Topic: Rum - African enslavement, Taino genocide, and colonization

Guest Speaker:   Kelvin Uffre - Spirits Specialist

I’ve worked in the beverage industry for about 17 years, starting in Dive bars to spots like the James beard award winning Maison Premiere and Olmsted. Currently I’m the Spirits Specialist for Winebow in NY, NJ and CT.  I oversee a sales team of about 87 people. My role is mainly to educate, critically analyze new potential brands and create sales strategy.

I’m a Dominican immigrant how came here at age 5 and became a citizen at age 11.  Because of my experience being brown in majority white industry my story is from the perspective of constant subjugation, subordination and having to push twice as hard to make it where I am today.

I recently wrote a historical feature on the white supremacy of the spirits industry which interrogated how white supremacy controls what stories are told and how.  It draws a historical thread from producer to cocktail bar.

When I teach about spirits I always try to teach from a cultural framework as much as possible, it’s my belief that those that suffered the oppression that gave birth to the spirits in the first place should be the authors and storytellers of those experiences.

We cannot talk about rum with out talking about African enslavement, Taino genocide and colonization. Experiencing spirits outside of the very white Sommelier framework is important to me as it doesn’t suit most spirits.

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