Rum

When you think of rum, pirates often come to mind. Perhaps that is because even in children’s books, pirates always seem to look the same: an eye patch, a wooden leg, a parrot on the shoulder and a little barrel of rum under one arm. The rum-drinking pirate was no invention, for a simple reason. Keeping fresh water for months at sea was almost impossible. The water was simply unsafe, so rum was the healthier choice at the time. Carrying water at sea is no longer a problem, but rum is still popular in a good cocktail, in tea or simply neat…

Rum is made from sugar cane. Sugar cane is a grass, looks similar to reeds and takes around 10 to 12 months to mature. Only the stalk is used at harvest. The juice is pressed from the sugar cane and fermented. The resulting alcohol is concentrated through distillation. The rum then needs time to mature. The longer the colourless distillate is allowed to age, the rounder and more aromatic its flavour becomes. ‘White rum’ matures for several months in stainless steel casks to absorb oxygen and become homogeneous. Rum takes on a golden-yellow to brown colour when it spends a longer time in wooden casks.