Nearly eight years ago, Jordan Morris, now 32, and his friend Turner Wathen, 35, began planning a business to bring the best, purest rums they could find to the U.S. “We’re looking for rums that are unadulterated,” Wathen says. “No sugar, no caramels. We like the purity of rum.” They identified a 12-year-old rum from Trinidad that they loved, bought some, and had it shipped to a warehouse in Louisville where—due to a mistake—it got mixed with whiskey. Their pure, unadulterated rum had been adulterated, and Wathen and Morris would have to figure out what to do about it.
The mix is mostly rum, says Morris; less than a quarter of it is whiskey. When they got the call telling them about the mistake, he says, they first told the warehouse to pay back whoever owned the whiskey that had been mixed with their rum. “Then we had to look at this spirit to see, is it godawful?” According to Wathen, “it was just enough rye to make a spicier finish to a sweeter rum, so you get a variety of flavors going from sweet to spicy. That’s where we lucked out.” Both Morris and Wathen liked the spirit a lot, as it turned out. But they didn’t trust themselves to be impartial, so they asked other people in the spirits industry in Louisville for their opinions—which also turned out to be favorable.
Part of the goal of Rolling Fork Spirits is to help whiskey drinkers appreciate rum. “We source unique rums from across the Caribbean and do interesting finishes to help match what consumers look for in bourbon and Scotch whiskey,” Wathen says. Both he and Morris believe that what whiskey drinkers want is quality, and there’s plenty of quality rum out there. “It’s crazy to me that you can walk into a liquor store and there’s Appleton Estate 21-year rum sitting on the shelf,” Morris says. “They make fantastic rum, and no one wants it. Whereas people will line up the day before for a 12-year bourbon.”
