Portsmouth Distillery named finalists in prestigious Great British Food Awards for popular rums

The business got through to the latter stages of the competition after entering four popular rums.

Results for the best alcoholic spirits will be announced on October 28.

Vincent Noyce, 54, operations director, told The News: ‘Our biggest worry is where to put the sticker if we do win, we’ve already won three awards and there’s no room for another sticker on the bottles!

‘If we do win, we’re going to celebrate. Tell everyone. And hopefully sell more products as a result.’

Mr Noyce said the rums they entered are Unaged White, 1812 three years old, Forum Botanical Garden and Cinnabar.

Portsmouth Distillery opened in 2018 and features a wide range of other award winning gins and rums.

The Grade II* listed building was originally part of Fort Cumberland, constructed in 1747.

It originally consisted of a guardhouse, barracks and a gunpowder storeroom.

The building became a distillery 275 years later.

Dich Oatley, 48, from Hayling Island, is the sales director and has been in the wine and spirits industry for years.

‘It all started when Giles [Collighan, 54, Portsmouth] and I wanted to get Caribbean rums in the UK.

‘I’d made a subscription site called the Rum Club, offering specialist rums that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

‘Giles and I often talked about making our own rums, and my 2017 redundancy presented the ideal opportunity.’

Their rums are made with dehydrated sugarcane juice from Costa Rica, which is boiled to make a syrup. This produces an unaged white rum.

All four of their rums are in the finals.

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When asked what their company had that his competitors didn’t, Mr Noyce smiled and said: ‘me.’

Mr Oatley outlined how the competition would work.

He said: ‘It’s a two-stage blind tasting process. And I wanted to enter these particular awards because the judges are experts in the field.

‘And if you want to see all this first-hand, come and see us! We have comedy nights, music and tours. We’re a local business that supports local businesses, the same way people support us.

‘And as our namesake suggests, we’re all about Portsmouth.’