Rum vs. Rhum: The Great Sugar Cane Battle

When I first started this whole wine school thing back in the day, I spent an awful lot of time diving into wine. I wanted to know everything about it: where it comes from, how it is made, introduce myself to new grapes...I couldn't get enough. Later, I realized that I can nerd out about spirits, too. This was a whole other world to me. All I knew about spirits was that I liked whiskey, and couldn't stand the hangovers a well-known spiced rum brand used to give me every time I drank rum.

Eventually, thanks to time, research, and study, I gave rum a second chance; mostly because I had to if I wanted to pass the spirits components of my exams, but I became genuinely interested in how this stuff gets made and ends up on store shelves. Little did I realize the variety of rums available to us was through the roof (and now roughly a decade later, American craft distilleries have added another layer of choices to the mix).

This is a post that can easily get out of hand, so let's get to some nuts and bolts. Rum is made from sugar cane. It can be made from either the juice directly crushed/pressed from the cane, or it can be made from molasses, the thick, sweet residue that is left over after heat cane juice to extract sugar crystals. The latter is the most popular base material; add water to molasses to allow for proper fermentation to make a base "wine" that gets fed into any number and type of distillation pot or column. The common link here is that the resulting distillate is very aromatic and exotically fruity. Rums made from cane juice can be fermented without water addition and gives you a leaner, grassier, and "greener" flavor and aroma profile. From here, the distillate can be bottled unaged or sent to (typically large, neutral barrels) for aging prior to bottling.

Simple right? Wait...we have culture and historical connections that really dictate rum styles: the British, French, and Spanish Caribbean islands dating back to the colonial period all have vastly different profiles. How about some examples, you say? No problem. Generally speaking...

British colonies: the Navy was given rations daily all the way up until about 1970, which would be diluted with water, sweetened, and maybe a squeeze of lime. The following three locations offered high-intensity rums to help stand up to those additional ingredients. Pot stills are the main reason this character is retained in the rums.

Jamaica: very intense aromatically, fruity and floral. Think of very ripe bananas and wildflowers. Appleton Estate VX ($22) is a fine example, consistently delivering on the Jamaican style for such a good price.

Guyana: Rich and full-bodied, not as pungent as the Jamaican style. Its deep flavors and weight are valuable in blends, but can stand alone as well. El Dorado is the easiest one to find; if you can taste the 3 Year ($18) and the 12 Year ($32) side by side, you will get to know both the style and the effects of aging.

Barbados: softer and more understated than the previous two, and is often used to either reduce the impact of a pungent rum from Jamaica or give some body and flavor to a lighter rum. Mount Gay Eclipse ($26) should illustrate this with its combination of apricot, banana, brown sugar, and baking spices.

French colonies: rather than use sugar cane to extract sugar crystals, the French used sugar beets instead for that commodity. In turn, this led to the use of cane juice for their rhum agricoles, a term that may only be used when this style is made in Martinique or Guadeloupe. Pot stills are responsible for retaining the intense flavors, but there are column-distilled examples that lighten things up to a degree.

Rhum agricole is even more intense and pungent on the nose than a Jamaican rum. The overall category seems to go over very well with Scotch and Cognac drinkers (an observation made by our friendly attendant at the Strong Water Tavern on a recent trip to Orlando) as there is a drier finish to these spirits than the examples from the British colonies above. Rhum Clément has an outstanding range: try the Canne Bleue unaged white rhum and the VSOP aged rhum, each running you somewhere in the $30-$35 range.

Spanish colonies: this style patterns after the Cuban style. These are light and smooth-textured rums, where column stills help make high-strength, delicate rums suitable for bottling unaged, or lightly aged  and bottled after filtration. This is where you think of the Bacardi brand, whose main facility is in Puerto Rico these days. The golden rums from places like Nicaragua and Panama are often middle-of-the-road in style, and in a good way. Not too strong, not too delicate (aromatically and flavor-wise), and very little fire when compared to other rum styles. Flor de Caña 4 Year golden rum ($16) and Ron Abuelo 7 Year ($25) give you great aged examples of this style.

Cachaça is a Brazil-specific style of rhum agricole. If you need an in-depth discussion on that, see last week's post where I broke down a tasting with a visitor to the store.

Craft: Let me give some love to a local Connecticut company, The Real McCoy, who I have mentioned about a year ago in a post. Their 12 Year rum is released in Bourbon cask-aged and Madeira cask-aged examples. These retail for about $60 each, but if you love aged rum to sip neat you should absolutely see if these are available in your local markets.

