Copalli

The Free Bacchus Story

The distillery sits at the edge of a private rainforest reserve in southern Belize, and the three things that go into the rum are cane grown on site, canopy water, and yeast. That's the whole list.

Copalli holds Ecocert organic certification and was the first certified organic farm and distillery in the country. The cane is cut and pressed on the property rather than bought in, which is what makes the certification mean something at the level of the liquid instead of just the paperwork.

The commercial logic runs backwards from the usual. Copal Tree was built to give the community around Punta Gorda a lasting economic reason not to clear rainforest for cultivation.

The Barrel Rested expression took Double Gold at the New York International Spirits Competition. At around forty dollars it is one of the more accessible certified organic spirits we list, which matters more than it might seem — most of the certified rum world sits well above that.

Cane farming has a difficult environmental record in the tropics, particularly around burning and runoff. An estate distillery working certified organic inside a forest reserve is a different proposition, and a checkable one.