Feature: Matugga Rum

from Konect Bathgate April 2020

Charity: The Sunday Dinner Lady

The ingredients for making gold medal-winning rum

You might think it’s all in the molasses, carefully sourced, distilled and teased into life in their copper pot stills. But you’d be only partially correct.

The ingredients of the new and award-winning “Liv” brand of rum, which is distilled right here in Livingston by Matugga Distillers are: a rumdistilling Caribbean heritage, an East African connection with sugar, a passion for the land and what can be achieved when we work in harmony with it; and a large measure of serious scientific know-how.

It’s as much to do with these ingredients as the molasses, the handcrafted alembic stills, and interestingly, the foraged botanicals that are going into some of their creative new rums.

I visited husband and wife team Paul and Jacine at their distillery in Livingston to find out more - and of course to taste the rum.

Paul grew up in Uganda. He is a civil engineer by training and has long been a whisky connoisseur. Jacine grew up in London and is a corporate marketer. Back in Jamaica where her family hails from, rum is the national spirit. Long evenings with family and friends enjoying good food, craic and camaraderie as a bottle of the finest slowly disappears has always been part of Paul and Jacine’s social life.

The seeds of their rum journey were sown during family visits back to Uganda, where the sugar and molasses industry is massive. “We thought, why not take this molasses grown in our homeland and make rum from it?” Production of their first batch of Matugga Rum was outsourced to a distiller in England - they were living in Kingston upon Thames at the time and both working full time in their own careers. Matugga is the name of a town in Uganda just north of Kampala, where the family owns land. It’s an artisan range of speciality cask-aged golden and spiced rums, and was quickly

picked up by a French distributor. They found themselves thrown in at the deep end with exportation! When contract manufacturing quality concerns arose, they decided to take the plunge, leave their careers and go full time into distilling for themselves. Heriot-Watt University came up as offering world-class expertise in Brewing and Distilling.

So, with their two young daughters, they arrived in West Lothian in 2017 so that Paul could do the course and they could follow the dream.

It’s been a good move in every way. “I knew Paul would be a good distiller,” says Jacine. And it seems she’s not the only one! As I was there for this interview the news came in that their new Liv white rum brand has just won gold at The Rum and Cachaça Masters 2020 competition. White rum is taken straight from the still, unsweetened and unaged, showcasing the distiller’s pure copper-pot craft, and to win a gold medal is an extraordinary achievement. The latest gold medal follows several other prestigious awards for the new distiller, such as winning the Women’s Enterprise Scotland Startup of the Year 2019.

They have a cask-exchange arrangement with Whyte and Mackay, so they use oak casks that have been used once for Scotch whisky. There is much more to come from this collaboration, watch this space. Innovative cask-ageing is in the DNA of this distillery, as they demonstrated through the release of an acacia-cask special limited edition rum last year.

“Liv” in Nordic languages means “good living.” It expresses Jacine and Paul’s approach to life and references Livingston perfectly.

Visit the new Liv pop-up rum stand in the heart of the Livingston Designer Outlet from 10 th

April** (Friday to Sunday). The stand will be situated in the new atrium area - outside Hot Flame, in between the grand staircase.

**Pop-up rum stand launch is subject to potential covid-19 restrictions. Please follow up online (details below) to keep up to date.

“We’re loving it here in West Lothian,” enthuses Jacine. “Our girls are thriving and my mum has now moved up from London too to be with us. We also make regular trips to Uganda to keep up with Paul’s family.”

The next stage in fact relates to the family’s land in Matugga; they are planning to start a sugar cane plantation, so eventually the complete cane to cask process will be wholly owned by themselves. “There is a lot of unfairness in the sugarcane sector, and we want to better support the livelihoods of sugarcane growers in East Africa,” explains Jacine.

They forage for local ingredients across Scotland such as lavender and heather to infuse into their new spiced and flavoured Liv rums, an innovative approach normally more associated with gin. They insist that the botanicals added are real plants, not bottled flavours. I tasted their Liv raspberry and hibuscus rum liqueur and their honey and lavender version. Needless to say, my verdict concurs perfectly with the judges who have just given Liv a gold!

The strap line “African soul, crafted in Scotland” is true in every detail.

This article was written by Helen-Jane Shearer after visiting Matugga Distillery in Livingston, speaking with Paul and Jacine and tasting the rum! Helen-Jane is the editor of Konect magazines and lives in West Lothian with her family.

We have 2 bottles from the very first batch of Liv Rum to give away to Konect readers!

Simply answer the following question for your chance to win a bottle:

WHERE IS THE TOWN MATUGGA LOCATED?

Send your entry to win@konect.scot to arrive no later than 15 th

April 2020. Please include your full name and postcode. Winners will be drawn at random after the closing date and informed via the email address used to enter.

Liv Black Spiced Rum