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Ok, pardon me for not having taken the Cruzan Factory tour to possibly find this out (but that's a whole other story of visiting on D. Hamilton Jackson Day) but does anyone know why Cruzan ships the bottles to Florida to be bottled? All the Cruzan Rum I find here is bottled in Florida. I thought going to the islands I would be able to have a nice souvenir of a bottle of Cruzan that was actually bottled in St. Croix, but when I got there I noticed quite a few bottles still had the Florida bottling location on it, there was just a few small bottles, that said bottled in the USVI. Just curious.
Oh, did I miss anything exciting on the tour? is there anything else available only at the factory I missed out on someone would be willing to purchase and mail me for Christmas. hahaha...
This is my understanding of the bottling. The flavored rums are bottled in FL, because they're not aged, and the flavoring is added in FL. I think it's the 2-year that's bottled in St Croix, and it's aged in those oak barrels you so often see. Also, when I was on a Royal Caribbean cruise in Oct, the ship had a lot of Cruzan flavored rums in one of the gift shop windows, so it's probably easier for them to load it up in FL than in STX. Also, STX's distilling capacity is limited, because of some EPA restriction on their water treatment (or is it waste water treatment???) facility. They have to raise money (from VI govt of course) to build a larger facility if they want to increase production.
If you take the tour, you actually see them bottling the 2-year rum. I saw him repairing barrels. I saw the rum fermenting (as opposed to just looking at a huge vat). At most other distilleries in the States, you see most of the production via video, but not at Cruzan. They still do things the old fashioned way.:-)
