In Union There Is Strength: The Story of Spirited Union

The story of Spirited Union starts with a frustration. Not a business insight, not a market gap analysis—a genuine, personal frustration. Ruben Maduro looked around the rum category and saw the same thing everywhere: global brands cutting costs, replacing natural ingredients with artificial flavours, piling in sugar to mask the compromise. A category that deserved better was being steadily diminished.

Maduro was well placed to feel this frustration. He had grown up in Aruba, where his great-grandfather had been a rum trader. Rum was part of his heritage before it was part of his career. He went on to work in bars and restaurants across Breda, Rotterdam, London and Aruba—environments where quality ingredients were taken seriously, where flavour was built from real things. When he looked at the spiced rum shelf, what he saw did not belong in that world.

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A Recipe Built on a Kitchen Counter

The first botanical rum recipe was created in 2016 in Amsterdam—not in a distillery, not with commercial equipment, but in Maduro’s home kitchen. The concept was straightforward: take single-origin rum from a quality producing region and unite it with real, responsibly sourced botanicals. Distil or infuse. No artificial flavours. No artificial aromas. List every ingredient on the label.

He called the brand Union 55. There was one product. He started hand-blending, hand-bottling and selling from a tiny distillery in Amsterdam. Trade began to take notice. The concept was new enough to be unfamiliar, and real enough to hold up under scrutiny.

From Union 55 to Spirited Union

As the range expanded and trade embraced the approach, Maduro opened a proper distillery in Amsterdam in 2019—a 300m² solar-powered facility close to Amsterdam Central. With the distillery came a new name: Spirited Union. The name captures two ideas simultaneously—the union between rum and botanicals that defines every product, and the spirit of the distillery itself as the brand’s home.

The distillery opened its doors to the public from day one. Nothing to hide was the principle then and it remains the principle now. Visitors can join distillery tours, distilling workshops and cocktail workshops. The transparency extends to every bottle: ingredients are listed, origins are named, production methods are described.

The Team Behind the Rums

Head Distiller Marjolein Pot runs production at the Amsterdam distillery. Her background combines distilling with microchemical sciences—a combination that has produced one of the most sophisticated botanical flavour libraries in the spirits industry. Working alongside her is Sharai Rodriguez, whose experience spans gin and genever distillation and a long career in high-end mixology bars. The two disciplines—scientific precision and bartender instinct—define how Spirited Union approaches flavour.

Single Origin. Real Botanicals. Full Transparency.

Every Spirited Union rum begins with a single-origin base. The team works with a network of rum producer partners across the world, evaluating and quality-checking each batch before it arrives in Amsterdam. The selection of base rums is as deliberate as the selection of botanicals: the rum is the canvas, and the canvas has to be right.

The botanicals are sourced from the same network of local, trusted producers. Green-cut sugarcane from Panama. Fresh green coconut water from Sri Lanka. Honeybush from a regenerative farm in South Africa. Ugandan vanilla from sustainable farming practices. Amalfi lemons with their thick, aromatic skins. Queen Victoria pineapple from Panama. Añana sea salt hand-harvested from ancient salt flats in the Basque Country. Every ingredient earns its place.

A Category Invented in Amsterdam

Botanical rum did not exist before Spirited Union. Maduro invented the category—a spirit that applies the logic of botanical infusion (familiar from gin) to the foundation of single-origin rum. The result is something distinct from both: rum’s tropical character, gin’s botanical complexity, none of the artificial sweetness of spiced rum.

The core range—Spiced, Queen Pineapple & Spice, Sweet Orange & Ginger, Pink Grapefruit & Rose, Lemon & Leaf, Organic Coconut—each uses a different base rum origin matched to botanicals that amplify rather than mask that origin’s character. Queen Pineapple & Spice uses a Panamanian rum; Pink Grapefruit & Rose uses a rum from Swaziland’s “flower belt”; Lemon & Leaf uses an Agricole-style rum from Mauritius. Origin matters in every decision.

The Reserve Collection: Patience and Patented Casks

When the distillery opened in 2019, Maduro and the team began a cask ageing programme with a long-term view. They selected tropically-aged rum casks from across the world and set them aside—waiting for the right moment. The Reserve Collection is the result.

