Richland Rum

The primary location for Richland Rum is in Richland a small town in Georgia. They do have a secondary location in Brunswick on the Georgia Coast. Both locations produce their rum and sell it on-site. The location in Richland takes up almost a whole block of the downtown area. The building offers historic scenery. When we stepped into this location we were greeted by Buddy who was fairly new to Richland Rum at the time. We asked if we could tour the location and they more than accommodated us. They explained that they grew all their own sugar cane and that the rum at Richland was produced solely with the juice from the sugar cane. Unlike most other rum distilleries they do not turn their sugar cane juices into molasses before creating their rums. We even got to meet Richland's head distiller TJ who explained the whole process to us. Richland uses copper stills over an open flame and bottles all their product by hand with a small bottling system. There is nothing automated at Richland and you can tell they take their craft seriously. Once we were done with the tour we went back into the store/tasting room area where we sampled some of the rums. We walked out with a bottle for us and two bottles for gifts.

Richlands location in Brunswick sits in the historic square where they have two stills working and several barrels aging. It had been a year since we toured the original location and to our surprise, there was a smiling Buddy standing behind the counter. He let us tour that location and answered more of our questions because now we are a bit more seasoned as distillers and were looking for pointers anywhere we could get them. Buddy was more than happy to share some of his knowledge and we told him stories of some of the off-the-wall experiments we have tried with making liquor.

If you like whiskey but prefer a good rum, Richland may be just the rum brand for you. Most of the rums are aged in oak barrels to give them that complexity you notice in whiskey or brandy. If you get a chance to visit the Georgia coast make sure you visit Brunswick for more of a small town coast feel and check out Richland Rum. If you run into Buddy I promise you will have a good conversation while being able to sample some good Georgia rum.