Final: Rum evolves from demon to darling

Article content material

There was a time when rum languished within the netherworld of the spirits realm, a base ingredient in your father or mother’s liquor cupboard that may be hauled out yearly as an addition to egg glop (a.ok.a. eggnog). It carries quite a few nautical references, reminiscent of navy rum (the Royal Navy would offer day by day rations to its sailors, therefore the time period “drunk as a sailor”) or saucy pirate tipples.

Article content material

When cocktail tradition exploded a few a long time in the past, rum was given a brand new lease on life, contributing its signature sweetness as a distillate produced from sugar cane. A lot of the rum available in the market was primary, damaged down into 4 essential classes; white, amber, darkish and spiced. Bacardi constructed an empire round it, and so they stay the biggest privately owned spirits firm on the earth with over 200 manufacturers, fairly a leap from its humble beginnings in 1862 Cuba.

Article content material

The inception of rum goes again to the mid-1600s, probably within the West Indies and Barbados. Initially known as “wine sugar” after which “kill-devil” and “rum bullion”, it was a commodity typically related to the slave commerce. Sugar cane was reworked into molasses which in flip was both bought as a sweetening agent or distilled into rum and, as such, it grew to become an necessary commodity.

For a lot of rum’s checkered historical past, it remained a primary tipple. Rum and Coke grew to become a bar staple and I count on contributed to quite a lot of circumstances of diabetes alongside the best way. After which an attention-grabbing factor occurred; a handful of conscientious distillers all over the world realized that, like whisky, it may very well be coaxed into revealing advanced and delicate flavours given a while and refinements.

Article content material

Article content material

Like all spirits, there are successfully two methods to distill sugar cane into rum. One is through a column nonetheless, broadly used all over the world as a cheap methodology for distillation. The opposite is a pot nonetheless – giant copper vessels usually related to Scotch whisky. They have a tendency to render a extra advanced expression of the distillate and are costly, being product of copper and all. A column nonetheless runs constantly whereas a pot nonetheless have to be performed in batches, which provides to the fee issue. Most rum is made with a column nonetheless, however pot stills are coming into play with extra regularity. Most often, sugar cane is transformed into molasses after which distilled, whereas the second possibility is to distill recent cane juice, referred to as rhum agricole.

As my sister lives in Barbados, I’m obligated to go there infrequently, that’s the form of sacrifice one should make for household. Barbados is synonymous with each sugar cane and rum, because the small island produces 60,000 tons of sugar yearly. The Mount Homosexual distillery, based in 1703, is the oldest rum distillery on the earth and the island is considered the birthplace of rum (FYI, the West Indies, St. Kitts, Martinique, and Brazil additionally make these claims). You don’t should go very far in Barbados to discover a “rum store”, successfully a pub though just a few of them are little greater than what resembles a roadside lemonade stand.

Article content material

Rum is consumed there with plates of fish and macaroni pie, (the latter being a nationwide dish we all know right here as mac n’ cheese), usually with water and ice or in varied cocktails. There are successfully no legal guidelines as to the place you may or can’t drink and the way a lot, nor are there blood alcohol checks. Apparently, the island has a low per-capita proportion of alcohol-related visitors deaths, I count on partially as a result of the pothole-laden roads demand slower speeds and warning. If I’m portray an image of a drunken shanty city, it’s not; in reality, I’ve seen little or no public intoxication throughout my visits through the years.

4 distilleries are working in Barbados: Mount Homosexual, West India Rum Refinery, Foursquare Rum Distillery and St Nicolas Abbey. Throughout my go to this previous April, I visited Foursquare, based in 1996. It started life as a service provider distillery, that means it bought its rum to unbiased retailers who blended, aged, and bottled the rum (it nonetheless sells a proportion of its rum this fashion). It now produces a spread of what’s largely thought to be essentially the most awarded and sought-after rums on the earth, and, it needs to be mentioned, very tough to seek out. The distillery was based by Sir David Seale and his son Richard and stays a household affair. It makes use of each column and pot stills and produces rum from molasses and pure cane juice, usually mixing the 2. Like Scotch whisky, the rum is aged in second-fill American bourbon barrels and, like Scotch whisky, the distillery employs different second-fill barrels, reminiscent of sherry and even wine. One spectacular aspect of this operation is that it recycles and reuses virtually all the things. Even the Co2 generated as a by-product of fermentation is captured, bottled, and bought to soda firms.

Article content material

Our tour of the distillery ended with a tasting of the vary of rums produced, and they’re distinctive. Sadly, even in Barbados, you may’t discover a bottle of Foursquare (aside from the spiced model, meh), though their second- and third-tier manufacturers, Doorly’s and R.L. Seale’s, are broadly out there. In our market – for now anyway – you’ll should accept an unbiased bottler’s model of Foursquare that features Holmes Cay Foursquare 12-year-old ($175) or Single Cask Nation’s Foursquare 10-year-old ($130).

Different premium rums effectively value making an attempt embrace Kill Satan, Ron Millonario, and Rum Nation, to call just some. Cheers!

Geoff Final is a long-time Calgary wine service provider author, teacher, and broadcaster. He might be heard each Friday on CJSW’s Highway Pops program between 4 and 6 p.m. He was awarded a fellowship at Napa Valley’s Symposium of Skilled Wine Writers for articles which have appeared on this column. Media inquiries might be directed to [email protected]