We've wanted to write this properly for a while. Here's the question we think matters: should something be called British rum if the base spirit was actually made somewhere else?
What's actually happening in the industry
More UK distilleries are fermenting and distilling rum from scratch rather than importing and bottling it, which mirrors what happened with gin a decade or so ago. That shift towards genuine, homegrown production is a good thing, and it's part of why we started Lazydog in the first place.
The problem
Some rum sold as British or English is imported in bulk and simply bottled here. That's legal, and some of those base spirits are genuinely excellent, made by skilled distillers on other continents. Our issue isn't with the spirit itself, it's with calling it British or English when the actual fermentation and distillation happened somewhere else entirely.
What we think British rum should mean
To us, it means the whole journey, from raw ingredient to bottle, happens here. Every one of our rums is fermented, distilled and matured in Leicestershire. Nothing arrives as finished spirit.
Why it matters
We'd rather the label meant something. If a brand only talks about blending or bottling rather than fermentation and distillation, that's usually the sign it isn't genuinely British in the way we mean it. Transparency should be the baseline, not something distilleries get praised for doing.
