Did you know that one the world's first cocktails was made with a sugar cane spirit?
A concoction called El Draque, named after Francis Drake, who was, depending on the moment in time and the person you ask, a high ranking navy officer, pirate and slave-trader. There are various stories of how the drink got his name, but the most widely known is the version where several of Drake’s crew members fell ill.
Someone on Drake’s ship made them a “healing drink” with Cane Aguardiente which is adjacent to rum, sugar, lime and mint. Whether it was the vitamine C, the buzz of the alcohol, or the soothing qualities of the mint, El Draque was a staple “medicinal drink” and was the forerunner of the Mojito. Allegedly the name change came to happen when the Aguardiente was replaced with Rum around the 1800’s.
Rum continued to be used in the navy, to enhance drinking water and save it from spoiling, for cleaning wounds, for calming rowdy deckhands and more. In the USA, only in the year 1917 drinking rum and other alcohol was officially discredited and removed from the list of approved medications.
There are a lot more laws and regulations surrounding rum, however what complicates things is that since rum is produced in many countries around the world, they have different regulations. This also means that different areas of the world have different definitions of rum. The main styles are Spanish style rums, English style rums, and rum Agricole. Cachaca is sometimes also mentioned along with Agricole, but is a category on its own. We will explain these styles in more detail in upcoming videos and blogs.
All those rum however, are made from sugarcane. Sugarcane takes a relatively short time to grow. The plants reach maturity between 10 months and 2 years. There are multiple varieties of sugarcane with different flavour profiles and quality. When the sugarcane is ready to harvest, this is done by field. Harvesting can be done manually, or mechanically. Manual harvesting is done by chopping the sugarcane as close to the ground as possible, as the most sugar is concentrated in the bottom of the stem. However, since it is very heavy manual labour and a machine can cut faster and longer, machine cutting is becoming more and more common. It is important to know that sugarcane is relatively unstable. That means that when a field is ripe, you will want to harvest as soon as possible. Also, the harvest seasons are quite short and freshly harvested sugarcane needs to be processed as fast as possible.
After harvesting, the sugar needs to be extracted from the sugarcane. Sugar cane goes through mills that chop the cane and separate the fibre from the juice. The fibres, also known as “bagasse” can be burned for fuel, or be made into paper, or used as fertiliser. The sugar cane juice can then either be used to create fresh sugar cane rums, sugar cane honey, or actual sugar. To make sugar the juice is mixed with sugar crystals and clarified. After boiling and cooling, more sugar will form on the existing sugar crystals. After cooling, the mixture is centrifuged. This will separate the sugar crystals from the remaining liquid. After repeating this several times, the sugar is ready to be sold, and the liquid left is sticky, dark, sweet and known as molasses. This is where molasse rums are made from.
The base (either fresh juice or molasses) is then fermented, distilled, aged, watered down, sometimes flavoured, and bottled. For more detail on these processes, please watch our previous videos or blogs.
One recent development in rum is that the EU Legislation for adding sugar has changed from 100 grams per litre to 20 grams per litre. If a brand contains more than 20 grams per litre, it will no longer be a rum but a “rum based spirit drink” Are you curious about what other rules there are in place for different rum styles? In our next videos and blogs we will go into more detail about the different types, flavours and rules per region