Papalin, the spotlight shifts to Haiti

After the releases dedicated to Jamaica, Velier introduces Papalin Haiti – a blend combining rum from 5 Haitian distilleries.

The Papalin project is rooted in a desire to celebrate the history of rum with the return to a tradition dating back to the late nineteenth century, when Caribbean merchants made blends by assembling sugarcane spirits from different distilleries located in the same area in the Caribbean. 

However, over the course of the last century and particularly in the last seventy years this tradition was slowly lost, especially because of the appearance and growth of different brands of blends produced in Europe. Over the last decades, this has led to the gradual disappearance of tropical blends. 

To tackle the loss of this time-honored tradition, Luca Gargano came up with the Papalin project, which doesn’t just to pay homage to that tradition, it revives it in a very practical way – in the glass and in the mouth.
The Papalin blends only combine rums from a single island, entirely produced and aged at the respective distilleries. 

The first release created by Velier was dedicated to Jamaica and was therefore named Papalin Jamaica. But right from the start Luca Gargano's plan was to produce one edition for as many islands as possible. 

That's how Papalin Haiti came into being. Just like its Jamaican counterpart, it faithfully reflects the basic idea of creating a blend with authentic products, all carefully selected and assembled by Luca Gargano, to offer people the opportunity to enjoy authentic rum, the product of skill, careful barrel selection and a constant search for different flavor profiles. 

Papalin Haiti is a blend of 5 of the island's distilleries: 

• Sajous, 
• Vaval, 
• Casimir, 
• Distillerie de Port-au-Prince,
• Le Rocher

A total of 32 barrels were selected, all entirely aged in a tropical climate. Barrels include ex-cognac, ex-bourbon, ex-Caroni and ex-whisky.

As Luca himself relates, “Richard Seale once called me a 'dependent bottler', meaning that unlike 'independent' bottlers, I depend directly on distilleries. We are actually co-bottlers: I'm responsible for selecting the barrels, packaging and ABV, but the rums are all authentic products, strictly 'tropical-aged' and bottled at the distillery where they're made – official bottlings for which Velier is the sole official distributor. This is why with Papalin we are a 'tropical dependent bottler', because the project follows the same principles.”