Down Island Spirits started the way a lot of the best rum brands do — with a fan who got obsessed. Founder Mike Streeter spent roughly 25 years traveling the Caribbean, and what began as laid-back cocktail trips turned into research trips as he got deeper into the distilleries and the people running them. The frustration that followed is the reason the brand exists: almost none of the rums he'd fallen for were available back home, in shops, online, or in cocktail bars. The Single Cask Rum Series was his answer. Based in Florida and part of the new wave of American independent bottlers, Down Island released its first four expressions in 2023 and immediately drew attention across the rum world, with pours at the Miami Rum Congress and coverage from The Rumcast, Memphis Rum Club, and beyond. The transparency is total — every release lists distillation and bottling year, still type, cask type, raw material, marque, and ABV, all with no additives and no chill filtration, bottled at cask strength. The map is genuinely wide: pot still Jamaican from New Yarmouth and St. Catherine Parish, agricole from Saint James in Sainte-Marie, Martinique, an Amburana-then-American-oak Brazilian from Epris, plus releases from Paraguay, Ghana, and beyond. Serious rum for people who read the back label first.

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