Velier Foursquare Raconteur Rum is the eight release born from the partnership between Luca Gargano (Velier) and Richard Seale (Foursquare) that began in 2016.
For a total of 4800 bottles produced – 1440 of which for Italy – Raconteur is to date Foursquare’s longest-aged release made with Velier.
The name of the new release is a tribute to two great rum “raconteurs”: Luca himself and the late Stephen Remsberg, a great collector who passed away last December.
As is customary with Foursquare, this release is also a Single Blended Rum. It’s assembled from a blend of rum from copper double retort pot stills and traditional twin column coffey stills, then placed in barrels for ageing. The result is a blend of two single- and double-matured rums. The first was aged for 17 years in ex-bourbon barrels, while the second was initially aged for 5 years in ex-bourbon barrels, then aged for a further 12 years in an ex-Sherry Oloroso barrel.
Richard Seale explains how the success of this approach led him to continue investing in old stocks and quality barrels:
“Last year we added a new pot still and we recently completed construction of two new ageing warehouses. We plan to produce more pot still rum and age it for longer periods.”
Foursquare distillery, based on Barbados, is set on parish Saint Philip, a former sugarcane plantation that dates back to the 1720s. The distillery was established in 1920, closed in 1987 and was subsequently re-opened in 1995 (with rum production resuming in 1996) by the Seale family. Richard Seale is the 4th generation of the Seale family to be involved with the brand and is the current owner and master distiller. In keeping with the Barbados style, the rum released by Foursquare is a combination of column and pot distillation. The distillery has recently come into global acclaim; winning Rum Producer of the Year at IWSC repeatedly in recent years (16′, 18′, 19′, 21′).
