Neither Cristina nor I are big drinkers but that didn’t stop us from touring the Old New Orleans Distillery. Located on Frenchman St. between the I-10 split, the distillery can be a little hard to find. In fact, if it wasn’t for the decorated door, we would have wondered if we were in the right place. That and a pretty decent crowd for an October afternoon tour.
After we checked in with the desk, everyone is offered a cup of mango tea spiked with their Crystal brand. Their Crystal brand is un-aged rum just like Barcardi Silver. It was a nice refreshing way of being welcomed to the distillery. We then entered the main part of the distillery where I tour guide explained to us the distilling process. The distillery is owned by James Michalopoulos who may or may not have distilled his own rum before getting his operating license and opening up the distillery (remember bootlegging is still kind of outside of the law). He explained that they buy their barrels from Kentucky whisky distillers and then use the barrels only twice due to actually laws governing barrel usage. We also found out that they get their sugar cane molasses from Gramercy where the farmer processes the sugar cane into molasses.
The best part of the tour came at the end when we got to sample the four brands that Old New Orleans Rum makes: Crystal, 3 year, 10 year, and Cajun Spice. Of course, the aged rums were stronger than the Crystal but the Cajun Spice one was my favorite out of the set. In fact, might make a nice Christmas present for someone.
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