Why You Should Never Judge A Rum By Its Colour - By Peter Holland
“Bartender, what gold whiskies have you got? Actually - scratch that - I’ll take a look at the dark whisky list instead.”
Obviously, the above scenario is a daft one - no one orders like that. You’d ask for the list of single malts, or perhaps inquire what Japanese whisky the bar stocks. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for Rum to be lumped together under the heading of white, gold or dark like the colour is any kind of indication what the taste might be like. Truly, the world of rum is amazingly diverse, and yet all in together under a categorising head that is neither a flavour, an indication of a flavour or not easily adapted by an injudicious use of E150A.
Trouble is, it’s everywhere. It’s pervasive and it’s almost totally ingrained in the minds of consumers, retailers and producers alike. All perpetuating the issue, not sure if it’s safe to change the status-quo. Well, we’ve decided to back the forward-thinking Mr Luca Gargano. The Gargano Classification puts the method of distillation at the heart of things and whilst we might not be mirroring the terms exactly, we’ve followed the ethos by stating if it’s a pot still rum, or a traditional column still.
Why would we do this? Well, it fits perfectly with our policy of openness. The more you know about the Rum in question, the more you’ll understand why you like it. Armed with that knowledge, you’ll be far more able to explore Rums with a similar characteristic.
We’ll be telling you what it’s made from (which is generally sugarcane molasses or sugarcane juice), the country in which it was produced, the distillery that produced it*, how it was distilled and when. Finally, we’ll tell you the alcoholic strength of the Rum in the bottle. You’ll have to decide if you like it or not because we can’t tell you that. But rest assured, it wouldn't be in the Boutique-y Rum collection if we didn’t think it was awesome!
*Sometimes this information has to be withheld at the request of the distillery. There’s a number of reasons why this might be, and whilst we’d love to tell you, we respect the producers too much to mess them around. You’ll know when this happens as we’ll call it something like “Secret Distillery #1”.
One last thing. We have not messed around with any of the Rums under That Boutique-y label. No sugar, flavourings, glycerin, or even a ‘drop’ of caramel.
Nothing but delicious Rum in the bottle.
Peter Holland is our Rum Expert, on a mission to make sure Rum gets the respect-y it deserves. He's also one half of the powerhouse rum couple The Floating Rum Shack.