Elizabeth Yard

The Royal Elizabeth Yard in Kirkliston, near Edinburgh, was a British Navy Food Depot: here, among other foodstuffs, the Navy's Rum stocks were stored until a few decades ago. The so-called 'Rum Ration', i.e. the Rum quota to which British Navy soldiers were entitled, was only abolished on 31 July 1970, and the Elizabeth Yard warehouse had to accommodate a sufficient stock to supply Royal Navy ships in case of emergency

All of Elizabeth Yard's selections, in fact, are inspired by the utmost transparency; the labels report every possible detail, so as to satisfy the curiosity of the most ardent rum geeks: exact age, type of still and barrel, tropical and continental maturation period, even the type of maturation warehouses, with humidity and average temperature. But don't think of it as an exhibition of information for its own sake: one of Elizabeth Yard's most fascinating projects, in fact, is in splitting a few barrels and transferring their contents to different woods to experiment with the impact of these on the same distillate.