Magnum Series

The starting idea is as simple as Columbus's egg: to bring together the great masters of rum with the great masters of photography, in a project that highlights the talent of both.

The story begins when Luca Gargano, president of Velier, discoverer of rum, traveler and photographer, theorizes a classification of rums that now bears his name and that changed the entire approach to the rum category. With the Gargano Classification, the focus is concentrated not only on distillation, but also on tropical aging, thus ensuring greater transparency for consumers. In this sense, the decision to carry out the first cask strength bottlings in history was also very important, such as the Damoiseau 1980 60.3%, and that of co-bottling with distilleries of the caliber of Foursquare, Worthy Park, Hampden and Neisson. It is precisely thanks to this tireless work of continuous research and exploration that Velier has become a true international point of reference in the world of rum, contributing with its bottlings to the revolutionary entry of rums into the world of collectors, thus making them equal to the most popular single malts. precious.

“We can identify a turning point of this different perception of rums in August 2019,” says Luca. “After a rum-only auction in May, Whiskey Auctioneer, the world's most popular platform for buying and selling whiskey, has launched rumauctioneer.com: the first online auction website dedicated exclusively to rums. During the November 2020 auction it became quite clear how Velier's co-bottlings brought the rum category to the same level as single malts: among the first 100 lots, 73 were Velier rums".

“I thought about how to create a bottling of great value, which could be auctioned off like the greatest single malts, or works of art”, continues Luca, “Four great rums produced by four great Master Distillers, selected by me, with something extra. The idea of embellishing the labels came to me because I am also a passionate photographer, and I thought that important images could accompany the rums in a perfect and elegant way. When it came to studying the 'how' and 'who' I couldn't help but think of the largest photographic agency in the world, which also allowed me to play on words between its name and the magnum format".