Rivers rum

Old school

This water wheel is not located in Asheville. We're headed down south again – to a rum distillery – for today's post. So put on your Speedos and your drinking hats, here we go!

As soon as we arrived, I fell in love with the River Antoine Rum Distillery. The little outside plaza feels almost European, with a two-story brick house covered in flowers thrown in for good measure.

Located on the northeast coast of Grenada, the distillery pumps out some serious rum. Like, seriously. There are two flavors: 69 percent and 75 percent.

The good folks at Rivers make the 69 percent for people who want to bring some rum home with them. It seems you can light the 75 percent on fire, so it's not allowed on airplanes.

"Rivers" as it's known locally, hasn't changed its process since 1785, when the waterwheel was built. The wheel turns a thing, which turns another thing that turns yet another thing, ultimately crushing sugar cane, the main ingredient for the rum. As far as I could tell, it's all about water and then things turning.

Rivers uses the sugar cane husks as fuel for the fire, so nothing is wasted. Except for the people drinking the rum.

Here we see how the water wheel makes the little thing turn the big thing, which crushes the sugar cane. Rivers crushes the sugar cane twice, to make it magically delicious. ...Which it kind of isn't.

Let's just say you either love it or you don't.

They leave the sweet juice to ferment for a while in large tanks and then something happens with a giant fire that's always cooking. At this point in the tour, I had become focused on the main goal of the trip: Tasting Rivers rum. So I wasn't really listening that much anymore.

Unfortunately, I tasted the 75 percent first, so I couldn't taste the 69 percent. Holy rum! My mouth and chest were burning for the entire 20-minute drive home.

As usual, Barb and I fell in love with the place. We bought three bottles of the 69 percent rum. Our plan was to drink one and then bring the other two home. One for us and one for my parents, who were lovely enough to be staying at our house and taking care of our unlicensed petting zoo while we were drinking rum.

Apparently, we had a good time drinking the first bottle of Rivers, though Barb could smell when I opened it in another room. So we decided we were not bringing any home. We gave one bottle to our newest friends Chris and Jim. What happened to the third bottle is any one's guess.

Sometimes, you have no idea. That's Rivers, baby. It's rumtacular.