So there you have it. A crash-course in rum vs. rhum. It is obviously not this simplistic, but hey...it's summer. You want to enjoy your weekend. Use this as a guide to get you steered in the right direction with r(h)um and may the best style win you over!

Spirit Spotlight: Avuá Cachaça

One of the aspects I really enjoy about working with my local wine and spirits shop, the Divine Wine Emporium, is that we get some great visitors who travel with our hardworking sales reps. Some interesting people represent compelling brands and categories of adult beverages, and I have a great time learning about them. Of course, having the opportunity to taste said products is a lovely bonus as well.

Last week, the regional rep from Avuá Cachaça paid a visit to The Boss and me. Aside from being friendly and passionate about Cachaça, he became my favorite person that day when these were introduced to us:

The paper towels were there to wipe the drool off of my face.

Not a bad way to start your day! By the way, some of you may be wondering, "So what is this stuff, Cachaça, anyway?" Cachaça (pronounced kah-SHAH-sah), is a faction within the rum category. Rather than distilling molasses in rum production, Cachaça production involves fermenting and distilling the cane juice that is directly milled and pressed from sugar cane. Cachaça can only be produced in Brazil, however other forms of Cachaça are generally known as Rhum Agricole (popular in the French Caribbean islands). Cachaça uses single distillation, which preserves the natural delicate character of the sugar cane; many industrial Cachaça producers use columns for efficiency and a lighter flavor, while Avuá uses single pot stills to retain maximum flavor developed from fermentation and slow-controlled disillation. Barrel aging is done via many local strains of wood, and is done frequently; the majority of Cachaça we currently receive in the U.S. is a white, unaged spirit. We are slowly receiving more wood-aged examples, and the Avuá lineup confirms this.

I was introduced to this spirit for the first time by The Greatest Wife In The World after she had been away on a trip to Brazil...little did I know that Cachaça is the country's national spirit (the same way Tequila is for Mexico or Bourbon is for the United States). It was there that she experienced caipirinhas, a Cachaça-based cocktail that uses a lime-superfine sugar muddle with ice in its most simplistic form. However, the bounty of exotic fruits, notably passionfruit, leads to something otherworldly (from what I have been told).

When we tasted through the lineup, I noticed a common link; fragrance. Cachaça is generally an aromatic spirit with a combination of tropical fruit, grass/earth, and a wide-ranging bouquet of flowers. The various strains of wood all lend their own unique compounds, some with baking spices, others with a floral perfume (which remind me of Japanese whisky aged in local oak in some ways), and still others that are neutral, thereby allowing the distillate to slowly oxidize and concentrate in a tropical aging environment.

I had mentioned the Avuá in a recent post, but to go into more detail the Prata has some texture and richness, packed with tropical flavors. There is also the Still Strength, which is a 90 proof Cachaça made from a different distillate from the Prata, a bit lighter and more fiery making it ideal in a cocktail since the higher proof will stand up to the addition of non-alcoholic mixers.

I kid you not...the Avua Amburana tasted almost EXACTLY like this cereal of my youth.

From there, all of the oak-aged examples use the distillate that made the Prata. Avuá Oak is a French oak-aged product that almost makes the Cachaça seem Cognac-like. Avuá Amburana is made from local Amburana wood, and let me tell you...when you stick your nose in the glass, it smells like you just opened a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch! The Avuá Balsamo (not yet available in CT or all markets) is a very aromatic local redwood with herbaceous tones. The Jequitiba Rosa is a rosewood-aged Cachaça that gives a fruity character with a little bitterness (think of a less pungent Campari here). The Avuá Tapinhoa is a single barrel product that is a recipe dating back decades to the Master Distiller's father. Very coconutty with wildflower aromas. The finish on all of the Cachaças goes on and on.

It was a very cool experience. Prices range from $35 for the Prata to $80 in some markets for the Tapinhoa. Avuá's textured and fragrant Cachaças, innovative native wood-aging, and commitment to promoting the category, all place it in a unique position to help grow the name recognition of Cachaça. For the record, we had to bring in the Prata and Amburana to put on the shelves. It's a fantastic way to be introduced to Cachaça and I hope you enjoy one of these, whether in caiprinhas, other cocktails, or simply as-is.

(Tip of the cap to the folks at Avuá and Worldwide Wines for setting up this tasting.)