Below is a preview of the Classifying Rum chapter of Modern Caribbean Rum, by Matt Pietrek and Carrie Smith. Available at Wonk Press and select international retailers outside the US.

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In the pantheon of distilled spirits, no other category comes close to rum’s enormous flavor palate and diverse means of production. Rum is so wide-ranging that we naturally desire to divide it into various subcategories to better grasp its nuance; we don’t see a strong need to subdivide bourbon, cognac, or vodka in the same way. Commonly used rum categories include blanket terms like “gold,” “overproof,” and “navy,” yet we never hear of “gold” bourbon. We seldom hear of “overproof” Japanese whisky, and no “navy cognac” is offered for sale.

Rum is the most misunderstood spirit, and much of that misunderstanding is due to how rum is categorized and sold. It seems natural to classify rums in the simple ways we do, but as we’ll see below, most rum classifications are fundamentally flawed.

Why Must We Classify Rum?

The world of rum offers an enormous breadth of flavors due to the many ways it’s made. Imagine the flavors of light Puerto Rican rum, Jamaican overproof rum, and Martinique rhum agricole enjoyed side by side. You’d find a much broader spectrum of flavors than in a similar cross-section of bourbons, Scotch whiskies, cognacs, or tequilas.

Because of the extreme diversity across producers, it’s not enough to simply say “rum” in a cocktail recipe. It would be akin to specifying “vegetable” in a stew recipe.

Thus, when talking about rum, it’s essential to specify which type we’re speaking of. The simple categories used today are severely lacking. Retail outlets often group their rums by color— white, gold, dark. Cocktail recipes often indicate only “white rum,” “aged rum,” or “navy strength rum.” These descriptions aren’t particularly helpful.

We can and should improve upon these outdated and unhelpful category descriptions. But first, we must step back and understand what these categories convey and the issues with each. The first step is to reflect on how we classify many similar everyday items.

Classification and Context

Classification: The action or process of classifying something according to shared qualities or characteristics – Oxford English Dictionary

Picture the last vehicle you traveled in. How would you answer if asked what kind of vehicle it was?

You likely wouldn’t reply with any of the following answers:

• Red
• German
• Diesel
• Four-door

You also wouldn’t say, “Two-door, with a four-cylinder, 2.0-liter, front-mounted-engine.” As oddly specific as that is, it doesn’t differentiate a Mini Cooper from a pickup truck. Even specifying the brand might not help, as that brand might have both a two-door coupe and a sports utility vehicle meeting the earlier description.

The larger point is, we classify vehicles in many ways: by color, manufacturer, size, country of origin, drivetrain (2WD, 4WD), or fuel type (gas, diesel, hybrid, electric). We also instinctively choose the most appropriate classification depending on the context. When scanning for an arriving rideshare, knowing its color is more helpful than knowing it was made in Germany. But when renting a vehicle for snowy weather, we care less about its color and more that it’s a four-wheel-drive. In short, when specifying vehicle details, we automatically select the best classification from various options for the context at hand.

When it comes to rum, things aren’t so easy. Rum’s numerous classifications can be easy to understand but aren’t useful in certain situations. A set of Jamaican rums could be alternately classified as white, Jamaican, pot still, overproof, and British style. However, if a recipe uses a poorly chosen classification, the resulting flavor profile may not match the original intent. A daiquiri made with a fine, twelve-year-old Jamaican rum will be very different than a daiquiri made with unaged Jamaican overproof rum, despite both belonging in the same category.

This chapter will look at various classification schemas and examine their issues. Naturally, we’ve divided the types of classifications into four categories:

• The rum’s observable physical characteristics
• The rum’s heritage and where it was made
• The rum’s production details
• Other

Physical Characteristic Classifications

These classifications rely on physical attributes that can be seen or measured. They do not depend on knowing how or where the rum was made.

Color

A rum’s color has no bearing on its taste nor reflects its age, where it was made, or its alcoholic strength. Categorizing a rum by color (or lack thereof) ignores the rum’s far more important attributes, first and foremost, flavor. Consider this hypothetical exchange at a restaurant:

“Sir, what type of cheese would you like on your hamburger?”

“Light yellow, please.”

