Proposed ways to classify rums

What is rum? Many people identify it as a cheap, sweet spirit, used in making Polynesian or Caribbean cocktails, but nothing to drink neat. But that’s not quite correct. Properly made, rum is analogous to whiskey!

Whiskey is a distilled spirit made from a fermented cereal grain mash, aged in oak barrels for a number of years.

Rum is a distilled spirit made from fermented sugar cane or molasses, aged in oak barrels for a number of years.

The common but misleading rum classification

If you believe liquor store advertising, there are supposedly several types of rum – light, gold, dark, blackstrap, navy, spiced, and overproof.  The problem with those names is that they are patent nonsense:

Light rums – Claimed to be mild and easy to drink. But no such style exists – clear rums exist in a wide spectrum of flavors. Some can be amazingly funky and complex. And yet many of the common clear, “light” rums sold in the USA are mass-produced on column stills, barely more than neutral spirit, and charcoal filtered to remove color. Their supposed smoothness often comes from adding sweeteners and thickeners.

Gold rums – These rums are said to be richer in flavor than light rums. They’re not. They’re exactly the same as so-called light rums, just with more added caramel coloring.

Dark rums – These rums are implied to be aged for much longer. But – surprise! – some of these are the same as light or gold rums, just with even more added coloring.

Blackstrap rums – These are often implied to be distilled from blackstrap molasses. But in fact many rums are made from molasses. And some of the so-called blackstrap rums sold in liquor stores are just cheap, light rum with extra added coloring and sweeteners.

Navy rum – Another meaningless category. The name suggests that this was the style of rum once used by the British Navy. But the British Navy used many different types of rums over the years, from many different distillers, from different nations.

Spiced rums – This isn’t a style flavor. This is just any rum with added spices (and often sugar.)

There never has been a useful, let along agreed-upon rum classification system. In the last few years, some have been working on logical ways to classify rum.  One system is that proposed by Luca Gargano of Velier and Richard Seale of Foursquare. Another system has been proposed by Martin Cate, author of “Smuggler’s Cove.”

The Gargano/Seale system

Pure Single rum

Molasses + 100% Batch pot still distillation, from one distillery or estate.

Examples: Worthy Park, Hampden, Mount Gilboa, Port Mourant, Foursquare and Versailles.

Also in this category

* Pure Single Agricole Rums – these are made from sugar cane juice. Examples include Rhum Rhum, Clairin, Saint Nicholas Abbey, Issan, Chalong Bay, River Antoine, Chamarel, Callwood.

* Cane juice rums from Martinique, these are the AOC protected Martinique Rhum Agricoles.

Single Blended rum

A blend of pot still and traditional column, from the same distillery or estate.

Examples: Appleton, El Dorado, Diplomatico, Mount Gay, Foursquare/Doorly’s, Saint Lucia Distillery/Chairmans.

Traditional rum

Made on a column still only. Molasses-based rums which are distilled from an artisanal column (Coffey or creole) stills.

Examples: Antigua Distillers, Saint Vincent Distillery, Savanna, Bellevue, Riviere du Mat

** Agricole rums, made from cane juice, from the Creole single-column copper still/continuous still

Examples include producers from Martinique: Neisson, St James (Bally, Dillon), JM, La Favourite, Simon (HSE, Clément), Depaz, and La Mauny (Trois Rivières, Duquesne) and producers from Guadeloupe: Damoiseau, Montebello, Bologne, Longueteau, Reimonenq, Père Labat, Bielle, Bellevue, and Séverin.

Modern rum

Rums from modern, factory-size, multi-column stills. Originate from distilled molasses. Typically produce a distillate of more than 95% ABV. Such rums are lighter, less rich in esters, and are aromatically almost neutral. This rum is often modified with some sugar, colorings, spices or flavorings.

Examples: Havana Club, Bacardi, Don Q, Brugal, Barceló, Flor de Cana, lantern, Pampero, Cacique.

-The examples for each category come from Rumaniacs, “Notes and Categories: Towards an Appropriate Classification of Rum”, at Notes and Categories

The Martin Cate system

Pot Still Unaged (such as Wray and Nephew, Hamilton Jamaican Gold, etc.)

Pot Still Lightly Aged (Smith and Cross, Pritchard’s Fine, etc.)

Pot Still Aged (various independent bottlings, Cadenheads, Berry Brothers, Plantation, etc.)

Pot Still Long Aged (Appleton Estate 50, Black Tot)

Blended Lightly Aged (Appleton Signature, Banks 5 or 7, El Dorado 3, Plantation 3, etc)

Blended Aged (Appleton Reserve or 12, El Dorado 5 or 8 or 12, Plantation 5 or 20th Anniversay, Pusser’s, Mount Gay Black Barrel or XO)

Blended Long Aged (El Dorado 15 or 21 or 25, various super old stuff, XO’s etc.)

Column Still Lightly Aged (Bacardi 1909, FdC 4yr, Scarlet Ibis, etc.)

Column Still Aged (Ango 1824 or 1919 or 5 or 7, Bacardi 8, FdC 12, Cruzan Single Barrel, Brugal 1888 or Extra Viejo, etc.)

Column Still Long Aged (FdC 18 or 25, English Harbor 25)

Black Pot Still (only example: Hamilton Jamaican Black)

Black Blended (Coruba, Goslings, Hamilton Guyana 86 pf, Lemon Hart 80, etc.)

