Come Hell or High Water

Come Hell or High Water

Come Hell or High Water is a multi-award-winning rum brand founded by Finnish entrepreneurs Olli Hietalahti and Jouko Laune — two industry outsiders who launched their first rum brand in 2010, survived a distillery fire, an earthquake, a brand crisis and a complete rebrand, and came out the other side with a range of genuinely serious Caribbean blended rums. The name says it all: this is a brand built on persistence, and the liquid backs it up. Every expression is blended from hand-selected pot and column still rums sourced from established Caribbean distilleries — including West Indies Rum Distillery (Barbados), Alcoholes Finos Dominicanos (Dominican Republic) and Demerara Distillers (Guyana) — aged in American oak ex-bourbon casks, and finished with a signature long, smooth house profile that runs through the entire range.

The lineup includes four expressions: the XO (40% ABV, aged up to 15 years, multi-island blend including Jamaica — the flagship sipping rum), the Reserva (40% ABV, aged up to 8 years — the versatile all-rounder), the Spiced (38% ABV — vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom, aniseed, coriander on a Caribbean rum base), and the Reserva Honey & Orange (a flavoured extension of the Reserva base with natural honey and orange). The range has collected Double Golds at the SIP Awards and San Francisco World Spirits Competition, multiple category wins at the World Rum Awards, and Gold medals across the International Rum Conference, Spirits Business Rum Masters and European Spirits Challenge. Notably, the XO complies with the new EU restrictions on sugar levels in rum — a transparency signal that matters to an increasingly label-literate trade audience.