A true taste of the Caribbean

Thursday, 19th November 2009

Dave Broom follows the rum trail back to its source

Though I hail from the land of whisky I’ve long lain under the sweet spell of sugar cane. When you think of it, this makes perfect sense. After all, rum was once more popular than whisky in my home city of Glasgow, which in the 18th century was noted for making the best rum punches in Britain. Not that I was alive at that time you understand.

Glasgow was built on trade with the Caribbean and the American colonies – tobacco mostly, but also sugar and where there was sugar there was molasses and where there was molasses there was rum. When the whisky
industry usurped rum as Scotland’s most popular spirit (which happened considerably later than we all think) it would have been rum barrels as well as those that had held sherry which were pressed into service for ageing.

My early drinking was centred around ‘Navy’ rums. Brands like Trawler, Lamb’s, Black Heart and Morton’s OVD – the last a blend which predates any blended Scotch by two decades, by the way. Dark, bitter-sweet
and best drunk mixed with whisky and lime, I seem to remember, in a drink we called Rum Sodomy and the Lash. Not sophisticated, or in these paranoid times, responsible, but hugely effective.

Now I’m following the rum trail back to its source, discovering that what I was brought up in thinking was real rum was simply bulk spirit shipped to Dumbarton and blended there. True rum is from the Caribbean Sea whose gentle breezes are now breathing around me, cooling the late afternoon air. The light catches the golden liquid in the bottles arrayed around the ramparts of Charles Fort. ‘Would you like to try?’ Not only would it be churlish to refuse, but foolish. The rums on the ramparts represent the finest that the Caribbean has to offer, spirits from islands and countries across the region, spirits which speak of their place and the people who make them.

How things have changed. The rums I’m trying are Caribbean owned, Caribbean produced. Here’s the punch of Appleton from Jamaica, the mellow power of El Dorado from Guyana, the fruity balance of the Bajan rums of Mount Gay, Foursquare and Cockspur. Down the line is the supremely elegant Barbancourt from Haiti, the Caribbean’s equivalent of cognac. Stir in the citrus and coffee of Brugal and Barcelo from the Dominican Republic, add a splash of the tropical depth of Admiral Rodney (best rum in the world according to this year’s International Spirits Challenge), English Harbour and Captain Bligh (from St. Lucia, Antigua and St Vincent respectively) and you can see why rum is growing in popularity.

Here is a spirit with a back story – the first rums were made in here in Barbados in the mid 17th century – with heritage, with craftsmanship and diversity of flavour. Jamaican rums have always been different
from those from Barbados, whose rums have always been different from those from Guyana and so on, across this chain of islands.

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