The resulting hamburger might arrive with Swiss, cheddar, or gruyere—all quite different, thank you. Yet when it comes to rum, white/gold/dark is the classification used in countless recipes and retail settings.

White Rum

If you asked people what constitutes a white or silver rum, most would say it has the appearance of crystal-clear water.

However, rums meeting that simple criterion vary substantially in flavor and strength. Some are unaged, while others aged for several years before carbon filtration removed their color. Some are made from molasses, while others are made from cane juice. They will taste very different. A label that simply says “white rum” gives no hints about these vital details.

Consider three types of “white rum”:

• The most common type of rum on US store shelves is Puerto Rican silver rum. It’s light in flavor and has aged for at least one year. Carbon filtration removed its color.
• Unaged agricole from Martinique and Guadeloupe looks like Puerto Rican white rum but has a very different and more intense flavor because it was made from cane juice rather than molasses.
• Jamaican overproof rum is also crystal clear. However, these rums are intensely flavored to the point of being known as “funky.” They are also fifty percent higher in alcoholic strength than the Puerto Rican rum.

Unfortunately, the consumer or bartender has little information to differentiate these three rums, all of which meet the simple criteria of having no discernible color.

Despite its widespread use in retail settings and in recipes, white is a terrible way to describe rum. Unfortunately, many brands persist in labeling their rums as white or silver, out of consumer familiarity. It does the category no favors.

Gold Rum

Gold rums are light to moderate bronze in color. A common consumer misperception is that the deeper a rum’s color, the longer it’s been aged. In reality, the opposite is often true.

Many rums, including certain unaged rums, add spirit caramel to give the perception of age. Conversely, many premium long-aged rums are lighter in color because no coloring has been added.

When it comes to aging, two primary factors influence the depth of color:

• Past usage of a cask: The longer a cask is used, the less color it imparts over time.
• Environmental conditions: Rums aged in warmer climates such as the Caribbean acquire color faster than rums aged in cooler climes such as Northern Europe. Chapter 8 describes this in detail.

Like white rums, gold rums have widely divergent flavor profiles because of the different means of production. Unfortunately, labeling a rum gold conveys none of that information.

Dark Rum

Adjacent to gold rum is dark or black rum. Rather than a shade of bronze, dark rums are deeply brown; some are nearly opaque.

Dark rums are relatively inexpensive and do not acquire their deep color from decades in a cask. Instead the color is mostly a result of spirit caramel. These rums are often floated on top of a cocktail as a visual flourish rather than a statement of their high quality.

Many spiced rums are also heavily colored with caramel. Consumers are frequently unaware, so select these rums for color without knowing that some rums that look dark are heavily spiced while others aren’t.

Alcoholic Strength

Using alcoholic strength (navy strength or overproof, for example) as a rum’s primary description is quite common. However, alcoholic strength has no bearing on a rum’s quality, source material, aging, or flavor profile.

Classifying rums by alcoholic strength is akin to classifying all motor vehicles solely by their horsepower, regardless of whether they’re motorcycles, powerboats, or minivans.

What follows are the primary strength-based rum categories.

Overproof

Overproof refers to “proof,” an obsolete measure of alcoholic strength used by the British until the late twentieth century. The system is also referred to as imperial proof.

If your understanding of proof is “twice the ABV,” you’re using the American definition of proof, which is quite different than the British system.

A bit of history: Great Britain originally defined a “proof spirit” as:

…that which, at the Temperature of Fifty-one Degrees by Fahrenheit’s Thermometer, weighs exactly Twelve-thirteenth Parts of an equal Measure of distilled Water. [1]

That’s a bit challenging to understand. In today’s terminology, a proof spirit is 57.15 percent ABV. A spirit below 57.15 percent ABV is underproof, while a spirit above 57.15 percent ABV is overproof.

A helpful analogy to understand British proof is human body temperature. The standard human body temperature measures 37 °C. A fever is a body temperature above 37 °C, whereas hypothermia is substantially below 37 °C. Thus in this metaphor, overproof rum is akin to a fever, and underproof rum is like hypothermia.

The British proof system is no longer used in common practice today, but the overproof term remains—a bit of rum history leveraged for marketing purposes.

