Episode
139: Inside Rum Buying at The Whisky Exchange, with Dawn Davies
- Podcast
- The Rumcast
- Published
- Aug 24, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 5080
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://www.rumcast.com/episodes/dawn-davies-the-whisky-exchange
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Summary
Did you know you can support The Rumcast on Patreon now and get bonus episodes, happy hours, and more? You can! Head to patreon.com/therumcast to check it out. You can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube. In this episode, we caught up with Dawn Davies, head buyer for The Whisky Exchange—one of the premier spirits stores in the UK. Dawn is a huge rum fan with an excellent palate (she's one of the very few Masters of Wine in the world), and her position at The Whisky Exchange gives her a fascinating perspective on the world of rum. You can watch the video version of the episode here. We discussed: What goes into managing a store selection that includes nearly 1,000 rum SKUs Balancing esoteric rum geek bottles with mass market selections Which rums should be on more store shelves right now Standouts from The Whisky Exchange's 5th annual Rum Show this past July What it takes to go through the grueling 5+ years long Master of Wine process How Dawn approaches tasting rums Revisiting The Whisky Exchange's rum classification system 6 years in Annoying label terminology And more! Relevant links mentioned in the episode: Follow Dawn on Instagram The Whisky Exchange website The Whisky Exchange rum classification system The Whisky Exchange rum flavor camps Check out Boston Rum Week — coming up September 14-21