PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Plat­inum-sell­ing Amer­i­can singer/song­writer and Ten to One Rum co-own­er, Cia­ra Wil­son, is ea­ger to ex­pand the brand’s reach in the Caribbean mar­ket.

The singer, who played mas with Spir­it Mas on Car­ni­val Tues­day, is in the coun­try to do pro­mo­tion­al work for the brand.

“There’s so much op­por­tu­ni­ty. I think we’re in the land of rum. So, you know, we were eat­ing, I had some beef stew and mac­a­roni pie, and all that good stuff just the oth­er day. And when you look on the menu, you see rum, rum, rum, rum, rum, rum. And all I can see is more Ten to One, Ten to One, Ten to One. So I think it’s def­i­nite­ly the goal for us to con­tin­ue to take peo­ple on the jour­ney with us, to get them to reimag­ine rum and see how much fun you can have and how far rum can go. We say, any­thing you can do, rum can do bet­ter. So any­thing you can do, rum can do bet­ter, is our phi­los­o­phy. So the goal is to keep on spread­ing the mes­sage and the good word,” said Cia­ra at the press con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency on Ash Wednes­day.

Ten to One rum was cre­at­ed by Trinida­di­an Marc Far­rell in 2019, how­ev­er Cia­ra in­vest­ed in the brand in 2021.

She ex­plained she al­ways had a spe­cial con­nec­tion to rum, as it had been her first drink when she at­tained the le­gal drink­ing age in the Unit­ed States.

“I got to have my first drink, and it was with rum. So I’ve al­ways been a su­per huge fan of rum, and so it was su­per or­gan­ic and au­then­tic when Marc and I met, and he in­tro­duced me to the in­cred­i­ble works of Ten to One. And so I’m just su­per proud to be on this jour­ney with him as a co-founder and in­vestor, and just su­per, su­per proud of who we are to­day,” said Cia­ra of the rum that earned in­ter­na­tion­al awards in 2023 and 2024.

Far­rell, who is al­so a di­rec­tor on the Massy Hold­ings board, said the team is proud of these ac­co­lades as it was cru­cial to grow the brand in Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope. He echoed Cia­ra’s sen­ti­ment that the Caribbean was an im­por­tant mar­ket to the brand.

He said, “We have this kind of shared am­bi­tion, which is that there’s this crazy op­por­tu­ni­ty around rum to take it to more places and spaces. I think the am­bi­tion for us is, we start­ed in New York as our first mar­ket, ex­pand­ed around the US. Now you have de­signs on tak­ing it, I mean, to Eu­rope, to Asia at some stage. I mean wher­ev­er ramp and trav­el. Of course, as Cia­ra re­flect­ed, the soul of the brand is here. And so, try­ing to make sure that it oc­cu­pies the right places and spaces in the Caribbean is al­so re­al­ly im­por­tant.”

Far­rell said he and Cia­ra worked yes­ter­day, Ash Wednes­day, as the co-own­ers of the rum brand had planned var­i­ous pro­mo­tion­al events.