Plantation Reserve Sugar is a product of the West Indies Sugar & Trading Company of Barbados and is a coarser, lighter raw cane sugar with a distinctive natural taste. The product itself is only made using sugarcane selected and harvested when sucrose content is at its peak. This occurs during a 2-week period of the 5 month harvest season and provides exceptionally pure juice for the mills. This juice purity allows the production of naturally larger crystals through a unique process that takes almost three times longer than that used for normal sugar. [1]
Plantation Reserve has been developed with the government of Barbados in order to ensure the sustainability of the Barbados sugar industry. The company pays almost twice as much as any equivalent sugar product reflecting both the unique process required to produce Plantation Reserve and a need to ensure that farmers to make a reasonable margin. This is part of an effort to support the Barbados sugar industry, under threat from a decline in the subsidised price traditionally paid for sugar by the European Union. Sugar is important to Barbados not only from a foreign exchange and aesthetic perspective, helping to keep the island attractive for tourism, but also protects the island’s thin layer of topsoil and prevents flooding. The company also supports the sugar heritage of Barbados in conjunction with the Barbados National Trust and is based at the Morgan Lewis sugar mill, Barbados – the oldest surviving wind-powered mill in the world, which still grinds canes for Plantation Reserve. [2]
Plantation Reserve is primarily sold through the English speaking Caribbean, including Barbados, and the United Kingdom, although no UK supplier can be identified as of November 2017. As of February 2020 it is available at Home Bargains and B&M.
It has been used at the Ritz Hotel, London and Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados as well as in The Cliff restaurant and at the Royal enclosure at Ascot races. [3] Chefs use the natural flavour of Plantation Reserve in small quantities to enhance dishes such as crème brûlée and to add flavour to dressings, sauces and desserts. According to Sandy Lane’s executive pastry chef, Cameron Steele, "If you smelled and tasted Plantation Reserve blind against other golden sugars, you would definitely spot the difference. It has a buttery caramel taste and a more intense, deep flavour and aroma than any other sugar. It is very, very different." [4]
Other than cooking, it is used on porridge and to enhance the taste of teas and coffees.
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double sugars, are molecules made of two bonded monosaccharides; common examples are sucrose, lactose, and maltose. White sugar is a refined form of sucrose. In the body, compound sugars are hydrolysed into simple sugars.
Sucrose, a disaccharide, is a sugar composed of glucose and fructose subunits. It is produced naturally in plants and is the main constituent of white sugar. It has the molecular formula C
12H
22O
11.
Neohesperidin dihydrochalcone, sometimes abbreviated to neohesperidin DC or simply NHDC, is an artificial sweetener derived from citrus.
A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value.
Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were a major part of the economy of the islands in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Most Caribbean islands were covered with sugar cane fields and mills for refining the crop. The main source of labor, until the abolition of chattel slavery, was enslaved Africans. After the abolition of slavery, indentured laborers from India, China, Portugal and other places were brought to the Caribbean to work in the sugar industry. These plantations produced 80 to 90 percent of the sugar consumed in Western Europe, later supplanted by European-grown sugar beet.
Golden syrup or light treacle is a thick, amber-coloured form of inverted sugar syrup made by the process of refining sugar cane or sugar beet juice into sugar. It is used in a variety of baking recipes and desserts. It has an appearance and consistency similar to honey, and is often used as a substitute where honey is unavailable.
Muscovado is a type of partially refined to unrefined sugar with a strong molasses content and flavour, and dark brown in colour. It is technically considered either a non-centrifugal cane sugar or a centrifuged, partially refined sugar according to the process used by the manufacturer. Muscovado contains higher levels of various minerals than processed white sugar, and is considered by some to be healthier. Its main uses are in food and confectionery, and the manufacturing of rum and other forms of alcohol. The largest producer and consumer of muscovado is India.
Sandy Lane is a luxury five-star beachfront resort close to Holetown and Paynes Bay on the island of Barbados. Sandy Lane was opened in 1961 by Ronald Tree, a former British politician, as a luxury hotel and golf course on what had been a sugar plantation. In 1998, the hotel was put up for sale by Granada plc, and five Irish businessmen, including J. P. McManus, Dermot Desmond and John Magnier, bought it. The original resort was then demolished in a three-year, $450 million upgrade and renovation.
SM Jaleel & Company Ltd, also known as SMJ, is the largest manufacturer of non alcoholic drinks in the English speaking Caribbean. Since inception in 1924 their portfolio of beverages are distributed to over 60 countries worldwide.
Morgan Lewis Windmill, St. Andrew, Barbados is the biggest and only fully functional sugar windmill in the Caribbean. The mill stopped operating in 1947. In 1962 the mill was given to the Barbados National Trust by its owner Egbert L. Bannister for preservation as a museum.
Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, perennial grass that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sucrose, which accumulates in the stalk internodes. Sugarcanes belong to the grass family, Poaceae, an economically important flowering plant family that includes maize, wheat, rice, and sorghum, and many forage crops. It is native to the warm temperate and tropical regions of India, Southeast Asia, and New Guinea.
Rum is a liquor made by fermenting and then distilling sugarcane molasses or sugarcane juice. The distillate, a clear liquid, is often aged in barrels of oak. Rum originated in the Caribbean in the 17th century, but today it is produced in nearly every major sugar-producing region of the world, such as the Philippines, where Tanduay Distillers, the largest producer of rum worldwide, has its headquarters.
Betty's Hope was a sugarcane plantation in Antigua. It was established in 1650, shortly after the island had become an English colony, and flourished as a successful agricultural industrial enterprise during the centuries of slavery. It was the first large-scale sugar plantation to operate in Antigua and belonged to the Codrington family from 1674 until 1944. Christopher Codrington, later Captain General of the Leeward Islands, acquired the property in 1674 and named it Betty's Hope, after his daughter.
The history of sugar has five main phases:
Wasanbon (和三盆) is a fine-grained Japanese sugar, traditionally made in the Shikoku prefectures of Tokushima and Kagawa, centered to the towns of Kamiita-cho and Donari-cho in Tokushima, where it has been made since about the 1770s. The sugar is often used for Japanese sweets. The sugar is made from thin sugarcane plants grown locally in Shikoku, called taketō (竹糖) or chikusha (竹蔗).
A slave plantation was an agricultural farm that used enslaved people for labour. The practice was abolished in most places during the 19th century.
A sugar cane mill is a factory that processes sugar cane to produce raw sugar or plantation white sugar. Some sugar mills are situated next to a back-end refinery, that turns raw sugar into (refined) white sugar.
Black Barbadians or Afro-Barbadians are Barbadians of entirely or predominantly African descent.
Fairymead Sugar Plantation was a sugar plantation in Fairymead, Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia. It was established by Ernest Young together with his father Henry and brothers Arthur, and Horace. It was one of Bundaberg's earliest independent sugar plantations and had one of its earliest sugar mills.