Black Blended Overproof (Lemon Hart 151, Hamilton Guyana 151)

http://www.martincate.com/

Classifying rums by flavor

Although proposed in 2017, neither the Gargano/Seale or Cate system has been widely adopted. When we meet folks at local rum tastings and events, they just aren’t interested in the engineering or production details – they want a map of rum by flavor. When they come across a rum that they enjoy they just want to know what they might want to explore next.

So the folks over at the Whiskey Exchange in the UK, came up with a way to classify rums by flavor. I am including their list here. It is simple and useful. I’m just adding a few important categories to it, because their current list doesn’t yet distinguish between fruity funky rums, and ester packed, deeply funky hogo monsters, which are a category unto themselves.

We’re also adding clairins and cachaças as distinct categories, although one could of course include those in the Herbaceous and Grassy category.

Light and Uncomplicated

Rums that are lighter in character and don’t have loads of complexity. They are often modernist rums, distilled to high strengths before bottling, either aged or unaged. This is the flavour that has risen to popularity over the past few decades, unintimidating to drinkers unused to intensely flavoured rums and perfect for modern cocktails and mixers.

Herbaceous and Grassy

This camp is mostly filled with sugar-cane juice rums: rhum agricole and its various cousins from around the Caribbean and beyond. It’s not all sugar-cane juice though, with blends and other rums that show a similar character also in the group.

Fruity and Spicy

These are sweet and spicy with a touch of fruitiness. These are mostly aged rums from traditional stills or blends that focus around those flavours, but anything that brings together those characters will feature.

Dry and Spicy

This camp is focused on the flavours of maturation – oaky spices. However, they are very much the drier side of things, without the sticky sweetness and toffee notes you can find in some rums. Often these are aged modernist rums, where the lighter spirit has picked up a lot of cask character, hiding some of its own.

Rich and Treacly

Thick, sweet and sticky: rums that are dark and decadent. These may have high levels of added sugar, have picked up heavier flavours from cask or even have weightiness from how they were distilled, but they all have a big body and rich character in common.

Tropical and Fruity

Often talked about as ‘estery’ rums, these are the spirits that show big fruity flavour, from bananas to mangoes and pineapples. Often found in Jamaica – an island famous for ‘funky’ rums – these have a character all of their own and are a must for rum fans. Fruity rums are also popular in blends, giving a tropical flavour that pulls the resulting releases into this category as well.

To this we may add:

Deeply Hogo funky rums

What distinguishes rums in this category is that they contain a very high amount of certain aromatic esters. This gives them a flavor known as hogo – a word derived from the French term haut goût. The aroma and flavor of hogo is hard to describe to those who haven’t tried it, but one could say that it has elements of rotting fruit and some say gaminess (notes of game meat.)

These notes exist because some rums allow wild bacteria, and not just yeast, to become an essential part of the fermentation process. Another part of the magic is that funky hogo-rich rums are fermented for much longer than traditional rums. Regular rums are fermented for between one to three days, but this category of rum can be fermented for one to three weeks. To learn more see Matt Pietrek’s article, Beyond Jamaican Funk – Next Level Hogo.

And of course

Cachaças

tba

Clairins

tba

What makes rum, rum?

(1) The main ingredient could be

* molasses made from sugarcane

* fresh sugarcane juice (sometimes called garapa)

* sugar cane syrup – sugar cane juice clarified to make it more stable for storage.

* In America, TTB regulations allow rum also to be made from “other sugar cane by-products.” A handful of American rums are made with white sugar and hot water. However, Martin Cate writes “With a fully refined sugar, you’ve removed virtually all of the flavor compounds that would be required to provide an accepted understanding of rum. Yes, it’s legal in the US. But no one in the Caribbean makes rum this way.”

(2) Fermented with yeast. Each distiller has their own strains.

Some places (Jamaica) use dunder – liquid left after distilling the previous batch. Analogous to the sour mash method used for bourbon whiskey.

(3) Distillation: May be done in pot stills or column stills. The Creole column still is used in French rhum production.

(4) Aging: Not required to be aged in wood barrels to be called rum, but much is aged.

When aged in wood barrels the wood is usually oak. Brazilian rums are often aged in other woods, lik amburana, jequitibá, ipê, tapinhoã, and balsam.

American regulations on distilled spirits from the US TTB state that rum must have “the taste, aroma and characteristics generally attributed to rum” and bottled at not less than 40% ABV.

Further reading

The lowdown on Rum with Richard Seale, Master distiller, Foursquare

Talking Rum and Sugar with Richard Seale

Chemistry of rum

The Chemistry of Rum: Compound Interest

From Alchemy to Science: Esters, Aldehydes, Mass Spectrometers and Hyper-Accelerated Aging

Days of Dunder: Setting the Record Straight on Jamaican Rum’s Mystery Ingredient

Feeling the Funk: From Dunder to Wonder – Tales of the Cocktail 2017

Rum Super Geekdom

Comparing and Contrasting Semi-Volatile Fingerprinting of Mature and Immature Heavy Pot Still Rum (PDF paper)

Trace Carboxylic Acid & Ester Origin in Mature Spirits (PDF paper)

Thanks for reading! While you are here check out our reviews of bourbon, Scotch, Irish whiskey, Canadian whiskey, ryes, flavored whiskys, and rums. We have articles on science & health, and a plethora of other topics. Learn more about me, Distilled Sunshine.