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Sweet and strong, like the kiss of a beloved woman, rum is strongly associated with pirates and sailors. Meanwhile, this drink is popular not only among salted captains and their sailors: it is added to glamorous cocktails, drunk for medical purposes, diluted with hot spiced water and served as a grog for dinner.
Rum is a cane vodka, a product of the fermentation and distillation of sweet molasses obtained from the processing of sugar cane. There is no single recipe for creating rum: the technology is highly dependent on the region. Somewhere “Nelson’s blood” is aged for years in oak barrels from bourbon and sherry, at other distilleries the drink is immediately bottled, and the third productions blend (mix) light and dark rum, achieving an original and soft taste.
One thing is invariable: only alcohol from sugar cane can be considered real rum, and no analogues from other raw materials can bear this name.
The official history of the drink rum begins in the middle of the XNUMXth century – it was then that the name “rum” was first encountered in documents and literature (for example, in the book of the Christian preacher Tertra on the history of the Antilles).
Appearance. It is known for certain that the future “king of the seas” was born in the Caribbean, it is believed that on the island of Barbados, therefore another popular name for rum is “Barbados water”. The hot and humid climate of South America creates ideal conditions for the growth of sugar cane, so while the art of winemaking was honed in Europe, Cuba, Venezuela, Jamaica, Panama and other islands successfully learned how to extract alcohol from cane syrup.
Historical evidence shows that rum (or at least related drinks) was known as far back as ancient India. China, on the territory of modern Iran, in Malaysia, however, the industrial production of cane vodka began only in 1664 in New England (a region in the northeastern United States), when it had not yet managed to separate from the old metropolis.
Origin of the name: versions
The origin of the term rum (rum) has not been precisely established, but there are several versions of varying degrees of reliability.
- From the gypsy word rum, meaning “strong, powerful, strong.”
- From the slang English term rum – “strange, wonderful.”
- From the names of two alcoholic drinks that became especially popular in England in the middle of the XNUMXth century – ramboozle and rumfustian.
- From the English words rumbullion and rumbustion, meaning “fury, noise, fun.”
- From the Dutch name for large glasses – Rummers.
- Abbreviation of the Latin term Saccharum – “sugar”.
- Iterum is an abbreviation for the Latin word “repetition, once more”.
- Modified French arome – “aroma”.
Today, the bottle can show off both English Rum and Spanish Ron or French Rhum. All three languages are spoken in the Caribbean, and depending on the specific location of production, the drink will have distinctive taste and characteristics.
The history of the creation of rum
They say that slaves on the plantations were the first to “discover” rum – it was hard not to notice that the cane juice begins to “wander” under the scorching sun and gains a fortress. The production technology in those days was the simplest, without cubes and distillations, and the output was a rather coarse dark drink with a high alcohol content.
In the second half of the XNUMXth century, Don Bacardi figured out how to improve the product, and after numerous experiments, he received a light “pirate’s potion” with a delicate taste and caramel aroma.
Rum was not just so fond of pirates, on the ship it allowed not to die of thirst and disease: 80-degree alcohol effectively disinfected wounds and minimized the risk of poisoning with second-class products and musty drinking water.
Rum was even included in the official ration of the sailors of Her Majesty’s fleet: until 1970, the sailors were given half a pint (284 ml) of strong drink daily, so that the guys could more easily endure the hardships of marine life.
Today, molasses – sweet molasses, a by-product of sugarcane processing – is not a useless production waste, but a valuable raw material, and rum has ceased to be a cheap alcohol, turning into an elite drink. However, there was a period in the history of Roma when Barbados water was valued no less than gold and played the role of money. The bottle of rum was the hardest currency listed in all of the Caribbean.
Rum classification
Since there is no single classification and strict standard for cane vodka, it is difficult to single out a finite number of types of drink.
By origin, rum happens:
- Spanish;
- English;
- French.
It is curious that we are not talking about the countries themselves, but mainly about the islands of the Caribbean, where this or that language is spoken.
By color:
- Light (with an unexpressed taste, used mainly for cocktails);
- Golden (aged rum, sometimes with spices);
- Dark (pronounced taste).
By fortress:
- Rum elixir (less than 40%);
- Aged (from 40%);
- Strong (up to 80%).
Each country has its own standards. For example, in Venezuela, rum is aged for two years, in the Dominican Republic for only a year, and in Mexico it is limited to 8 months. But in Colombia, real rum must have a strength of at least 50 degrees, while in most states the alcohol content is 40%.
In addition, there is also “fragrant” rum, extra-light, agricultural (from cane sugar without processing), industrial, rum liquor and a host of other variations that do not fit into the standard classifications.
Roma promotion
A strong, moderately sweet alcoholic drink that did not spoil over time, was doomed to popularity. However, the unsanitary conditions in which the colonial settlers had to live served as additional factors: in those days, even children were given diluted rum – it was safer than giving them water contaminated with bacteria.
In the XNUMXth century, the popularity of rum was promoted by the American writer Hemingway, who glorified the taste and sweetness of this drink in his books.
The phylloxera epidemic also played its role in the second half of the XNUMXth century – in Europe, winemaking began to fade into the background and strong alcoholic drinks came to the forefront. During Prohibition in America, bootleggers illegally imported rum into the country – it was more profitable than selling weak wines or bitters for an amateur.
The most famous and popular rum today is Bacardi, more than 170 million boxes of this alcohol are sold annually in 20 countries around the world. Today, the “death of the devil” (another name for cane vodka) is used to treat colds and flu, and at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, rum was often used as a remedy for baldness, indigestion, scurvy and other ailments.
The popularity of this drink is evidenced by the fact that in the 1800s, Australian farmhands often received a salary with bottles of “Nelson’s blood”, and when the government forbade paying with alcohol instead of money, a real riot arose.
The more mature the rum, the richer its taste, but due to the climate of the equatorial countries, up to 10% of the liquid evaporates per year, so keeping Barbados water in a barrel for longer than 2-5 years is unprofitable. Rhum vieux and Ron anejo belong to the premium line and are much more expensive than their “young” counterparts.
