Cutting on the windward slope
Stems come down at three-quarter fill, never from the ripening sheds. A cutter works a row twice a season and takes maybe a fifth of what is hanging. Green fruit cures; ripe fruit rots, and no amount of salt fixes a stem cut a week late.
The brine house
Fourteen hours in Caribbean sea salt, drawn from the pans at Cooper’s Wharf. The strength is checked twice against a hydrometer that has been in the family longer than most of the family.
Six days of cedar smoke
The part nobody has copied. Slow cedar smoke, racks turned by hand twice daily. Machines bruise the fruit and bruised fruit does not keep, which is why every yard that mechanised this step quietly went back to hands or went out of the fruit.
The cooper’s bench
Oak with a cedar liner, headed and pitched the same afternoon the fruit comes off the rack. Sven approves every mark that leaves the yard, and rejects rather more casks than he cares to be reminded of.
Assay and stamp
The Port Royal assay house tests the ascorbic charge and the figure is stamped on the head alongside the cure date and the cooper’s mark. Every dispute we have ever had was settled by three people looking at a barrel end.
Alongside, paperwork filed
Delivered to your berth with customs and excise already lodged. Your bosun signs one sheet. On a standing manifest nobody at your end raises anything at all.