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Swede nabs world’s dearest rum ‘for Obama’

A Swedish luxury hotelier has bought a 180,000-kronor ($28,350) bottle of rum but says he won't open it until his manor house in central Sweden welcomes a true VIP, such as US President Barack Obama.

Published: 18 February 2013 10:53 CET

Swede nabs world's dearest rum 'for Obama'

Georg Möller owns a stake in Dömle herrgård, a manor house converted into a hotel in rural Värmland County in central Sweden.

He told the regional Nya Wermlands Tidning (NWT) newspaper that it only took five minutes of deliberation at a wine and spirits auction at the weekend for him to part with more than $28,000 for the limited edition bottle of rum.

It was developed by master distillers on Trinidad to celebrate the Caribbean island’s 50 years of independence.

Only 20 bottles were produced, with Möller got his hands on the only one available on the Swedish market.

Möller told NWT he may invite master distiller John Georges at Angostura distillers of Trinidad & Tobago to come to Sweden and hold a guest lecture about the unique rum, believed to be the world’s most expensive.

The Legacy bottle of rum, meanwhile, will get a specially designed cabinet at the Swedish manor house where it will be displayed rather than tasted – at least for the foreseeable future.

“If ever something really, really really unique happens, like Obama visiting us, then we’ll take a sip,” Möller told NWT.

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Spain has second highest rate of daily alcohol drinkers in EU

Photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP

Thirteen percent of people in Spain drink alcohol every day, a similar rate to Italy, where 12 percent enjoy a tipple on a daily basis, and only behind Portugal, where 20 percent of people have an alcoholic drink seven days a week.

That puts Spaniards above the EU average of 8.4 percent daily drinkers, data published by Eurostat in July 2021 reveals.

This consistent alcoholic intake among Spaniards is far higher than in countries such as Sweden (1.8 percent daily drinkers), Poland (1.6 percent), Norway (1.4 percent), Estonia (1.3 percent) and Latvia (1.2 percent).

However, the survey that looked at the frequency of alcohol consumption in people aged 15 and over shows that weekly and monthly drinking habits among Spaniards are more in line with European averages.

A total of 22.9 percent of respondents from Spain said they drunk booze on a weekly basis, 18.3 percent every month, 12.5 percent less than once a month, and 33 percent haven’t had a drink ever or in the last year.

Furthermore, another part of the study which looked at heavy episodic drinking found that Spaniards are the third least likely to get blind drunk, after Cypriots and Italians.

The Europeans who ingested more than 60 grammes of pure ethanol on a single occasion at least once a month in 2019 were Danes (37.8 percent), Romanians (35 percent), Luxembourgers (34.3 percent) and Germans (30.4 percent).

The UK did not form part of the study but Ireland is included.

Overall, Eurostat’s findings reflect how the Spanish habit of enjoying a glass of wine with a meal or a small beer (caña) outdoors with friends continues to be common daily practice, even though 13 percent does not make it prevalent.

Spaniards’ tendency to drink in moderation also continues to prevail, even though a 2016 study by Danish pharmaceuticals company Lundbeck found that one in six people in the country still drinks too much.

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