Some people believe that an overproof label means greater than 50 percent ABV. This may be because a US “proof gallon” is a US gallon of spirit at 50 percent ABV. However, there is no legal definition of overproof in the US. Rather, many brands simply use “overproof” to convey that the rum is strong.

Jamaica, Guyana, and Puerto Rico all make overproof rum, yet these products are far from interchangeable in terms of flavor profile. A cocktail recipe that specifies overproof rum with no other criteria is a potential disaster waiting to happen.

151

 The “151” in rum names like Lemon Hart 151, Gosling’s 151, and Don Q 151 refers to the rum’s strength in American proof: 151 proof is 75.5 percent ABV.

Why 151 became such a common alcoholic strength is difficult to establish. One theory is that it was a common strength of rum exported by British Guiana rum makers. The first rum featuring the “151” moniker was Hudson’s Bay 151, a Demerara rum bottled in Canada by the Hudson’s Bay Company. It first appeared around the time US prohibition ended in 1933. Puerto Rican–made 151 rums soon followed.

Few commonalities exist across the many 151 proof rums on the market, other than alcoholic strength. As with overproof, a 151 designation provides no flavor information.

Navy Strength

From 1866 onward, the rum Britain’s Royal Navy issued to its sailors measured 4.5 degrees underproof.[2] In modern terms, that equals 54.5 percent ABV. Unfortunately, many brands confuse navy strength with proof strength. As noted earlier, proof strength is 57.15 percent ABV. True navy strength at 54.5 percent is less than that, so underproof.

Brands selling “navy strength” rum at 57 percent ABV are ignoring history. Fortunately, a few brands, including Pusser’s and Black Tot, respect the history of Royal Navy rum and bottle at 54.5 percent ABV.

Cask Strength

Cask strength rum is bottled at whatever strength it measured when removed from its cask. Such rums vary widely in strength: Some are as low as 50 percent ABV, while others are near 80 percent ABV.

Although various rums say cask strength on their label, the term is rarely used in retail classifications or in recipes. As with the other strength-based categories, cask strength conveys nothing about a rum’s flavor, quality, or production process. Cask strength is just one specific detail about a rum.

Ester Level Marques (Jamaica)

From the late1800s onward, dozens of Jamaican distilleries made a wide range of rum, from relatively light to very heavy. The heavier rums commanded a higher price from European rum blenders, so a classification system arose based on how many esters (organic flavor compounds) a rum contained.

In 1947, J.R. McFarlane, chief chemist at Caymanas Estates Ltd., wrote:

The ester content has come to be regarded as the criterion of quality in a rum, … there is a real basis for a system of classification of rum types according to their ester content. With regard to the four main types, the ester content is usually given as:

• Common Clean  80 — 150 parts per 100,000 alcohol.
• Plummer             150 — 200 parts per 100,000 alcohol.
• Wedderburn      200 — 300 parts per 100,000 alcohol.
• Flavoured.          700 —1600 parts per 100,000 alcohol. [3]

These values translate directly to gr/hlAA in today’s preferred units. For instance, “150 parts per 100,000 alcohol” is 150 gr/hlAA.

The designations had been in common use in prior decades, but the above is the earliest known mapping of ester ranges to category names. Although ester-level categories can be used for any rum, they’re rarely used outside Jamaica. Their use by brands today is simply a nod to Jamaica’s rum history.

As a historical note, the Flavoured marque meant highly flavored, not added flavor; such rums also had alternate names, including German and Continental. Today it’s colloquially referred to as high ester rum.

High ester rum isn’t intended for drinking like normal rum. Rather, it’s blended in small quantities with other rums to give a “top note.” High ester rums are also used as flavorings in confectionery, ice cream, tobacco, and other consumables. Once only available to rum merchants such as E&A Scheer, a few savvy independent bottlers have begun selling high ester rums to consumers, and eager rum enthusiasts have quickly snapped them up.

Spiced

Spiced rum is a rum infused with a spice mixture. The specific spices are up to the rum brand and differ from brand to brand, although vanilla, orange peel, and cinnamon are frequently used.

Many spiced rums, including Captain Morgan, Kraken, and Sailor Jerry, are substantially sweetened; very few commercial spiced rums do not include added sugar. Spiced rums are not easily interchangeable in drink recipes, as their flavors and sweetness levels vary widely.

