In this interview, James McPherson, founder of JimmyRum, talks about the birth of his distillery on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne. Born of a change of career direction and a growing passion for rum, JimmyRum has been exploring a diversity of styles for several years now, with a strong artisanal approach and a clear desire to promote Australian rum well beyond its borders.
What is the history of the distillery?
JimmyRum has been a lovely new distillery for just over 10 years since the original thought bubble was created, 8 years since the company was founded, 6.5 years since the first distillation, and 5.5 years since it opened. The company was founded by myself, James McPherson, the Chief Ideas Man. A guy who loved his beer and then loved to move on to rum.
Ten years ago, Australia didn’t have much of a rum or craft spirits culture, only mass-produced and local products. I was lucky though, as my career for 20 years was as an engineer in commercial shipping, which took me all over the world, to many bars and probably too many rums!
In 2015 the company I worked for lost their only contract and everyone was made redundant, after fending off repeated questions of ‘what are you going to do after this is over’ for a few months I started making a joke to get them off my back… ‘I’m going to go make rum’. I’ll go and make some rum‘… This usually resulted in a lot of hilarity and comments like ’Don’t do it, you’ll drink all the profits!”.
While it was a funny joke at first, thoughts of a craft rum distillery started to grow in my head, until about 2am one morning in a small outback town called Karratha (imagine the filming location of the movie ‘Red Dog’ if you know it) and I was enjoying a craft beer after a very long day at work.
“Hmmm, why can I be in the middle of nowhere drinking a craft beer, but I can’t find a small, craft spirit or even a craft rum in any of Australia’s major capital cities? Maybe there’s something to it!?” The seed has been sown.
Job done, redundancy arrived, 70+ distilleries visited in 3 months for a worldwide search and it was time to do it. The business plan was drawn up, the brand was built and the location was found. Let the games begin! In this case, on the Mornington Peninsula, 1 hour south-east of Melbourne, less than 5 km from the beach.
What types of rum do you produce?
All… Well, we’ve started making most styles. We created JimmyRum not only to show the quality of the rums, but also to show its diversity. We currently have molasses-based rums, but soon we’ll also be doing cane juice-based products.
‘Silver/Navy’ is our light to medium unaged profile
‘Dirty white & Dirty Rum’ is a pure Jamaican style dunder still
‘Oaked’ is our American style, using new small format oak casks
“RumRum” and ‘RumRum Cask Strength’ are our most aged products. Currently 5 years old and winner of the World Rum Awards – Best Hybrid Still Rum in 2023… We’ll see how it goes in 2025!
What’s new for us are RumRum’s cask expressions – imperial stout, peated whisky, Madeira, oloroso and banana brandy finishes are all things we’re playing with.
Finally our cinnamon based “Spiced” to the Mornington Peninsula inspired “Pinot”, we have a good range of influenced rums.
What is the production process?
We currently produce 100% molasses rum, sourcing molasses from a 100% Australian sugar refinery in northern New South Wales (about 1700 km north of JimmyRum). Fermentation takes an average of 5-6 days at a controlled temperature of 18-19°C.
Our “Dirty” products use a 1/3 dunder back set in the fermentation, a special yeast and pot/thumper distillation only (3 x striping and 1 x spirit run).
We use an Italian ‘Barison Industries’ hybrid still called Matilda. A distillation sequence lasts an average of 8 to 11 hours and the rum comes out at around 92% (depending on the product).
The unaged products are reduced to their ABV bottle slowly over a month – we don’t want to shock the product. They are then left to rest in stainless steel vats for a further 2 months to relax: Silver (40%)/Navy (57.8%). Our Oak reference is between 42% and 48%. This is our Silver, cut to 62.5%, then casked in a JimmyRum virgin American oak cask (we reuse the casks 4-5 times) with a capacity of 60-120 litres.
To produce RumRum we reduce to 62.5% and put it into 200-litre Ex-Bourbon American oak casks filled to 85% of their capacity. The current RumRum is our 1st batch, 5 years old.
The brut de fût version is available. The current batch is 65.9%. With the exception of some flavoured/infused products, JimmyRum does not have a sugar dosage of a pure spirit, we also adhere to the ‘Honest Rum’ policy of declaring everything in the bottle on the label.
What are your main markets?
At the moment, Australia… But we’re now in the process of boosting exports, this month (March) we’re in Europe to find a distributor and take part in ProWein Düsseldorf under the ‘Global Victoria’ banner with 8 other Victorian craft distillers.
Next month, it’s South East Asia, with a focus on Singapore at FHA Asia. With the exception of the occasional independent bottling of Beenleigh rum, there is very very little Australian rum in Europe and this is something we want to change as soon as possible.
Currently, and still planning to be, a premium rum brand, we have a capacity of ~200k bottles a year, with the installation of a continuous still in the next 2 years, we plan to lift that significantly.