When you’re offered the chance to follow in the fabled footsteps of The Rolling Stones by mooching around Jamaica while drinking the band’s very own rum, it would be wild to say anything but yes. Which is how I ended up on a beach near Keith Richards’ old house eating a bowl of mannish water while watching reggae legend Eric Donaldson sing an a cappella version of his 1971 hit ‘Cherry Oh! Baby’.
First, a little background. In 1972, the Rolling Stones wound up in Kingston to record the follow-up to Exile on Main St. As tax exiles who’d experienced various run-ins with the law, welcoming Jamaica was the perfect place for the Goat’s Head Soup sessions. Most of the band returned to the UK after recording, but Keith stayed on in Mammee Bay, a fishing village near Ocho Rios on the north coast of Jamaica. Which is where I found myself, thanks to a rather lavish launch party for Crossfire Hurricane, the rum brand recently launched by the band (named after the indelible opening line of ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’).
But before we get to the rum, a little more on the music. Keith connected deeply with the island, befriending a group of Rastafarian musicians who he met on the beach. Called Wingless Angels, Keith was besotted with their hypnotic drumming and chanting, and got them to Dynamic Sounds studio, and attempted to record an album. Things didn’t quite go to plan, but firm friendships were made.
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Over 50 years later, I’m on the balmy patio of Miss T’s Kitchen in Ocho Rios watching a reformed version of the group. Wingless Angels’ legendary frontman Justin Hinds – who Bob Marley once called his favourite singer – passed away two decades ago, but to see these elders in the flesh is an experience bordering on the spiritual. Their trance state sound is presumably even better when in the kind of deep ganja fug that surrounded their recording sessions, when, they tell us, 2lbs of weed was delivered to the studio every day.
As well as seeing these legendary friends of the Stones, I’m lucky enough to visit Stush in the Bush, which ranked 49th on North America’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025 – the only vegan restaurant on the list. Ital food is intrinsic to the Rastafarian way of life, and Stush in the Bush offers a farm-to-table dining experience like no other. The restaurant is an elegant treehouse at the end of a stunning, if not slightly trepidacious, mountain drive near Sturge Town, which was created after the abolition of slavery to be one of the first free villages in Jamaica.
As the mist rolls in, co-owner Christopher Bins takes us on a tour of his rambling hillside farm, picking and sharing organic scotch bonnets, allspice and pineapple as we go, before we return to the restaurant to feast on rosemary and Red Stripe beer bread, kale salad lovingly massaged with passion fruit vinaigrette and pepperpot sip thick with farm-fresh okra. At Stush in the Bush, whatever’s ready for harvest is what’s on the menu. Truly, it’s one of the most memorable dining experiences of my life, and not just because of the adorable puppies that make a cameo halfway through the farm tour.
The Rolling Stones aren’t the first musicians to release their own booze; there’s Iron Maiden’s Trooper beer, Motorhead’s Snaggletooth cider and let’s not forget Dolly Parton’s range of wine. Crossfire Hurricane uses rum from four of Jamaica’s six distilleries – Hampden Estate, Long Pond, Worthy Park and Clarendon – and we visit the gigantic Worthy Park to see where the magic happens, checking out vast warehouses of barrelled booze, and sprawling sugar cane fields. The drive there takes us past colourful countryside rum bars boasting names as singular as those of pubs in the UK. We pull up at one mountainside shack and catch the final few minutes of the England v Argentina World Cup game. If you’re going to watch England lose, there’s no better place to do it.
We return to the historic Jamaica Inn hotel – the site of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller’s honeymoon, as well as a favourite of local ex-pats Noel Coward and Ian Fleming – a deeply chilled out kind of place, with a horseshoe of blue and white 1950s-built rooms around a palm tree-lined bay. It’s the kind of place that dishes up fresh mango and papaya for breakfast, and has turtle releases in the afternoons. All in all, an utter vibe.
It’s here on the beach we have a celebratory dinner, knocking back more Crossfire Hurricane rum. (I mean, why not, eh?) After inhaling my bowl of mannish water (the fortifying Caribbean stew said to have given the album Goat’s Head Soup its name), Herbie Miller, an ethnomusicologist, one-time manager of Peter Tosh and Skatalites and extremely wise man, puts rum into context. He talks eloquently about the unignorable slave history of rum, as well as his days in the music industry and his first love, jazz. Then, another dinner guest, reggae icon and one-time Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry collaborator Eric Donaldson pops up to sing a few soaring bars of his song ‘Cherry Oh! Baby’, which the Rolling Stones covered in 1976.
Only in Jamaica – and only with a heroic amount of rum greasing the wheels.
Leonie stayed at the Jamaica Inn hotel and travelled to Jamaica as a guest of Crossfire Hurricane Rum. Crossfire Hurricane Reserve (£45) and Gold (£36) is available to purchase from Tesco with more major retailers to come.
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