Loved this tour - Lisa the guide gave a lot of insight about living in Barbados. She is an excellent driver on the crazy roads.

Excellent tour, exceptional driver and guide. - Our guide and driver, Charles, was particularly informative and interesting. This was our first visit to Barbados, and because of him we feel like we understand the island and it’s history well.

Phenomenal historical tour and run tasting!! - Simply outstanding! A historical rum tour on steroids. Two tours that are completely different wrapped into one. The Abbey was deep in hands-on history and wonderful view with a train ride. A single run tasting… small batch production only. Mt Gay was a tasting extravaganza. Both guides were phenomenal! Our driver (Winston) was a tour guide himself and included some extra stops too!!

Trip well worth it. - My wife and I decided to take this excursion on our honeymoon. Our guide was Charles and he was awesome. He was very knowledgeable about the island and made the drives as comfortable as possible. The tours themselves were just as amazing. We learned alot about the island and alot about rum!

Wonderful experience, just wish we could've tasted more rum! - Great tour and tour guide! I wish we could've spent more time at St. Nicholas Abbey we could've learned more about and tasted more of the rum - more like our experience at Mount Gay - but the beautiful facilities and railway tour alleviated some of that disappointment!

Excellent Tour and Rum Sampling! - From the time we were picked up by Charles, our trip was amazing. Charles was very knowledgeable about the island, history, and culture. He narrated as he drove from point to point and had an excellent sense of humor. Oh, we had rum too. St. Nicholas Abbey gave us a true appreciation for the small scale and batch size of the operation. You really were only able to sample 1-2 vintages but they were both excellent. We made a stop for some traditional lunch then made a quick stop in Bathsheba for some time to take photos at the beach area. Then we’re we off to the Mount Gay visitors center (not the distillery) for our tasting. If you want to visit the actual distillery you need to do the separately. Akil, the guide and drinking buddy did a great job walking you through the tasting of several vintages. I will say that we also met some lovely folks in our van, it was a very pleasant day. Would recommend this if you want to carve out a portion of a day to get away from the beach.

Rum with Ryan - My wife and I had a great day with our guide Ryan. He went out of his way to ensure we were welcome, engaged and entertained throughout. Very knowledgeable and I parted his wisdom through wit and humour and a good dollop of cheekiness. He is clearly proud of his island and we learned a lot about all manner of things despite it being a rum focussed tour. Both the St Nicholas and Mount Gay rum experiences though very different were super. The visit to Bathsheba was a great thing to have had as part of the tour as it sits on a very different part of the island (East) than the usual resorts on the southwest. Lunch was a welcome stop and plenty to keep us going. We recommend this tour.

Story of Rum Tour - Fantastic - Fantastic tour steeped in history and wonderful landscapes. Small group which resulted in lots of attention. Lunch and water included - good lunch. Prompt pickup and timely finish. Winston was a very informative and good guide - would recommend.

Would recommend Beautiful Barbados - We were picked up from our hotel by our driver, Winston, who was friendly and helpful throughout. He chatted to his guests and helped us gel into a nice group with which to spend the day. First stop was St Nicholas Abbey with a trip on the steam train to Cherry Tree Hill. The driver and train staff were really entertaining and gave us the history behind the railway on Barbados. Next up was the Abbey itself, which is actually a house. Our guide, Megan was fantastic. Simon was passionate about the rum they produce and there's opportunity to buy without feeling pressured. We opted to watch the film, which was entertaining and actually quite cute, more of a home video. Next stop was meant to be the windmill, sadly under repair after a couple of years of no tourists (due to covid), we didn't stop here. Then onto Mount Gay Distillery. This was more polished, professional film and clearly designed to host more guests. Again, opportunity to buy without feeling pressured. We didn't get to Bathsheba - the leaflet I had said we were due to visit - as we were running short of time, but all in all I'd recommend this tour if you're interested in the history of rum production and tasting some samples.

Little Rum Involved - Glory tours provides a huge range of prestigious and expensive tours on their website. We decided on Glory tours after watching a youtuber who is affiliated with them recommend them. It looked really good and promised so much. We opted for the specialised "Story of Rum" tour at $134 USD each. What a huge disappointment. We started at St. Nicholas’s Abbey and began with a train ride on the Heritage Railway. It was fantastic and whetted our appetite for the subsequent rum tasting of a specialised boutique rum house at the abbey. Unfortunately this is where things started going wrong. We were quickly ushered off the train in mid conversation with the train driver, and started the tour of the Abbey. This involves visiting two rooms and being told the history of the owners China crockery which has never even been used. The roaming cats were more interesting. Anyway, we were then forced to watch an 18 minute (yes 18 minute!) video on the workings of the plantation from a family members trip to Barbados in the 20s? It was horrific and the jovial voiceover was inappropriate given the images being shown. Anyhow, we were then invited in to a lovely room to start the tasting. The first rum was a 5 year old aged rum. Lovely. Simon, the owners son was funny and entertaining. He was about to let us taste the far more special selection when we were rudely interrupted and told by our tour guide that we had to leave as we were running late??? When we questioned this on the bus if we were on the right tour, the guide explained we were running late for lunch and that we would get a rum punch “on him” instead to make up for it. He also proceeded to blame St Nicholas Abbey for their time keeping, and bad mouth Simon as a ladies man and for talking too much. He was also going to raise the issue of the video as it wasted too much time. Well here's the thing, this is a Rum tour. A tour you run 3 times a week. Surely by now you know your timings? You took us away from a special tasting and replaced it with a rum punch...seriously? We were then whisked off to Bathsheba and continued with pointless tales of horse hill, mushroom rock??? Colours of school uniforms, pointing out every church and parish, simply pointless information unrelated to anything relevant to rum. Even a cement factory was pointed out. This is the Story of Rum...what a shame. We eventually got to Mount Gay visitors centre at 13:50 for a 14:30 tour and tasting. It then all became very clear. Glory tours are clearly associated with Mount Gay and we were left to wait for 40 minutes with plenty of time to buy rum at the shop, sip our entrance ticket rum punch or have a $15 USD cocktail. When the tour/tasting started, Mount Gay were very knowledgeable and professional but let's say it how it is, for anyone who has gone on any serious tours of wineries in Europe, or Sherry tours, or visited beer breweries ... this will leave you disappointed. The tour consists of two rooms, filled with pictures, bottles and an old sill. You are then asked to watch an 8 minute video on the production of rum (great), and then do a bottle tasting of 4 bottles. There is no tasting of molasses, no smelling of the oak of barrels, no smelling of various odours to associate to when tasting the rum, no appearance of a sugar cane so you can touch, feel, taste. No appearance of a single physical barrel. It is a huge disappointment. Furthermore, we wanted to buy a special edition mount gay from the shop, and they were sold out and directed us to world of wine. There was no special aged rum or any special edition you could buy from the Mount Gay centre, very disappointed. After much resistance from our tour guide, we convinced him to let us buy some rum from the world of wine which was on the way to all our hotels. Initially he suggested we could get the reggae bus back, but eventually agreed to do the right thing. All in all, a very disappointing experience where you'll spend more of the day in a van hearing pointless stories of cars, car ownerships, golf courses and schools but little about actual rum. Mis-sold...