Geography/Heritage Classifications

A common rum classification is the country where it was produced. This assumes that rum makers in close proximity will by nature make rums in the same way and with similar flavor profiles. In the colonial era, this had some basis in truth.

However, the rum world has substantially evolved since then. Distilleries seek to differentiate themselves from each other, and in many cases, little incentive remains to stick with obsolete notions about how their former colony/country once made rum.

Country of Origin

Some Caribbean countries are inextricably linked to specific flavor profiles. Jamaican rums are “funky” and redolent of overripe fruit. Rhum agricole from Martinique and Guadeloupe, made from fresh-pressed cane juice, is earthy, organic, and grassy. Cuban and Puerto Rican rums are light, delicate, deriving most of their flavor from aging. Cocktail recipes (especially older recipes) frequently specify a rum from a particular country, e.g., “Puerto Rican rum.”

While it was once reasonable to specify a rum by its country of origin because such rums were similar enough, those days are long gone. For instance, Grenada’s River Antoine makes wild-fermentation cane syrup rum with flavors rivaling Jamaican overproof rum and Haitian clairin. Just down the road, the Renegade distillery produces a cane juice rum similar to rhum agricole from Martinique. On the island’s south coast, Grenada Distillers Ltd. makes a molasses-based, column-distilled rum far closer to a Puerto Rican rum than River Antoine’s rum. Yet all three are Grenadian rum by provenance.

Barbados is sometimes said to have a “house style.” Rums from Mount Gay, Foursquare, and West Indies Rum Distillery are usually a blend of pot and column distillates, described as “center of the road” relative to more extreme rums from Jamaica and Haiti. However, both Foursquare and the West Indies Rum Distillery have recently experimented with high ester rums, traditionally Jamaica’s forte.

Most large distilleries now make a wide variety of distillates, blending them to offer a wider range of rums. For example, Demerara Distillers makes both light rum and heavy, pot-distilled rum, and all manner in between. Yet all are “Demerara rum” per the country-of-origin classification.

In the 1930s, St. Croix made only cane juice rum. Today, the island’s rums are made with multicolumn stills and have more in common stylistically with Puerto Rican rum than the cane juice rums of Martinique and Guadeloupe. The country-of-origin classification doesn’t take such changes into account.

Even Puerto Rico isn’t immune to evolution from its well-known style. While the island is the single largest producer of light, column-distilled molasses rums, a new producer known as San Juan Artisan Distillery has brought sugarcane agriculture back to the island, producing cane juice rum in pot stills.

In short, a country-based classification is easy to understand, but as the rum world changes, its usefulness diminishes.

Colonial Heritage

In recent years, Luca Gargano and others began classifying rums using the colonial backdrop of where spirits were made; “British-style,” “French-style,” and “Spanish-style” categories came into vogue.

In the 1600s and 1700s, all rum was made in a fairly similar manner. That began to change in the 1800s as the colonies of Spain and France evolved their rum-making techniques, while Great Britain’s colonies mostly stuck to what worked for them. Different techniques yield different rum flavor profiles. Chapter 2 explains the evolution of these rum styles in great detail, so we’ll keep it to a high-level overview here.

If the rum world had stopped evolving at the start of the twentieth century, a colonial classification system (British, French, Spanish) might broadly make sense. However, cross-pollination of styles accelerated in the latter half of the last century.

For instance, consumer tastes shifted in the 1950s toward the light rums of Cuba and Puerto Rico., and producers in non-Spanish heritage countries like Jamaica scrambled to make similar rums. A Jamaican rum advertisement from the era compared itself to vodka and gin.

What are we to call the rums of this era from Jamaica? Are they British heritage rums, due to Jamaica’s lineage? Or Spanish heritage because they are more similar to classic Cuban? These questions expose the weakness of the colonial classification.

The colonial classification is occasionally useful shorthand for those well acquainted with rum’s history. But because it has so many exceptions to the rule, the conversation can be confusing to non-experts. For this and other reasons, the use of the colonial classification is now downplayed.

