I mentioned a while back that it seems like every month has at least one day devoted to some kind of booze. Today, 16 August, is National Rum Day. A friend of ours always drank Meyers dark rum — never mixed it with anything, just drank it straight. In Vietnam, after things settled down a bit after Tet, we sometimes got Saturday or Sunday afternoon “off,” and we started a tradition of going to one of our houses and making huge pitchers of Daiquiris. Our maids usually made lots and lots of chà ciò (Vietnamese spring rolls, or more accurately, “pork rolls.”) It was something we looked forward to when we got some down-time on those Saturdays or Sundays. And rum and coke is usually one of the first “mixed drinks” people try when they become drinking age…
But today is National Rum Day, so it’s only proper that it get an entry in my blog…. when we think of rum, we tend to think of the Caribbean, but it’s actually a very international spirit.
We know that rum is an alcoholic beverage and pirates like rum, but what exactly is rum, and what makes rum —rum? Rum is an alcohol distilled from byproducts of sugarcane. Some varieties are made from molasses, others from sugarcane juice, but all rum, after it’s distilled, is clear. The color you see in some rum is from additives or seasonings.
Rum was first created in the Caribbean after it was discovered that molasses could be fermented into alcohol. It turns out that it was the slaves who made the discovery — but it was the Colonials who discovered how to distill it into “true” rum.
Sugarcane, the crop from which rum is produced, was actually domesticated in New Guinea as far back as 8000 BC, and there is evidence to suggest that some kind of sugarcane spirit was produced in India sometime around 300 AD. Sugarcane wasn’t imported to the Caribbean until much later — probably in the mid-16th century, and then rum production exploded and made the Caribbean both the “practical and spiritual home for rum production.”
People think that because rum is made from byproducts of sugarcane that the final product is loaded with sugar, but after the distillation process, rum has just about the same amount of sugar as any other spirit.
There’s a saying that “wine is fine, but liquor is quicker.” I suppose that applies to rum, and I’ve heard that the best ideas come while sipping rum. The best rum slogan that I remember was a sign behind a bar in Bangkok — it read, “Have a glass of rum and see what you’ll become.” Good advice for National Rum Day.
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