A local man has launched premium spirits brand, House of Rum, after spending the last three decades immersed in Caribbean culture.
David Howarth’s time spent travelling and working around the Caribbean has been used to hone a collection of unique, limited-edition rums inspired by the regional blends found across the islands.
David says he first fell in love with the region when he was just 22 years old, when a trip to Antigua prompted him to change his career and move across the world.
The Manchester-born businessman was ‘forever moved’ by his first island experience, which he spent ‘enjoying a rum punch, listening to steel drums being played to the backdrop of Shirley Heights’.
House of Rum’s range of unique, limited-edition rums. Credit: Supplied
He’s spent the last three decades soaking up the islands’ culture and discovering the differences in rum blends, which are influenced by the land surrounding each distillery – whether that’s the shores of Jamaica or the coastal hillsides of Barbados.
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House of Rum was created to ‘celebrate these undiscovered, rare regional intricacies, provide a platform for them, through the creation of sought after, specially selected aged and blended rums’.
All of the rums in the collection are small-batch releases, with the Diablo series presented in luxurious Wibalin Buckram Black window boxes.
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House of Rum’s Spiced Millionaire cocktail. Credit: Supplied
Using some of the oldest distilleries in the Caribbean, the range includes the award-winning Diablo Aged White Rum (filtered through charcoal, with notes of liquorice, peppermint and banana) at £69 per 70cl bottle.
House of Rum also boasts the Diablo Spiced Rum (with flavours of golden syrup, ginger, cloves and nutmeg) and the Diablo Aged Rum (featuring notes of red fruits and a touch of burnt sugar).
Its most premium product is its XO Reserve Single Cask, an incredibly rare rum matured for 11 years before being shipped to the UK.
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It’s distilled from molasses in a continuous column and there are only 140 bottles in existence, priced at £750 per bottle.
Hemmingway Daiquiri
Black Cherry Cobbler
House of Rum cocktails – recipes below. Credit: Supplied
The XO Reserve, which won a Silver Award at the Rum and Cachaca Masters 2022 and the IWSC 2022, is served in a bottle embellished with a die-cast metal badge, and sold alongside two House of Rum and Cumbria Crystal hand-blown tumblers.
House of Rum has created some delicious cocktail recipes to complement its unique premium rum range.
There’s the Hemingway Daiquiri (40ml Diablo Aged White Rum, 15ml Maraschino liqueur, 25ml grapefruit juice, 15ml lime juice, shaken and double-strained into a coupe glass with a grapefruit twist) and the Black Cherry Cobbler (35ml Diablo Aged Rum, 20ml Amontillado Sherry, 20ml Black cherry syrup, 20ml lemon juice, served in a wine goblet with a lime wedge and cherry).
Spiced rum fans will also love the Spiced Millionaire, which sees 40ml Diablo Spiced Rum, 15ml Cointreau, 2.5ml Absinthe, 10ml pomegranate syrup and 20ml lime juice served in a rocks glass with lemon zest and a cherry.
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You can find out more and browse the House of Rum collection at www.house-of-rum.com.
Featured image: Supplied
Food & Drink
Manchester’s Cat Café is set to reopen four years after its closure
Danny Jones
Feline fans, rejoice, because Cat Café Manchester looks like it is reopening more than four whole years after its unfortunate closure.
The city centre’s much-loved cat café – the only one of its kind in Greater Manchester and among just a small handful in the North West – closed back in 2021 following unavoidable economic struggles brought about by the pandemic
Despite being hugely popular before having to shut its doors, the business was unable to reach an agreement with their landlord at the time and the owners were left with no other choice than to close permanently – or so we thought…
Seemingly back from the dead and published their first post since 11 January 2021, the official Instagram page shared just one line along with a picture of their soon-to-be new premises.
Briefly teasing fans ahead of an official announcement, the post reads: “Manchester we’ve missed you! There’s only one thing this place needs…”
The shot taken across the road from Manchester’s historic Barton Arcade shows the large shopfront unit on the main Deansgate strip where the original Classic Football Shirts store used to be.
As you can see, although the vintage footy kit reseller’s brand and decals still remain plastered on the windows, the two-storey location has been vacant since October 2023 when CFS moved their flagship Manchester branch to Dale Street in the Northern Quarter.
We’ve personally been wondering what might take the old venue’s place for a while now, with the rest of the Grade II-listed Victorian shopping arcade populated by food and drink spaces, a barbershop and fashion retailers like The R Store, but after all this time the last thing we expect was the Cat Café.
This will no doubt come as wonderful news to the countless fans who were gutted to see it disappear just a few short years ago.
At the time, a fundraiser was set up in an attempt to rescue it and the pet-forward coffee shop format also paved the way for similar ventures like this one over Salford.
Although we’re still yet to hear any more details regarding a possible reopening date, we can safely assume their four-year hiatus will be coming to an end sometime in 2025.
When they were still up and running, the café had 10 resident cats at their original site on the edge of NQ, now home to one of two Gooeys in Manchester.
It is worth noting that there were some concerns raised around hygiene and animal welfare, though we’re sure steps have been taken to address these issues in the interim.
The Didsbury Dozen loses one of its best as The Dockyard confirms closure
Danny Jones
The Didsbury Dozen has lost one of its strongest stops as the much-loved Dockyard sadly closed for good this past weekend.
A favourite among those taking on the popular Greater Manchester pub crawl and a busy bar in its own right along the main Didsbury Village strip, The Dockyard has been a staple of South Manchester boozing for some time.
However, it’s time as part of the Dozen and in the heart of the community has come to an end, with the staff having completed their final service on Sunday, 19 January.
Sharing a short but heartfelt goodbye on social media, they welcomed customers to join them one last time “to raise a glass and say cheers!”.
An unreal beer garden too. (Credit: The Manc Group)
The post begins: “Right Didsbury… Thank you so much for your welcome and custom when we arrived here in the village, but the time has now come to say goodbye. We have had a blast over the last four years and we hope you have too!”
Although many relatively new to the area or at least its drinking scene will only know it as The Dockyard, the venue has actually been under a lot of names over the years.
Originally known as Times Square, it was then refurbished into a branch of O’Neills in 1996 before going on to re-open as The Stokers Arms in 2014.
Nevertheless, it maintained a regular and loyal following as The Dockyard and many will be “sorry to see it go”; one person commented: “Oh no! We had a fab time in here over Christmas and [were] hoping to return soon. Sorry to see you go and I will be visiting your other sites.
Thankfully, they did go on to confirm that the remaining pubs in Salford Quays and Northwich will remain open – as is the Left Bank location in Spinningfields overlooking the River Irwell. Better still, the building itself will still remain a pub and we already know what’s taking its place:
Although there is still no news on when we can expect to see The Salmon’s second venture launch, if it’s anything like the success the Northern Quarter one has seen then we’re in for a treat.
So don’t worry, The Didsbury Dozen may have taken a hit but it’s still intact and there are plenty of other pubs you can work into the crawl in the meantime.
For now, though, all we can say is rest in peace to The Dockyard Didsbury, you were a real one – we’ll always have the memories.
Daisy Jackson -
6th April 2022 