Navy Rum

Rum naturally evokes images of the sea, of the sailors and pirates that traversed it centuries ago. To no surprise, such imagery has been held up as marketing fodder for more than a century. Among those nautical tropes, navy rum has particularly captured the imagination. Of the many tales, most are factually incorrect. So, what exactly was navy rum?

Most European navies supplied their sailors with beer, wine, and spirits to maintain morale. Before metal tanks to hold spirits became commonplace, these liquids rested in wooden casks and soon spoiled aboard ship unless the contents were fortified with enough alcohol. Naturally, the higher alcoholic strength of distilled spirits let them stay unspoiled longer. Brandy, made from grapes, was a common spirit across navies, but rum took particular hold with Great Britain’s Royal Navy because of its sugar-growing and thus rum-making Caribbean colonies. As a result, the term “navy rum” is far more associated with Great Britain than other countries.

Over the 170-odd years that the Royal Navy blended rum for its sailors, the sources and styles of rum changed repeatedly. Contrary to long-held belief, there was no specific navy rum recipe; the navy’s blenders worked with whatever stocks were available.[4]

The Royal Navy typically purchased unaged or very young rums from British colonies, then briefly aged them in extensive vatting systems in several provisioning yards. Before issuing the rum to ships, it was diluted to 54.5 percent ABV, and a substantial amount of caramel coloring was also added.

In the final decades of British navy rum, into the mid-twentieth century, the typical blend was 60 percent Demerara (Guyana), 30 percent Trinidad, and the remaining ten percent from Australia, Barbados, or elsewhere; Jamaican rum was rarely part of the navy’s blend for the last century it was issued.

When the daily rum tot was halted in 1970, the Royal Navy sold off its remaining rum stocks in one-gallon flagons. Some of that rum is still available today, from the Black Tot brand. It is the only true navy rum available for sale.

Consumer Navy Rum

With so many sailors passing through Britain’s navy, it was inevitable that brands would tap into fond recollections of the daily rum ration and create consumer “navy rums.” The earliest known examples of commercial rum labeled “navy rum” are from the 1870s, but their popularity soared during and after World War II.

Brands making “navy rum” couldn’t purchase the actual rum blended and vatted by the British navy. Nor did they have the facilities to blend the rums the way the navy had. Instead, consumer navy rums such as Lamb’s, Lemon Hart, and Rope & Anchor bottled young, heavily colored rum, mostly Demerara (Guyanese) but also from Trinidad.

In 1979, US businessman Charles Tobias launched the Pusser’s navy rum product. Unlike other self-styled navy rums, Pusser’s was blended to the recipe provided by the British admiralty, and it included rums from Guyana and Trinidad. However, Pusser’s has since shifted production entirely to a blend of rums from Guyana, still under the “navy rum” moniker.

As a final note, several modern brands sell rum today that is advertised as “navy strength.” Most are not bottled at the proper strength to match the characteristics of Britain’s navy rum.

Technical / Production Detail Classifications

Dissatisfied with flaws in the commonly used rum classifications, various rum experts have put forth new systems based on production details such as fermentation source material and distillation technology. These updated classifications are more objective but can present other issues.

Gargano Classification

In 2015, Velier’s Luca Gargano introduced a classification system known as the Gargano classification. Originally it had four categories:

• Pure Single Rum – 100 percent batch (pot) still rum from one distillery
• Single Blended Rum – a blend of only pot still and traditional column still rums from one distillery
• Rum – Rum from a traditional column still
• Industrial Rum – Rum from a multicolumn still

The Gargano classification has evolved several times since its first launch.

The most recently published Gargano classification has eight categories. Each embodies a particular combination of source material, distillation technology, and distillery identification.  (The original classification did not refer to the fermentation source material, i.e., cane juice and molasses, and the “Industrial” category went away; perhaps it was too pejorative. Rums that don’t identify where they come from are simply categorized as “blended’ or “vatted.” The specification notes, “…we do not know how they are made and where they come from.”

