Forged from the Fire - Our Story

Though we may say so ourselves, the story behind Burning Barn Rum is quite something. In fact, without the near destruction of our family’s toffee apple business, Burning Barn wouldn’t have come to exist – for this was a venture that was truly born from the ashes.

In September 2015, flights into Birmingham airport were diverted due to a huge column of black smoke rising from a barn on the flight path. That barn belonged to the father of Harry, our co-founder, and on that day his life's work burnt down. The fire was caused by a fluke accident that led to his toffee apple business, which he'd built from the ground up including designing and building his own automated production line, going up in flames.

It was Harry’s father’s response to this disaster which really inspired us to embark on building our own business. He rebuilt the barn and his toffee apple machine in less than a year, so he was trading again by September 2016. Not only was this incredibly tenacious, brave and inspiring in itself but it also gave us the nudge we needed to put our dream to bring a truly craft offering to the rum market into motion.

Flavours inspired by the Fire

The fire not only inspired our branding it also inspired our flavours. We wanted to take on a market saturated by synthetically flavoured and mass produced rum and for us this meant hand-crafting bold, authentic rum using only whole, natural spices and ingredients.

It's why our flagship rum, Burning Barn Smoked Rum, is smoked with apple wood. We harvest wood from apple trees in our orchard that are no longer fruiting. We fell, season and chip the wood ourselves to ensure we have the best possible ingredient to flavour our rum and we then use this wood to cold smoke the rum itself in a former apple juice tank with an oak lid. It's an incredibly unique process which gives our rum a fantastically smooth, smoky taste with a long finish.

To the Future

In the last year we’ve launched our Burning Barn Gift Box, which contains 1x5cl of each of our 3 delicious rums, attended fantastic events up and down the country – two of our highlights would have to be Barn on the Farm and Race the Tide - and been stocked by the likes of Harrods and Harvey Nichols, as well as getting Burning Barn on the back bar of some of our favourite pubs and restaurants. We’ve observed the renaissance of craft distilling, the revival of artisan operations and a renewed appetite for premium rums – which has been fantastic to be a part of. It’s been quite a journey so far and we can’t wait to see what’s next. Rum aficionado or still a rum skeptic, we're not fussy, join us on our craft rum journey by following us on our social media channels: @burningbarnrum #burningbarnrum.