Where Scotch leads, Angostura rum follows

Burn Stewart Distillers, which Angostura-owner CL Financial bought in 2002 for £49 million, is already a key player in Asia, with its Scottish Leader brand the top-selling blended Scotch in Taiwan. Now CL wants to use Burn Stewart’s success to help it grow sales of its rums.

Angostura, which is best known for its distinctive bitters that are used to flavour cocktails and foods, has distilled rum for 150 years.

The firm was owned by Bacardi until 1998, but CL began bottling its Angostura rums in 2008, having tested the water with the “super-premium” 1824 and 1919 editions.

CL shifted all of its eastern hemisphere rum bottling to East Kilbride-based Burn Stewart three years ago and, in 2010, appointed the firm as its distributor for Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Brian Woods, senior marketing manager at Angostura, said: “Russia has shown some impressive growth from a standing start two years ago and is now our number one international market for rum.

“We have been focusing on developing the brand in some emerging markets where Burn Stewart has a strong Scotch presence, such as the Baltics.

“We have hopes that Taiwan will give a longer-term opportunity for rum growth. The Taiwanese haven’t yet got an appetite for rum but we expect it to be just a matter of time before this changes.”

In the UK, Marks & Spencer has a deal to sell Angostura’s “reserva” and “five-year old” labels, while Oddbins and Waitrose sell the 1919 edition.

Angostura began buying shares in Burn Stewart in 1999, taking its stake to 29 per cent before launching a takeover and then de-listing the firm from London’s stock market.

Former Burn Stewart managing director Ian Bankier went on to work at CL World Brands and is now chairman of Celtic football club, while operations director Billy Walker bought the BenRiach and GlenDronach distilleries and a bottling plant at Newbridge from Chivas Brothers, part of French firm Pernod Ricard.