Name	Source Material	Distillation Technology	Distillery Statement  (Y/N)
Pure Single Agricole Rum	Cane juice	Batch (pot)	Y
Pure Single Rum	Molasses or syrup	Batch (pot)	Y
Agricole Rum	Cane juice	Traditional 1 or 2 column	Y
Singled Blended Rum	Molasses	A blend of batch and column	Y
Traditional Rum	Molasses or syrup	Traditional 1 or 2 column	Y
Rum	Molasses or syrup	Blend of batch and column	Y
Blended Rum	Molasses	Traditional 1 or 2 column	N
Vatted Rum	Molasses	Blend of batch and column	N

The Gargano classification provides no insights on what a rum tastes like; instead, its categories identify rums made comparably, for example, pot-distilled molasses-based rum. A key distinction the classification makes is between traditional stills (one or two columns) and multicolumn stills producing light rum.

The Gargano categories don’t consider fermentation details (wild or cultured yeast) or aging. This is intentional and not an oversight.

In the absence of concrete information about how a particular rum is made, consumers typically choose the least expensive option. The Gargano classification helps consumers differentiate between rums made at traditional distilleries from rums from distilleries prioritizing volume over quality.

Some might note that Luca Gargano is in the business of selling high-end rum, so such a distinction is valuable for his business. His classification takes a cue from Scotch whisky, where “Single Malt Scotch whisky” has a higher perceived value than “blended grain whisky.” Although some have said the Gargano classification isn’t about quality, it’s hard to argue that the category names do not favor some categories over others.

While it’s fair to say the Gargano classification is based on objective criteria, its value depends on the context where it’s used. For instance, some rum bars have organized their rum list around the Gargano classification. However, even a single category like “pure single rum” encompasses a huge swath of flavor profiles, ages, and quality levels.

Cate Classification

In their book Smuggler’s Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum, and the Cult of Tiki, Martin and Rebecca Cate use a classification based primarily on production details, e.g., source material, distillation process, and aging. The twenty-one Cate categories can be condensed into seven meta-categories:

• Pot Still (Unaged, Lightly Aged, Aged, Long Aged)
• Blended (Lightly Aged, Aged, Long Aged)
• Column Still (Lightly Aged, Aged, Long Aged)
• Black (Pot Still, Blended, Blended Overproof)
• Cane (Coffey Still Aged, Pot Still Unaged, Pot Still Aged)
• Cane AOC Martinique Rhum Agricole (Blanc, Vieux, Long Aged)
• Pot Still Cachaça (Unaged, Aged)

The Cate classification is effectively a superset of Gargano, with age as an additional dimension. It retains Gargano’s batch-vs.-continuous-distillation aspect but ignores the different types of continuous distillation. The Cate classification brings legal definitions into the mix by separating Martinique AOC rum and Brazilian cachaça from other cane juice spirits, for example. It also uses four age brackets rather than specific age ranges: unaged, lightly aged, aged, and long-aged.

Like Gargano, the Cate classification does not tackle flavor profiles. Rums within a single Cate category often differ enough to not be suitable replacements for each other in a cocktail recipe. Nonetheless, the Cate classification has its fans, and the book uses the categories in its recipes.

The Whisky Exchange Classification

In 2019, The Whisky Exchange, a UK-based spirit retailer, published another production-detail based classification, this one inspired by Scotch whisky:

Single Distillery Rum

• Single Traditional Pot Still
  Rum distilled at one distillery in traditional pot stills. These produce lower-strength spirits and are usually have a weightier style with richer flavours and character.
• Single Traditional Column
  Rum distilled at one distillery in traditional column stills. These are stills that consist of just an analyser and rectifier – the two columns found in old fashioned stills for more than a century – even if either column is split to produce a total of more than two physical columns. While these generally produce high-strength spirit, they leave many more flavour compounds in the spirit than more modern designs of still do, giving more characterful rums.
• Single Traditional Blended
  A blend of traditional pot-still and traditional column-still rums from the same distillery.
• Single Modernist
  Rum made at a single distillery using modern multicolumn stills. These stills consist of more than an analyser and rectifier, and include a hydro-selector/purifier as well as potentially other columns. These generally produce spirit at a high strength and with less character than traditional rums.

Multi-distillery Rum

• Blended Traditionalist
  A blend of rums from multiple distilleries that only includes single traditional spirit.
• Blended Modernist
  A blend of rums from multiple distilleries that includes single modernist rum. [5]

The Whisky Exchange classification has strong similarities to the Gargano classification but is easier for non-experts to understand. Like Gargano, it doesn’t address the age dimension, nor flavor profiles. However, The Whisky Exchange simultaneously published an alternative, flavor-oriented categorization, designated as “Flavour Camps.” (The notes in parenthesis are very brief summations.)

