Rum

What rum is

Rum is made from sugarcane: usually molasses left over from sugar production, sometimes fresh-pressed cane juice. Its history sits in the Caribbean and Latin America, though it is now distilled in Asia, Africa and across the Pacific as well. There is no single international definition — each producing country writes its own rules — and that is one reason the category stretches so far. A rum can be as light as vodka or heavy enough to decide the whole drink on its own.

How it is made

Molasses or cane juice is diluted, fermented and distilled. Short fermentations give a clean spirit; long ones, often with wild yeast from the surroundings, build the esters behind the ripe-fruit intensity of heavy rums. Distillation runs in pot stills, which keep more flavour, or in columns, which lighten it. What follows is bottling or cask ageing, and in a tropical climate ageing moves fast: a year in the barrel can do what several years do in a cool one. Some pale rums have in fact been aged and then filtered through carbon to strip the colour back out.

The main styles

• White or light rum — made for cleanliness, the most generally useful bottle behind a bar.
• Gold and dark — colour from the cask, or from added caramel; dark does not mean old.
• Aged rum — wood, vanilla and dried fruit, structured much like whisky.
• Overproof — bottled well above the usual strength, a fixture of tiki recipes.
• Rhum agricole — fermented from fresh cane juice, grassy and vegetal, associated with the French Antilles.
• Cachaça — Brazil's cane-juice spirit. Brazilian law gives it its own denomination (fresh cane juice, 38–48 % ABV), while the United States classes it as a type of rum distinctive to Brazil; both readings are in use.

What it tastes like

The common ground is the sweetness of cane: brown sugar, banana, coconut, roasted pineapple. Above that sit the vanilla and oak of ageing, or the green, earthy bite of an agricole. Sweet aromas are not sugar, though: most rums are dry.

Rum in cocktails

It serves both as a crisp sour base and as the weight in a long drink. Light rum with citrus and sugar syrup is a Daiquiri; with mint and soda it becomes a Mojito; with cola, a Cuba Libre. Add coconut cream and pineapple juice and you have a Pina Colada; add orange curaçao and almond syrup and you have the tiki landmark, the Mai-tai. Cachaça's standard-bearer is the Caipirinha, built on citrus and sugar pressed together — see muddling.

Choosing a bottle for mixing

No brands, three questions. What was it made from, and how? Molasses or cane juice, pot or column: those two choices set the weight of the spirit. Is the colour telling the truth? Darkness can come from caramel; a stated age statement is the better clue. Does the weight match the recipe? A short sour wants a clean base, while tiki and long drinks welcome something heavier — often two rums at once.