Approximately 350 years ago, when British sailors in the Caribbean first encountered Kill-Devil (the extremely rough local spirit from sugar cane) they drank copious quantities, resulting in behaviour described at the time, as rumbullion. This so-called rumbustious-ness led to the name rum.

Rum tends to be made only in countries that are capable of growing sugar cane.

Today many Caribbean countries import their molasses from the big producers: Guyana and Venezuela. Some islands, however, still grow enough of their own to produce rum including Barbados, Martinique and Jamaica.

Rum, rhum or ron is the product obtained by distilling the ferment of either sugar cane juice or molasses.

It comes from many parts of the tropical and sub-tropical world including Central and South America, Australia, India, Mauritius, Hawaii and, of course, the Caribbean.

It can be distilled either in a continuous still or a pot still and has no requirement to be aged in barrel. It can be any strength above 37.5 % abv with some as high as 80 % abv and can be white, light and elegant, dark, rich and pungent, or indeed any possible combination thereof.

WHAT CAN BE ON THE LABEL?
Rums from the English-Speaking Caribbean Antigua, Barbados, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Grenada, St Lucia, St Vincent, Trinidad & Tobago and the Virgin Islands, all produce light and golden rums, and some with great style and finesse. Labels often use proprietary terms for differing qualities and many use age statements, from three year old up through five, seven etc. In some instances terms such as XO are borrowed from the brandy world.

Jamaica produces pungent high-ester rums, valuable for blending as well as for their own style and forthright flavours. Labels tend to indicate simply white and for the aged, special (gold), often a proprietary brand names and some age statements do actually refer to the minimum age of the blend.

Guyana is a powerhouse of molasses production and produces a softer style of medium and heavily-bodied rums. The whites tend to be labelled very simply whilst the golden and dark rums generally utilise age statements which refer to the youngest parts of the blends.

Many blended white and black rums are sourced from the countries above for bottling in the Caribbean or in Europe, and these tend to be labelled with brand names and often carry no age statements or qualitative marks at all.

RUMS FROM FRENCH ISLANDS
Guadeloupe, Marie Galante and Martinique produce both agricole and molasses based rums. The agricole have strict rules and follow a defined quality ladder: Blanc and Ambré followed by Vieux (minimum of three years), Hors d’Âge and age statements or vintages. The molasses-based rums are labelled with brand names and rarely carry any other quality statements, many of which are bottled in France. Haiti has only one major producer; the rums are produced and aged in a similar way to cognac and carry age statements which refer to the minimum age of the blend.

HISPANIC CARIBBEAN, CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAN RUMS
Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico and Venezuela produce light rums, predominantly white and gold and labelled with terms such as silver and blanca for the whites, and añejo, reserva, gran reserva and numerous age statements for the golden. Some are aged in solera systems and the stated age or number on the label can be a reference to the average age of the blend, or the youngest or oldest part of the blend or simply a special number that has been applied to a particular blend.

Brazil deserves a mention on its own. It produces a great deal of the world’s molasses and some traditional rums but cachaça is its main spirit. Many of these do not qualify as true rums as grain and sugar syrup are also used alongside the molasses.

OTHER RUMS AROUND THE WORLD
From Australia through the Philippines, India, South Africa and the French speaking islands in the Indian Ocean, many types of rum are produced with brand names providing the best indication of quality. The French tend to be the greatest respecters of the age statement; the Indian rums tend to have colonial-sounding brands; the Australians may differ mostly on alcoholic strength, whilst the Spanish-speaking producers will tend towards the reserva and añejo systems.

RUM MATURATION
White rums may be aged in stainless steel for approximately six months, however, occasionally they will be oak aged for a short while and then filtered through activated carbon to remove the colour.

Different countries have different rules, but most insist on a minimum of six months or one year before the product can be bottled; however, the size of the ageing container is often not dictated and this will affect the end flavour.

The vast majority of amber rums will have been aged in old bourbon barrels and many will pick up the vanilla and sweet spice notes found in bourbon.

Ageing in this part of the world is a quick business! In the tropics spirits evaporate through the pores in the wood at great speed during maturation. The Caribbean, for example, has evaporation rates of approximately 8 % a year whilst, by contrast, 2 % annually is the norm in Scotland; essentially one year ageing in the islands is worth four years in Scotland.

Sugar cane is a perennial grass grown mostly in the tropics where it thrives particularly in volcanic soils. Rum is produced from sugar cane using either the juice or the by-product of sugar production: molasses. The variety of cane planted depends on the volume of sucrose that it will yield on the prevalent soil type, and can also be influenced by other minor factors, none of which influence the cane like grapes can be influenced by terroir or microclimates.

HOW IS IT MADE?
Most Caribbean islands harvest cane from February through June, but regions of South America will allow two crops each year. The sugar cane is cut by hand or mechanically and taken immediately to the mill where it is chopped and crushed to release the juice.

If the juice is to be used for the production of rum it is immediately fermented and then distilled. If it is to be used for the production of sugar, then the juice is heated creating crystals and subsequently centrifuged in order to separate those crystals from the molasses. Also known as treacle, molasses is, therefore, essentially all that remains after the sugar has been crystallised out of the juice. The centrifuging process is repeated many times resulting in many different grades of molasses all of which are so thick that they need to be diluted with water prior to fermentation.

Fermentation is a very important stage as all the character of the end product is created at this point. It is affected by three main factors:

TEMPERATURE

TYPE OF YEAST USED: a cultured yeast giving simpler, more elegant styles or a unique yeast strain.

DURATION: can vary from 48 hours for a typical Eastern Caribbean/Australian/Indian rum to two weeks for a Jamaican-style rum; and this is greatly dictated by the first two factors.

In Jamaica there is an interesting little addition to proceedings, which is called dunder. Dunder is the equivalent of sour mash in American whiskey-production. The distiller takes the residue from previous fermentation and stores it in a pit or tank in the heat of the Caribbean sun; this concentrates the acids, reducing the pH, considerably slowing the rate of fermentation and at the same time imparting a dramatic pungency to the resultant rum.

Whilst some of the stills are quite creative, one generally finds that the distillation process is selective. The art of distillation is very much in evidence in the rum world with numerous possibilities from the same distillation.

What to capture and what to discard is critical to the style of the end product. Commence collection early and finish early and the result will be a light, delicate, elegant spirit, occasionally showing hints of creamy toffee. Start later and finish later and the result will be a richer, fuller style with hints of burnt rubber and a certain oily character.

The stills used may vary considerably. Column stills can be as high as a four-storey building with one rectifying column or more columns all linked together; or in the case of Martinique’s Rhum Agricoles, can be very small, fitting quite easily into an average room. The taller ones are very versatile as the collection shelves can be set anywhere to make anything from a heavy to light distillate. The pot stills can be big or small with long necks-giving more delicate rums-or short necks-resulting in richer, heavier rums-and some may even be modified to incorporate a retort.

A retort is a chamber attached to the pot before the condenser, which is usually filled with the first distillate. The vapour passes through this chamber, the heat strips off and incorporates some of the alcohol before passing into the neck where it is condensed and collected. This method will always produce rums of great distinction and character, if not something of an acquired taste.