Gosling?s is set to launch its new Gold Rum later on this week ? and is working on creating new products to keep expanding its lines.

Malcolm Gosling, president of Gosling?s Export (Bermuda) Ltd., on Thursday took the first bottles off the production line for sale this week.

This is the second new product to be launched this year, with a luxury cask-aged rum called ?Old Rum? launched last month.

Gold Rum is a lighter rum which is going to be marketed to be drunk with ginger ale or coke for both the export market and for the local market.

?In test it did well in all demographics, including the local and tourist market,? said Mr. Gosling. ?The blend is mellower. Where black Seal is very full flavoured, say like a cognac, Gold is more like a single malt.?

The new drink will cost the same as Black Seal, and will sit along the shelves of supermarkets and liquor stores as the third product in the line.

?There was a need for line extension to protect your awareness on the shelf,? said Mr. Gosling. But the main drive is going after the US and Canadian markets where lighter rums are popular.

The product took two years to develop and is made up of mainly five years oak aged rum, with the rest made up of two years oak aged rum.

The bottle has been designed to fit along side Black Seal and the new Old Rum and has a ship on the front of the bottle ? .

This was the ship that arrived in Bermuda in 1806 carrying James Gosling and was full of wines and spirits. The boat and Mr. Gosling were trying to get to Virginia ? but failed and his charter ran out.

Instead of going home empty handed, he noticed there was a large number of sailors on the Island and a need for plenty of liquor. He succeeded in getting a licence to sell it.

?So it was purely by accident that we came here, we were trying to get to Virginia,? said Mr. Gosling.

On the new bottle there is also the family crest with a griffin printed on the bottom right hand side of the face of the bottle.

This, along with Old Rum, are the first new products Goslings has launched since the 1970s when it unveiled the dark and stormy in a can.

Old Rum is a high end wooden boxed, branded, hand labelled and finished blended aged rum retailing at $55 in Bermuda and up to $73 in the US.

Now Mr. Gosling will turn his attention to marketing the new rums and the development of some new products ? flavoured rums.

?About 18.5 million bottles of rum are sold in the US every year,? he said. ?And my guess is half of that is flavoured rum. ?

And he pointed to the success of Bacardi Limon and O as well as other rum producers who had branched out in this direction.

?It is like the flavoured vodka market used to be,? said Mr. Gosling. ?It is really skewing the figures.?

Goslings has been pushing its Black Seal rum in the US and Canada ? and it is now sold in all 50 US states and every Canadian province bar Quebec.

It will now add to this the mass golden rum drinking population and the lucrative high-end market ? and now the flavoured rums.