Copalli is rum as a conservation project. The Copal Tree Distillery was built in 2016 in the rainforest of southern Belize, near Punta Gorda, to give local families a living that didn’t depend on logging — it’s now the region’s biggest employer — and it makes rum from three ingredients: organic heirloom sugarcane grown within two miles and pressed within two hours of hand-cutting, yeast, and rainwater collected from the forest canopy. The stills run on cane leftovers, the ash fertilizes the fields. White is the flagship: fresh cane juice, agricole-style, distilled in both a copper pot still and a 72-plate column, blended, rested in stainless steel, and bottled at 42% ABV with no additives. It took SIP Platinum in 2023. Difford’s found a really characterful white rum with grassy overripe banana, funky pineapple, and assertive white pepper. The Rum Barrel: fennel seed, cut grass, toffee, grapefruit zest, coconut water, and cream — a balanced cane-juice rum that makes a great Daiquiri. Rum Ratings’ drinkers call it a well-executed organic agricole with clairin-like yeasty, herbal notes in a gentler register — an accessible door into cane-juice rum, and fantastic in a Mai Tai. Honest note: it’s grassy and vegetal, not a neutral white; drinkers expecting Bacardi should know. For a Daiquiri, a Ti’ Punch, a rum-forward tiki drink, or a rainforest Mojito, it’s Belize’s answer to Martinique.
Buy Copalli White Rum online with fast shipping right to your door.
