The Permanent Mission in Switzerland Supports Bahamian Rum Businesses at WTO Public Forum 2024
Staff at the Permanent Mission in Switzerland including Ambassador HE Patricia Hermanns (far right) at the WTO Public Forum
25th September 2024, Geneva Switzerland.
The Permanent Mission of The Bahamas in Geneva, Switzerland was privileged to represent The Bahamas at the Joint Rum Initiative hosted at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Public Forum 2024. This presented a unique rum-tasting event featuring 55 rum brands from 16 countries around the world. This very important forum provided participants with a rare opportunity to obtain direct feedback on the perception of their rum compared to similar competing brands.
During the event, both John Watlings and Pindrop Rum, representing The Bahamas, participated in a rum blind tasting in several categories alongside some of the world’s oldest rum brands and achieved strong performance results.
In the white rum category, John Watling’s Pale rum achieved a ranking of #5 among its peers such as Botran (established in 1940), Barbancourt (established in 1842), and Ron Amuleto (created in the 18th century). In the category of rum aged up to 6 years, John Watling’s Amber rum and John Watling’s Paradise rum tied with a ranking of #3 in the category. The winning submissions in this grouping of El Dorado and English Harbour Rum have 300 years and 91 years of experience in rum making respectively. For rums aged 6 to 10 years, the Pindrop and John Watling’s Bullion submissions ranked #6 and #8 in this category. Finally, for the People’s Choice award, The Bahamas achieved a high ranking of #5 across all 55 rums submitted at the event.
The event results provide valuable and unique feedback for participating Bahamian rums as they seek to continue to grow their brands and participate more actively in global trade.
In addition to the participating brands of John Watlings and Pindrop Rums, the effort was supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Bahamas Trade Commission, represented by Chairman Philip Galanis who attended the event.
Each fall the WTO hosts a large public outreach forum entitled the WTO Public Forum, where more than four thousand persons from UN bodies, civil society, NGOs, academia, the private sector, and other organizations assemble in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss the latest trends and developments in trade. This year, one of the highlighted side events was a joint rum charity initiative hosted on the WTO premises on 13 September 2024. The primary focus of the event is to raise funds for UNICEF while also providing community engagement and a unique cultural opportunity for participants to display their various rum products/brands, a sector that contributes $730 billion to the global economy.