The Worthy Park distillery is the oldest distillery in Jamaica. It covers more than 3,500 hectares and has its own sugar mill and precious sugar cane fields. With its ancestral know-how combined with modern equipment, it produces rums with complex aromatic profiles instantly recognisable.
The Worthy Park estate sprawls over 8,600 acres in Saint Catherine Parish, a Jamaican county nestled in the heart of the Lluidas Valley. It is home to the distillery, of course, as well as the sugar factory and the oh-so-important sugarcane fields. It was given to British Lieutenant Emeritus Francis Price in recognition of his assistance in conquering Jamaica. Only two families owned the property prior to its acquisition by the Clarke family in 1918. Today, third- and fourth-generation members of the Clarke family run the distillery, keeping the legacy alive. Sugarcane farming began in 1720 and has never stopped. The oldest historic records found on the estate show that the first batch of rum was produced in 1741. No other Jamaican distillery operating today was in business at that time. The production came to a sudden stop in 1960, when an agreement was signed with the Spirits Pool Association of Jamaica because of massive over-production on the island.
The Worthy Park sugar factory has been running since 1720 and has continued to improve each year. The estate even has its own packaging line to package the refined sugar for sale. There is no waste: the bagasse is used as fuel to generate electricity on the estate and the molasses is delivered straight to the distillery through a radiofrequency-controlled pipeline that is over 1.5 miles long.
