A Brief History of Rum

Some of rum’s history isn’t pretty.

Rum or rhum – depending on whether you’re in an English or French-speaking area – is the Caribbean’s most frequently produced spirit. It’s also produced in the Southern USA and Central and South America. Every island and every country where sugarcane is grown make their own version of the spirit in varying qualities, alcoholic content, and price ranges. (The top photo is a pot still at a rhum distillery in Grenada. Photo by Manos Angelakis.)

The earliest accounts of rum makings come from the Caribbean in the 17th century. It originated in the West Indies and is first mentioned in records from Barbados in about 1648. The oldest commercial rum producer in the world is Mount Gay Distilleries Ltd., established in 1703.  

In Caribbean island plantations, African slaves working the sugarcane fields to make sugar discovered that molasses, a byproduct of sugar refining, would ferment in the warm tropical environment and then distill into an alcoholic beverage.

By the late 17th century, rum production became prevalent in the Caribbean colonies. It quickly became popular and was traded extensively across the region and the USA, as well as western Africa.

It also became a staple on British Royal Navy ships. From 1766 to 1970, a rum ration called a “tot,” consisting of rum at 95.5 proof (54.6% ABV), was given out to the sailors every day. The ration was split into two servings, one between 10 am and noon and the other between 4 and 6 pm.

In 1795, Royal Navy regulations started requiring quantities of lemon or lime juice to be added to the ration as an anti-scurvy remedy. The Navy rum was procured from distillers in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, and Tortola Island. Rations were cut in half in 1823 and again in half in 1850 to arrive at the traditional amount, one-eighth of an imperial pint (71ml).

Senior ratings (petty officers and above) received their rum neat, but for junior ratings it was diluted with two parts of water to make three-eighths of an imperial pint (213 ml) of grog. Due to its highly flammable nature, the rum was stored in large barrels in special storage on the ships.

Rum also became important in the slave trade of the American colonies. Slaves were bought with rum as payment from western African kingdoms and traded to the West Indies plantations for molasses. The molasses was made into rum in New England, and the rum was then traded back to Africa for more slaves.

Most of it is now made from molasses, which is the residue remaining after sugar has been crystallized from sugarcane juice. On underdeveloped sugar-producing islands, it’s made from fresh sugarcane juice. Some South American countries import molasses from the Caribbean for use in their production. A low-quality spirit called tafia is made from impure molasses or other sugarcane residue, but it isn’t considered a true rum.

The sugar necessary for fermentation is already present in the raw material, and rum retains more of the original material taste than most other spirits. The flavor of specific rums is determined by the type of yeast employed for fermentation – natural or induced – as well as the distillation method and the aging conditions.

Most of the better distilleries use second- or third-hand oak barrels and barriques to age their rum. It comes out colorless and with limited taste from the still. It acquires color and more taste from the oak barrels and what the used barrels previously held.

The better distilleries purchase used barrels from wine, cognac, brandy, and whiskey-makers in the European Union, especially France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Scotland. They also purchased used barrels from bourbon-makers in the USA. Especially desirable are old barrels that held sweet and aromatic wines, such as the Spanish Pedro Ximenez, the French Sauternes, or the German Rieslings – the older the better.

Distillation is done with pot stills and column stills, and there’s quite a taste and aroma difference among the two methods.

Pot stills (alembics) are less “efficient” than column stills, and traces of fusel oils and other aromatic elements are carried over with the alcohol, giving each rum its distinct nose and palate. Column stills are much more efficient and strip away much of the fusel oils, therefore removing most of the aromas and taste from the resulting distillate.

Some brands are made by blending pot-distilled and column-distilled spirits in a manner similar to the production of Armagnac. The rum is nowadays distilled twice, usually in pot stills and more rarely in column stills. This produces a clear distillate that turns a golden color as the alcohol picks up coloring and aromatics from the oak of the wooden barrels used for storage and aging.

A few distillers will deepen the distillate’s color and taste with the addition of caramel near the end of aging. A few of the better and more expensive rums are aged for as much as 25 years before being released for sale.

Editor’s note: I’m a big fan of Appleton rum from Jamaica, so if you’re a fan of rum and haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it. In my opinion, a smoother rum doesn’t exist.