• Light and Uncomplicated (Multicolumn, distilled to high strengths)
• Herbaceous and Grassy (Cane juice)
• Tropical and Fruity (Jamaican, ester-forward)
• Fruity and Spicy (Aged rums from traditional stills)
• Dry and Spicy (Wood-derived flavors from maturation)
• Rich and Treacly (Sweetened)

The Flavour Camps are a good start in representing common flavor profiles, although they leave lots of room for interpretation. For example’s Bacardi Ocho rum could be alternately categorized as “Light and Uncomplicated,” “Dry and Spicy,” or “Rich and Treacly.”

Loose Ends

There are two more informal classifications to note briefly.

Sipping / Mixing

Rum connoisseurs who also make cocktails often designate their rums as “sipping” or “mixing.” This distinction often correlates to cost; mixing rums are affordable enough to use in cocktails while sipping rums are at a higher price point and thus should be enjoyed by themselves. An alternative school of thought believes that if a rum is good enough to use in cocktails, it should also be enjoyable to drink by itself.

The challenge in defining sipping vs. mixing is that one person’s USD 40 bottle may be their top-shelf sipping rum, while another consumer happily mixes it with ginger beer. Is that rum a sipping or a mixing rum? There’s no objective answer.

New rum enthusiasts are often drawn to sweetened rums marketed as premium “sipping” rums. With more experience, many collectors gravitate to drier rums without additives.

Age Ranges

Although age ranges are rarely used in commercial settings, they’re frequently used to denote categories of rums in tasting competitions, where entries are typically divided into age ranges. For example, a typical judging category might be “molasses-rum, pot distilled, 3-6 years.”

An Alternative to Classifications

Technical classifications like Gargano roll up several production dimensions into one category, e.g., “pure single rum.” The category name easily fits on any label, and one might presume that two different bottles labeled “pure single rum” share some similarities. But without memorizing the specifics of each, it’s not clear exactly what information the category name conveys.[6]

The above isn’t intended as a dismissal of the technical classifications. Rather, it begs the question: Could the technical details a category represents also appear on the label? For example, both “cane juice” and “pot distilled”?

In an ideal world, rum makers would work together to define a set of technical details to include on labels or make available via QR code. These technical details would include items any forthright rum producer would want to disclose:  source material (cane juice or molasses), distillation technology (batch or continuous), and aging cask (ex-bourbon, new French oak). Enthusiasts and consumers alike could easily access consistent and essential information to help understand what’s in the bottle.

A few forward-thinking rum producers have gone down his path with varying levels of disclosure. However, left to their own devices, what one company might call a pot still, another might call a batch still. One bottle may say “cane syrup,” while another says “cane honey.”  These seemingly small differences ultimately make it harder for consumers to make a side-by-side comparison. In an ideal world, producers disclosing technical details would agree on terminology and units of measure. Standardizing the terminology should be a baseline goal of any effort.

SUMMARY

Rum’s diversity makes it essential to divide it into various categories. However, poorly defined or inappropriate classifications pose significant problems. As the rum community works to elevate rum’s perception as a premium spirit, we all need to reevaluate and improve the obsolete classifications and terminology used for rum.

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[1] Sikes’s hydrometer & table; An abstract of the Act of Parliament, 56 Geo. III Cap. 140, 1817.

[2] Historical information on the issue of rum in the Royal Navy, British National Archives ADM 114/152.

[3] McFarland, J.R., The Chemistry of Rum Production, The International Sugar Journal, March 1947.

[4] Pietrek, Matt (2020). A (Non-)History of Jamaica in British Navy Rum – Cocktail Wonk. Retrieved 23 March 2022, from https://cocktailwonk.com/2020/05/non-history-of-jamaica-in-british-navy-rum.html

[5] https://blog.thewhiskyexchange.com/2019/05/whisky-exchange-rum-classification/

[6] To be fair, the same could be said of the Scotch whisky classification, where the distinction between the “blended grain” and “blended” categories aren’t so obvious by the name alone.