Genial Paul, who owns and runs St Helena’s own distillery, will give you a great, informative tour if you book it with the helpful tourist office in Jamestown. He has run it in his garage below his house (signposted off the road outside in Alarm Forest) since the early 2000s. He distills the island’s gin, as well as making brandy and mountain mist, a coffee liqueur. He’ll let you sample all three (they’re all excellent) and if you’re lucky, Tungi, which he used to make from the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. It was a great, convivial way to spend an hour while I was on St Helena. Thoroughly recommended!!!!
This is a distillery that makes a range of spirits and some interesting liqueurs. Delightful to see someone who knows and loves the island and has set out to create something new. Our host knew his stuff and was most interesting to listen to. If you have an interest in alcohol and the island economy, go there.
St Helena White Lion Rum commemorates the island’s celebrated ‘sunken treasure’ shipwreck, when the Dutch vessel ‘Witte Leeuw’, (White Lion) sunk in James Bay in 1613 after a brief but spectacular naval action with the Portuguese. Returning from Java, she was carrying peppercorns, nutmeg, cloves, diamonds, and precious Chinese Ming porcelain and was armed with 30 bronze cannons, one of which is in the Museum by the famous Jacob‘s Ladder cliff staircase.
White Lion Spiced Rum is an authentic homage to the favored liquor of the Seventeenth Century sailors who first combined pure white rum and the exotic spices of the Orient with which they had become uniquely familiar. Today it is produced in exclusive quantities and blended at the world’s most isolated working distillery situated in Alarm Forest, not very far from Napoleon‘s Tomb.
