Steffen Mayer's Caroni I & II is the definitive encyclopedic work on the legendary Trinidad distillery, closed in 2002 and now central to the collector market. Two volumes, 1,136 pages, hardcover slipcase, individually numbered in a limited edition of 2,072 copies. THE RESEARCH: five years of fieldwork. Over 100 interviews with former managers, the distillation supervisor, and key personnel of the closed plant. Archival photography, technical schematics of the still-house, fermentation records, marque definitions, vintage-by-vintage bottling histories from the great independent houses — Velier first among them. The result is the resource: there is no second-place reference for serious collectors and rum scholars. WHO IS THIS FOR: the serious rum collector, the bar professional building a Caribbean programme, the auction-house specialist authenticating provenance, the rum-bar owner curating a Caroni vertical. Pairs naturally with the bottles themselves — a long evening with the encyclopedia open and a glass of vintage Caroni at hand is the intended ritual.
A German rum specialist, distillery historian and one of the foremost researchers documenting Caribbean rum's vanished distilleries. Mayer has spent two decades cataloguing the craft and the casks of the great closed and operating houses — Caroni, Long Pond, Hampden, Worthy Park — through hundreds of interviews with master distillers, blenders and warehouse workers. His 2022 Caroni encyclopedia is the most ambitious of his projects: a definitive work undertaken with the cooperation of the distillery's surviving custodians.
