Week long activities planned for patrons

Caribbean rum festival, Bonaire Rum Week, is set to return in 2023 with a week of fantastic rum and culinary events.

Next year’s Bonaire Rum Week will run from June 12-16 with a full slate of rum tastings, beach parties, bartending seminars, rum-pairing dinners and cigar pairings.

The rum lineup is expected to be even more robust in 2023 from Ron Diplomatico to fast-growing Dutch Caribbean brands like Ron San Pablo. 

The festival concludes on June 16 with a new addition for 2023, where the island’s popular Taste of Bonaire culinary street fair joins forces with Bonaire Rum Week for a culinary fete with a sugarcane twist, set in the heart of Bonaire’s capital of Kralendijk. Also new for 2023 will be an islandwide cocktail competition that lets visitors and locals sample cocktails at top bars in Bonaire and vote for their favourites online during the week.

On the final day, the island’s Best Cocktail will be announced. The event shines a spotlight both on Bonaire’s burgeoning rum and cocktail culture and on its sizzling culinary scene, one with an enviable collection of restaurants that also includes the number one restaurant in the Caribbean, Brass Boer, at the Delfins Beach. 

Bonaire, which is one of the region’s most exciting islands is an island municipality of the Netherlands, which lies off Venezuela’s coast in the southern Caribbean.

Festival organisers commenting

Alexander Britell, editor and publisher of Caribbean Journal, which is organising Bonaire Rum Week in collaboration with Tourism Corporation Bonaire, said: “The inaugural edition of Bonaire Rum Week (2022) was a tremendous success, and 2023 will be bigger and better.”

CEO of Tourism Corporation Bonaire, Miles Mercera explains, “after a successful first edition, we are happy to organize the second edition of the Bonaire Rum Week together with Caribbean Journal. During this edition we hope to have more partners join, so that it can be an exciting week, where our locals and visitors can mingle while experiencing Bonaire’s culinary scene.”

“This is an amazing and totally unique event,” remarked Guy Britton, executive Vice President and managing editor of Caribbean Journal adding, “the way each event is hosted and managed is representative of each hotel’s and restaurant’s specialties. The event offers a very personal sampling of Bonaire’s unique experiences.”

Bonaire Rum Week is part of the Caribbean Journal Rum Festival Portfolio that also includes the Caribbean Rum Awards St Barth, which takes place each November.