Exclusive Interview with Mr. Trevor Bruns, founding member of Whistler African Style Rum

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Exclusive Interview with Mr. Trevor Bruns, Founding Member of Whistler African Style Rum

Q: What is your full name, title, company name and company location?

Hi Margaret! Thanks for this opportunity! My name is Trevor Bruns. I am a founding member of Whistler African Style rum and spend most of my time on the marketing side. I guess you could call me the marketing director. Uhm, oh yes, Whistler is located on a farm in the Free State province of South Africa.

Q: I understand your company consist of you and your two brothers. What inspired you all to build a rum distillery and why? What are each of your roles in the business?

We consider ourselves very different from most people. Rum is similar when compared to other spirits. If you think of whiskey, for instance, a picture of an old guy, sitting on a leather couch, smoking a cigar comes to mind. If you think of gin, thoughts of someone sitting on a porch, watching the sun set comes to mind. In both these cases, the world happens to that person.

Rum is different. Rum is all about adventure, fun, making friends and being colorful. Rum people, in other words, don’t sit and wait on the world like gin or whiskey people. Rum people happen to the world! Rum people whistle their own tune!

Well, back in 2015, my brother, brother-in-law and I were looking for opportunities that could save us from our ordinary jobs and preferably compliment who we are as people. Making rum is certainly not mundane and it really suits our personalities very well! By far the best decision the three of us have ever made.

Considering our individual backgrounds, our roles in the business certainly indicate how badly we wanted to change our career trajectories. My brother has a finance background and now runs our distillery. My brother-in-law and I both have engineering backgrounds and now prefer to work in sales and marketing. It’s interesting how things turn out once you whistle your own tune, instead of letting the world happen to you.

Q: Where did the inspiration come from for naming your products Whistler?

It stems from our own longing to whistle to our own tune. The three of us were all caught up in worlds that did not really align with our respective wants and needs. As I suggested previously, we wanted to work for ourselves in positions that aligned with who we are as individuals. 

Q: What have been some of the challenges you faced prior to opening up your distillery?

I guess there were three main difficulties. The first was securing funding for Whistler. The second was satisfying our objective of designing and building the entire facility in Africa. And the third was getting our families onboard for this venture.

South Africa is a little behind the times when it comes to small batch spirits. Gin has seen some success, but rum is very new to the SA market. A lot of people did not understand what we were thinking when we started constructing our distillery. This was certainly true when we were sourcing funding for Whistler. Thankfully, our investors could see how passionate we were about this project. Some detailed market analysis naturally also helped.

Most of the new distillers in SA source their equipment from China, Europe or USA. These distillers do not realize that there is significant distilling expertise in Africa, especially South Africa. We wanted to have the entire facility designed and built in Africa. After a surprisingly short search we found an engineer who had years of experience in designing distillation plants. Through this engineer it wasn’t difficult to find artisans capable of building the distillery. I’m sure the pictures will illustrate how amazing the workmanships was from these truly brilliant South African experts.

All three of us are very devoted to our families. Naturally it was very important for us to get them excited about Whistler. It helped that we were excited and constantly talking about rum. Over time our entire family were as excited about the project as we were. Now it is common to find one of the wives helping out at the taste room. It really just adds to all the fun we are having!

One funny story was how my mom came around to accepting that her two sons will become rum producers, instead of respected professionals. When we started the research into Whistler, she would often remark that she had difficulty accepting this. Her biggest concern being that she cannot, in good conscience, pray for the success of an alcohol business. One day, when we were about halfway through the construction of Whistler, she came to us with a big smile on her face. She said that she had finally figured out how to pray for us at her weekly bible study. She said that, instead of praying for a successful alcohol business, she would from then on pray that a lot of people drink a little bit of Whistler every now and again. Well, that is exactly what we are hoping for!

Q: What challenges are you currently facing and do you foresee ever overcoming them?

