Two of the coun­try's lead­ing en­ter­tain­ment pro­mot­ers have come to­geth­er with T&T's pre­miere artiste and its most not­ed al­co­hol blenders to work in syn­er­gy to pro­duce and mar­ket 3 Ze­ro Plat­inum Rum. The rum was launched on Fri­day night at Pier 1, Williams Bay, Ch­aguara­mas. Had­co, the food dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny, is work­ing in syn­er­gy with fete pro­mot­er and ra­dio sta­tion own­er Tony Chow Lin On, pro­mot­er John­ny Soong, reign­ing So­ca Monarch, Machel Mon­tano, and for­mer An­gos­tu­ra ex­ec­u­tive, Patrick Pa­tel. The four are stake­hold­ers in 3 Ze­ro Ltd, the com­pa­ny that is cur­rent­ly bot­tling the plat­inum rum at the West­er­hall Es­tate in Grena­da. The rum is a com­bi­na­tion of Caribbean spir­its, which have been blend­ed to­geth­er by Pa­tel who has tast­ed a num­ber of rums from through­out the re­gion to come up with a for­mu­la that he be­lieves would sat­is­fy the palate of lo­cal rum drinkers.

The name of the rum is based on Machel Mon­tano's cel­e­bra­tion of his 30th year in the ca­lyp­so busi­ness, said Stu­art Rochard, sales man­ag­er, wines and spir­its at Had­co. "We think that the rum is go­ing to be a big suc­cess be­cause of its as­so­ci­a­tion with Machel, an icon­ic world-class en­ter­tain­er who is born and bred in T&T and be­cause its taste pro­file is dif­fer­ent to any­thing on the lo­cal mar­ket now with its smooth­ness and its hint of sweet­ness," said John Hadad, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Had­co. The al­co­hol con­tent of 3 Ze­ro is 52 per cent by vol­ume, which is high­er than reg­u­lar gold­en rums which have 43 per cent al­co­hol con­tent by vol­ume. Rochard said 3 Ze­ro is be­ing bot­tled and blend­ed by a com­pa­ny called Pa­tel.