Rum
A spirit distilled from sugarcane, either from molasses or from fresh-pressed juice. The styles differ by what happened afterwards: how long it spent in cask, what was added to it, and at what strength it was finally bottled.
Quick Facts
Usage
Used as a base spirit across daiquiris, punches, tiki drinks and highballs. Style choice matters more than brand: a white rum daiquiri and an aged rum daiquiri are different drinks.
Sugarcane, Two Ways
Rum is distilled from sugarcane. Most of it starts from molasses, a by-product of sugar refining; some starts from fresh-pressed cane juice, which is what separates rhum agricole and cachaça from the rest.
That split is the first thing to establish about any bottle, because it decides the character before anything else does. Molasses brings caramel and dried fruit; cane juice brings grass and a green, vegetal edge. Everything after that is cask, time and additions.
The Styles
White rum. Little or no cask age, or aged and then filtered clear. Clean rather than neutral.
Dark rum. Colour is not a grade. It can come from long ageing or from added caramel, and the label rarely tells you which.
Aged rum. Time in oak, doing what oak does. The style closest to a sipping whisky.
Spiced rum. Rum with spices added after distillation, where quality depends entirely on whether those spices are real.
Overproof rum. Bottled well above 40%, and a seasoning spirit more than a base.
Blackstrap rum. Near-black and heavy with molasses character, built on the darkest grade of it.
Cachaça. Brazilian, from fresh cane juice, and legally its own category rather than a rum at all.
Colour Is Not Age
Reading past the colour is the habit worth forming here. Caramel is permitted almost everywhere and is widely used, so a dark rum may be dark because it sat in wood for a decade or because somebody adjusted it in a blending tank.
Age statements are more reliable than colour, and the absence of one is itself information. Where a bottle is dark and silent about its age, the colour is doing marketing rather than reporting.
Matching Style to Drink
Style choice changes a drink more than brand does, which is the opposite of how most people shop. A white rum daiquiri and an aged rum daiquiri are different drinks rather than better and worse versions of one.
The two failures are symmetrical. Aged rum in a daiquiri wastes the ageing, since citrus buries the oak you paid for; white rum in an Old Fashioned wastes the drink, since there is nothing for the sugar and bitters to hold on to.
Top Tips
- Match the style to the drink. Aged rum in a daiquiri wastes the ageing; white rum in an Old Fashioned wastes the drink.
- Read past the colour. Dark does not mean old.
Common Questions
What is rum made from?
Sugarcane. Most rum is distilled from molasses, a by-product of sugar refining. Some is distilled from fresh-pressed cane juice, which is what gives rhum agricole and cachaça their grassier, more vegetal character and makes them a different proposition.
Does dark rum mean it is aged?
Not necessarily. Colour can come from time in cask or from added caramel, and labels rarely distinguish between the two. Age statements are far more reliable than colour, and a dark bottle silent about its age is telling you something.
Is cachaça a rum?
Legally, no. It is its own category, made in Brazil from fresh cane juice rather than molasses, and regulated separately. In practice it behaves like an unaged cane spirit, and it will not substitute cleanly for a white rum.
Which rum should I buy first?
A decent white rum, because it covers the daiquiri, the mojito and most highballs, and those are the drinks that show whether a rum is any good. An aged bottle is the second purchase rather than the first.
Styles of rum
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Guide by Jerry Can Spirits