What makes the XO series technically distinct is Spirited Union’s patented botanical cask system. Rather than simply ageing in ex-bourbon or ex-sherry wood, they pre-season their casks with specific botanicals—vanilla for XO Panama, roasted coffee for XO Colombia, freeze-dried banana for XO Jamaica. The rum finishes in these pre-conditioned casks in Amsterdam, absorbing the botanical character alongside the wood complexity. Double-cask. Genuinely innovative. A world first within a world first.

The 2024 XO Anniversary Edition—the distillery’s first single cask bottling—is the pinnacle so far: a 10-year-old rum aged five years in the tropics (Barbados) and five years at the Amsterdam distillery. Hand-bottled, hand-dipped, hand-labelled. A limited edition that shows where the programme is heading.

When the distillery opened in 2019, Maduro and the team began a cask ageing programme with a long-term view. They selected tropically-aged rum casks from across the world and set them aside—waiting for the right moment. The Reserve Collection is the result.

What makes the XO series technically distinct is Spirited Union’s patented botanical cask system. Rather than simply ageing in ex-bourbon or ex-sherry wood, they pre-season their casks with specific botanicals—vanilla for XO Panama, roasted coffee for XO Colombia, freeze-dried banana for XO Jamaica.

The rum finishes in these pre-conditioned casks in Amsterdam, absorbing the botanical character alongside the wood complexity. Double-cask. Genuinely innovative. A world first within a world first.

The 2024 XO Anniversary Edition—the distillery’s first single cask bottling—is the pinnacle so far: a 10-year-old rum aged five years in the tropics (Barbados) and five years at the Amsterdam distillery. Hand-bottled, hand-dipped, hand-labelled. A limited edition that shows where the programme is heading.

Growing Responsibly

Spirited Union is the first fully certified botanical rum brand under the Bonsucro Mass Balance Chain of Custody. This certification tracks the sustainability credentials of sugarcane—from field to bottle—across the entire supply chain. The solar-powered distillery minimises carbon footprint. Packaging is designed to reduce single-use plastic. 1% of revenue goes directly to supporting environmental causes, social activism and responsible sugarcane production in the communities where the base rums are sourced.

The “take less—give back” philosophy is not a marketing statement. It is built into supplier relationships, production decisions and how the distillery approaches every part of its operation.

22 Countries. Still Just Getting Started.

When the distillery opened in 2019, Maduro and the team began a cask ageing programme with a long-term view. They selected tropically-aged rum casks from across the world and set them aside—waiting for the right moment. The Reserve Collection is the result.

What makes the XO series technically distinct is Spirited Union’s patented botanical cask system. Rather than simply ageing in ex-bourbon or ex-sherry wood, they pre-season their casks with specific botanicals—vanilla for XO Panama, roasted coffee for XO Colombia, freeze-dried banana for XO Jamaica. The rum finishes in these pre-conditioned casks in Amsterdam, absorbing the botanical character alongside the wood complexity. Double-cask. Genuinely innovative. A world first within a world first.

The 2024 XO Anniversary Edition—the distillery’s first single cask bottling—is the pinnacle so far: a 10-year-old rum aged five years in the tropics (Barbados) and five years at the Amsterdam distillery. Hand-bottled, hand-dipped, hand-labelled. A limited edition that shows where the programme is heading.

Spirited Union launched in a couple of Amsterdam bars in 2017. It now distributes across 22 countries on four continents. Bars and restaurants globally carry it on their menus. The Reserve Collection has established Spirited Union as a serious aged rum producer alongside the botanical core range.

In the Netherlands, Spirited Union is available through Pineapple Drinks Club—Maduro’s distribution partner and the import channel through which the brand reaches Dutch horeca and retail. The relationship is close: Ruben Maduro founded both Spirited Union and Brandbox Studio, the brand development and production agency that powers the Pineapple Drinks Club private label programme.

The project that began behind a kitchen counter in Amsterdam has become a genuine category pioneer with global reach. And as they say themselves—they’re only just getting started.