madeira and this led to the closure of the distillery.

However, in order to recommence the tradtion of rum production in 2006 a smaller distillery in Calheita, towards the west of the island, was restored and the production once again got underway, this time purely for the purpose of making distinctive Madeiran rum. The type of rum they make is known as 'Agricole Rum' meaning that its made from sugar cane juice that's been fermented and distilled rather than from molasses from which most rums are made and this tends to give a slightly different flavour profile with grassy note and up front fruitiness among the characteristics.