Sarasota, Florida

Siesta Key Rum is Florida's first craft rum distillery and is located a few miles west of it's namesake beach in Sarasota, FL.  It is a small, family-owned business where they use a hands-on distillation process to make small batches of various types of rum including Silver, Gold, Spiced, and the popular Toasted Coconut.  They also have very limited releases of the Distiller's Reserve and Beer Barrel Finish rums which are available only at the distillery.

We visited the distillery for a tour and rum tasting in July 2016.  The distillery consists of one large room where the entire distillation process is conducted - from fermenting the 100% Florida sugar cane molasses to aging the rum in various types of barrels - and a small bottling and labeling room where the final product is produced.  Troy Roberts, the master distiller, founder, and CEO greeted us and began the tour, then turned it over to Kevin Kawa, the production distiller. The final (and in our case also the first) stop on the tour is the tasting room, where you can sample all of the different rums they make and purchase collectibles like t-shirts, hats, and Tervis® tumblers.  We highly recommend the rum cakes - both the Toasted Coconut and Spiced Rum with pecans were delicious! 

The rums are made with natural ingredients, such as real coconut that they toast in an oven and genuine spices which are infused into the rum.  There are no artificial flavors and the rum is sweetened with honey rather than added sugars.  For their aged rums, they use the solera method where rums of various ages are blended together to achieve a unique flavor for each batch.  It is difficult to choose a favorite amongst these delicious rums, but we narrowed it down to the Spiced and Toasted Coconut rums.  The Spiced rum has tasting notes of predominately cinnamon along with nutmeg and a hint of clove, and the finish is reminiscent of a cinnamon bun.  The Toasted Coconut flavored rum is sweet and smooth, with an authentic toasted coconut flavor similar to a cake or pie topping.  At the time of our visit, the Toasted Coconut rum was available in a limited edition "Sea Life" series where a portion of the proceeds benefit the nearby Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium.