Clarendon

Yes: Clarendon and Monymusk are two names for the same distillery in Clarendon parish, Jamaica, and they are used interchangeably. The site was long known as Monymusk Estate, and Monymusk is still the distillery's name in the trade. It is also the house brand of National Rums of Jamaica, with a Monymusk Overproof launched in 2011, while smaller labels like Port Royal and Smatt's draw on the same spirit.

Because the distillery sells almost everything in bulk, independent bottlers buy single marques and age them for decades, and those bottlings, often 1990s vintages from houses like Velier and Rum Sapiens, are where Clarendon shows what it can do. The distillery's bread and butter is anonymous bulk spirit, light and quiet when young. Decades in oak turn that distillate into rum collectors chase, and the heavier pot-still marques in particular only show their deeper character once they have spent years in the cask.

Mostly light: Clarendon is really two adjoining distilleries, and its big four-column still makes roughly three-quarters of the output as a light, near-neutral spirit at very low ester levels. That column was rebuilt in a 2009 expansion part-funded by the EU. Alongside it sit pot stills, one of them among the largest in the Caribbean, making heavier marques up to MLC at around 550 esters. Source guides therefore place Clarendon at the lighter, more mixable end of Jamaican rum, the kind that shines in a mojito or with ginger beer, in contrast to the heavy funk of Hampden.

For Europe, largely yes: a large share of Clarendon's bulk spirit is bottled by Diageo as Captain Morgan for the European market, while the Captain Morgan sold in the US is distilled mainly in St Croix, not Jamaica. The Captain Morgan arrangement alone accounts for a big slice of all Jamaican bulk rum exports.

Clarendon belongs to National Rums of Jamaica, a venture whose owners include Demerara Distillers, Maison Ferrand and the Jamaican state, with Diageo holding a stake in the Clarendon operation. The Jamaican government stepped in to save the distillery in 1976, and in 1980 it became part of National Rums of Jamaica alongside Long Pond.