I think there were quite a lot of people cheering when Jamaica's Worthy Park Estate announced a new release with the magical name “Gunpowder Proof”. A Jamaican aged pot still rum at 54.5% should make the hearts of most rum enthusiast beat a little faster. It surely did in my case. It was about to roll out when WP received a letter from another company, objecting to them using the Gunpowder Proof name.
They have their own release with that exact same name and felt it should protect their product. Worthy Park didn’t find the name worthy of a lawsuit and has decided to change it to “Worthy Park 109”. When I told Zan Kong, export sales manager of WP, that it’s not as sexy as the previous name, he said:”nope, but the good thing about it is that we weren't banking the success of our product on the name”.
I also asked him what the thought process was of bringing this rum to market. He mentioned:”rounding out our portfolio offering, trying to capture back the demand for the old style, pot-still, "dark" Jamaican rum. Not necessarily to compete with Smith and Cross per say but to offer something that checks the boxes of the darker/aged/higher proof/pot still jamaican rum. We felt there was opportunity there”.
The rum is a blend of 3 year old WPL and unaged WPE marks. No additives apart from caramel colouring. Bottling will start in the next couple of weeks.
