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Young drinkers turn to Puncheon
Darryl Heeralal dheeralal@trinidadexpress.com
Wednesday, August 6th 2008
You know the story? The one about the penny that ended up in the crown of the king next to the diamond? Well, that's puncheon rum.
The Forres Park brand, produced by Fernandes Distillers, rum drinker's choice for the best puncheon, has upped sales six and a half per cent, every year for the past three.
Enough puncheon rum has been sold in the period for you and all your drinking friends to swim in, over 100,000 thousand cases, puncheon to fill nearly three average-sized swimming pools.
That is over 900,000 litres or 237,754 gallons of the potent 75 per cent alcohol by volume rum.
Puncheon Rum is such a big seller now that the original 750 ml bottle is for beginners.
There is, now, the one litre bottles; we call it the family size or megaton. And you know the big 1.75 litres bottles sold in duty-free? Well, you can now get that size of puncheon in the grocery.
We sing about it, celebrate it in our music. How many soca or chutney compositions have paid homage to whisky or cognac? Well, there are many odes to good old 'fire water'.
Brand manager for the rum, Christopher Noel, says he is "very happy with the increase in sales so far."
Traditionally a drink for cane-cutters, farmers, labourers, hunters and fishermen, Forres Park Puncheon Rum is now the choice of young male and even some female drinkers.
No longer is it confined to the shelf above the deep freeze in Lall's corner rum shop down in Barrackpore or by the fishing depot watering hole in Carenage. You can have it in the Zen Nightclub, or at that upscale rumshop in MovieTowne, where it sits next to the bottle of Johnny Walker.
"Puncheon rum drinkers have a look. You know you could tell a man if he is a Heineken beer drinker or Carib? Well usually a barman like me, as soon as a man walk in, if is puncheon he want, they have a look," a rumshop owner in one of the more popular watering holes in Couva says.
"But these days I kinda losing meh touch. Is some young, young fellas drinking puncheon. Every time they come in for a drink I ask if they sure."
"Long time is when a drinker reach a level of experience with the bottle then he go call for a nip of puncheon. Now these days these young fellas starting off with the fire water. They say if you want real head then drink a real rum," another barman observes.
"A few years ago when a young fella come in a bar and ask for puncheon people use to turn around, well not now. They calling for puncheon like the calling for a round of beers."
At one of those upscale bars in the 'West' the reasoning is a bit different.
"I think it's just the kick of drinking puncheon, you know. The rum has a certain mystique, a certain unmistakeable reputation as being for the hardcore, so when you see these well dressed professionals come in and order puncheon, I think its an adventurous thing for them. A kind of bragging right that 'I drank puncheon'."
But the drink is the same whether you buy it by the old 'Chineeman' shop where you could get a bottle on one side and Crix on the next, drink it in an old time peanut butter glass in a rumshop where the urinal is outside, or sit on a teak bar stool and have the bartender slide it across on the spanking counter in a glass that only comes out at Christmas time.
Puncheon has always stayed true to its original character given it by hardcore drinkers.
Whether you're hitting the first shot five o'clock in the morning before the first cane cut or the seine pull, or you trying to impress your partners or that girl who end up in the lime by shotting it like Tequila, the effect is the same.
If you want some true puncheon rum stories ask Singh the old Caroni (1975) Limited watchman.
He get so drunk one night he went to the urinal and when he was done, propping himself on the wall, took out the torchlight from his back pocket, shake it, put it back and walked back into the bar, everything outside.
Or Bumper who stand-up under the street light shouting "allyuh open the door, ah come home, I know allyuh waking I see light on upstairs."
The stories, like the mystique of the puncheon itself, never fail to attract attention.
How about the journalist and his army friend who play fast one night and drink two bottles of puncheon, Supligen Seamoss and Mackeson mixed together and fall asleep under shop when they went to shelter the rain?
But the best is the UWI grad who went Zen, get so wasted that he sit down in the back seat of his car and start to cuss saying how they thief his steering wheel.
Say what you will about Forres Park Puncheon, its still remains the most versatile rum.
Like Crix, it good with anything, name your choice.
Puncheon and the original chaser, cold water. Puncheon is also good with Angostura LLB, Fruta fruit punch, Redbull, Supligen, coffee, coconut water, club soda, Seven-Up, Sprite, Solo Bentley, orange juice, peardrax, ginger ale, Shandy sorrel, Greensands, whatever your taste.
And then there are chasers that only "real men drink with"; Guinness, they call that drink donkey injection; with beer, steel and brass; and with cola-tonic a Laurel so smooth is the ride down your throat.
And as Rattie would say, for the real kick, some good mother in law in the glass.
Have it how you want the outcome is "head like bodi and tight like a small shoes" as they say.
But the best effect of puncheon rum is that super-human belief you get of yourself after having a few and hopefully to remain sober enough to tell the story.
[/quote]larafan wrote:But the best is the UWI grad who went Zen, get so wasted that he sit down in the back seat of his car and start to cuss saying how they thief his steering wheel.
joker wrote:real men drink with"; Guinness,
the potent 75 per cent alcohol by volume rum.
