Plantation XO 20th Anniversary Rum (700 ml)

When Alexandre Gabriel revived the 17th-century practice of shipping Caribbean rum to European cellars for a second maturation, the XO 20th Anniversary became the clearest expression of that thesis. Distilled at Stade's West Indies Rum Distillery (WIRD) in Blackrock, St. Michael — a coastal site on Barbados's Atlantic-facing shoreline, built on coral-limestone geology in 1893 — the molasses-based distillate spends 8 to 20 years in American white oak ex-bourbon barrels inside a seafront warehouse where the tropical angel's share runs 6–7% annually, concentrating the spirit at a rate more than double what France's cooler cellars would allow. The rum then travels to Château de Bonbonnet, Ars, Charentes, where it finishes in ex-Ferrand French oak Cognac casks — the same barrels that shaped Maison Ferrand's own eaux-de-vie — adding dried-fruit depth and baking-spice structure unavailable from American oak alone. A Cognac-style dosage is applied: toasted unrefined brown sugar blended with rum and aged one year in Ferrand Cognac barrels, functioning as a flavour-integrating syrup rather than a sweetener. No other major rum brand systematically applies this dual-climate, dual-oak model across a named-anniversary blend. Bottled at 40% ABV, the XO draws from barrels spanning a 12-year age range, giving the blender latitude to balance the maritime salinity of younger Barbados distillate against the oxidative depth of the oldest stocks.