Brooklyn Rum Fest 2022

I missed the New York Rum Fest & Congress which was held on June 18th of this year. It’s the biggest rum festival in the city. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me) it was held on the same day as the Decanter Wine Encounter which was too good of a tasting to miss.

So, I was happy to see that the Brooklyn Rum Festival would be held on August 13th. The event was held at the Brooklyn Monarch, an event space in the outer reaches of Bushwick at 23 Meadow Street.

The great thing about rum is the shear diversity of the styles available. There are white rums, dark rums, flavored rums and rums of various ages. While the industry is concentrated in the Caribbean, rum is made throughout the world, and they were represented here as well.

Every producer poured several versions of their rums and even the mass producers such as Bacardi poured some limited production aged rums.

The event space is a huge warehouse with an outdoor area in the back which had a DJ spinning tunes. There was definitely a “Caribbean” vibe to the event which had about half the number of producers present than in the New York Rum Fest, but there were till more than enough rums to sample that afternoon.

Some of the rums I sample, every producer poured several different.

Dos Maderas	Rhum Barbancourt
Bacardi	Trans Continental Rum Line
Plantation Rum	Rhum J.M.
Mount Gay	Rhum Clement
Chairman’s Reserve	Ten To One
Dan Q	Pasetto 8
Equino	Copalli

Raw Wine Festival New York 2022

The Raw Wine Festival is an international Natural Wine fair that stops in London, Berlin, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal and New York City. It’s all about low intervention organic, biodynamic, natural wines, “the most important event for artisanal and natural wines in the international wine calendar”.

The Spring edition was held in New York City on March 27-28 at an event space at 99 Scott Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

These wines are still a niche market, but the market has grown tremendously the past decade. I attended on the first day on Sunday and the event space packed with trade and consumers ready and eager to try the wines. All of the major wine producing countries and several of the smaller ones were represented this afternoon with all styles of wine poured including still, sparkling, pet-nats and orange wines.

Many of the wine makers themselves were on hand to discuss their wines and not surprisingly were a colorful cast of characters.

These wines have come a long way in the past few years with the “funk” factor toned down.

Bushwick Street Art

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During the lockdown their aren’t many opportunities to attend wine/cocktail tastings as those type of social events have been shut down.

In the morning I like to start the day with a walk for some air and sunshine, and during those walks I bring my camera along. One of those walks was in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Bushwick is a neighborhood in northeast Brooklyn bordering Queens. It’s very industrial neighborhood that at one time had multiple breweries,

After a period of decline the neighborhood came back as artists took advantage of the unused commercial spaces and set up shop. Local artists began leaving their make on the buildings and now the grafiti (street art) can be viewed in this open air museum.