The main challenge is educating the local market. As I mentioned, rum is a relatively new product to the South African market. Very few people have had a chance to sample rum that were not mass made. This means that the general assumption in our market is that rum can only be consumed with a mixer. This isn’t true. A well-produced rum is as enjoyable neat or on the rocks as any other brown spirit. This is why our first marketing campaign is #ReThinkRum. We want our local consumers to reconsider their views on rum and how it can or should be consumed.

The same challenge is present in our regulatory environment. South African regulators have not had experience in defining rum properly. For example, spicing a rum isn’t allowed in South Africa. A spice rum has to be called an aperitif with the word “rum” completely removed from the bottle. We learnt this fact the hard way.

We’ve seen that we are already making inroads into these challenges. Our #ReThinkRum campaign combined with our taste room has certainly indicated that people are shifting their perspectives, slowly, but surely. Also, the regulators that we’ve had contact with suggested that the current law needs to change. This is a much slower process, but we are happy that the acknowledgement has at least been made.

Q: Can you share with us the state of the sugarcane industry in Africa and what that means to your operation now and in the years to come?

South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique have very healthy sugar cane industries. In South Africa alone, there are 24 000 sugar cane farms. It really isn’t difficult for us to find quality stock and we don’t foresee this changing in the foreseeable future.

Q: What rums are you currently producing?

We currently sell Whistler African Style Dark Rum and Whistler African Style Spiced Rum (We have to call it Spice Infused. See question 5) 

Q: African Style rum? Can you tell us a little bit more about this?

When we started this business, we attended a Rum University course in Louisville, KY. Our lecturer there, Luis Ayala, gave us an overview of the various rum styles around the world. It was clear to us from this lecture that the different rum styles around the world stem from the producer’s advantages and disadvantages in their respective geographic location. Producers that have access to raw sugarcane have different rums to those who don’t for example. Well, we decided that we could, by analyzing the South African landscape, define what an African Style rum should be. We have one disadvantage – it is difficult and expensive for us to source new American or French barrels. We have two advantages: one, we have access to both raw sugarcane and different types of molasses and two, we have access to barrels that were previously used in South Africa for wine, brandy or whiskey. With this in mind we defined African Style rum as having 5 main rules:

1. The rum must be produced in Africa

2. The rum must be produced in equipment designed and built in Africa

3. The rum must be produced by a born and bred African

4. Only locally sourced sugarcane or sugarcane byproducts can be used in the fermentation

5. The rum must be matured in barrels that previously held other African alcohol products. 

Q: Do you have plans to produce additional rums in the future?

Yes, we originally planned to launch with three products. Our Dark rum, Spiced rum and a silver rum. In the end we decided to delay the release of our silver rum. We also have plans for a coconut rum, a solera rum and\in the near future, rum with age statements.

Q: Where are your rums currently available for purchase?

We launched on 4 November 2017 so the roll out to the SA market is in its early stages. We are hoping that Whistler will be available throughout SA by the end of 2018. We already have a listing on TakeAlot.com, South Africa’s version of Amazon. And we are in discussions with multiple companies for export to the USA and Europe in the very near future.

Q: Do you offer tours of your distillery, as well as tastings?

Absolutely! Currently our taste room is open every last Friday and Saturday of the month or by appointment. The distillery is two and a half hours drive from Johannesburg for those of your readers who might be traveling to South Africa in the near future. 

Q: If people want to contact you, how may they reach you?

Anyone is welcome to contact us through our website www.whistler rum.co.za or our Facebook page www.facebook.com/whistlerrum.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

If your readers want to learn more about Whistler, please follow our Facebook page. We release regular videos of our brand, distillery and general activities, such as when Whistler will be available in the USA or Europe.

Cheers!

-Interview by Margaret Ayala- 

It is always great to find out that a new distillery has opened up, but even better when I learn that it is producing rum. Not only am I excited about this being a rum distillery in South Africa, but also because it is owned and operated by brothers (two brothers and a brother-in-law)! I wish them all the best and that they all have fun with this fantastic elixir of our beloved Sweet Grass!

Margaret Ayala, Publisher