Rum, rhum or ron: what is the difference?

Molasses, long ferments and the pot still give it weight

Most English-style rum is distilled from molasses, the syrup left once the sugar has been refined out of the cane. Long fermentations, most of all in the traditional Jamaican houses, build esters, the compounds that smell of banana and pineapple. Pot stills keep them in the spirit. Many houses blend pot and column rum to a house style.

Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad make four different rums

Jamaican rum is the heaviest. The Fat Rum Pirate, a secondary source, records Jamaica Rum as a geographical indication registered in 2016, with rules that the wash be fermented and distilled in Jamaica with local water, that only water and cane caramel be added after distillation, and that an age statement name the youngest rum in the blend. The Jamaica Gleaner reported a 2024 ruling that the rum must also be aged in Jamaica, and The Fat Rum Pirate that a court order paused its enforcement in September 2025. Wikipedia, a secondary source, puts the DOK marque of Hampden Estate at 1,500 to 1,600 grams of esters per hectolitre of pure alcohol, the most Jamaican law allows.

Barbados blends pot and column rum, at Foursquare and Mount Gay among others. Difford’s Guide, a secondary source, gives a deed of sale of 1703 as the earliest written evidence of rum-making equipment at Mount Gay. Barbados Today reported in November 2025 that no geographical indication for Barbados rum is in force. Drinks International reported in 2020 that the proposed one would ban added sugar syrup and flavourings and require ageing on the island, and that one distillery had appealed to age Barbados rum elsewhere.

Demerara rum comes from Guyana, where one rum distillery still works: Demerara Distillers at Diamond, on the Demerara River. It keeps wooden stills that survive nowhere else, and each gives a different weight of spirit. El Dorado is its house brand. Trinidad’s rum is mostly column-distilled and light, and Angostura distils its rums in column stills, by its own account.

The Royal Navy ran on English-style rum for three centuries

Royal Museums Greenwich dates a daily rum ration in the Royal Navy from around 1655 to the last tot on 31 July 1970, Black Tot Day. Navy rum follows the style of that ration, and the British rum renaissance covers the distilleries now making rum in Britain.

Agricole and traditionnel are reserved terms

Not every rhum is agricole. Rhum traditionnel, sometimes called rhum industriel, is made from molasses like most other rum. Read the label for the word agricole or for the Martinique appellation.

The law protects the term. In the UK, under the retained EU regulation on spirit drinks, agricultural may describe rum only when it is distilled from cane juice, carries the aromatic volatiles of rum, and is sold under a geographical indication of a French overseas department or Madeira. Traditionnel is reserved in the same way for rum distilled below 90% ABV from materials grown where it is made.

Martinique’s appellation fixes the cane, the still and the age

Martinique’s rhum agricole has had an appellation d’origine contrôlée since 1996. Its current rules date from a decree of December 2014, and they fix every stage:

• The cane must be grown in the appellation area and cut between 1 January and 31 August.
• The juice must reach 14 degrees Brix, a measure of sugar, with a pH of 4.7 or above.
• Fermentation runs in open vats of up to 500 hectolitres, for no more than 120 hours.
• Distillation is in a continuous column, the Creole column, to between 65% and 75% ABV.
• Caramel may be added only to adjust colour, as for all rum.

Rhum JM and Rhum Clement both work within it. An age grade sets a minimum time in oak, served without a break.

Rhum agricole tastes of the fresh cane

Rhum agricole tastes of cut grass, cane sap, green banana and white pepper, with a dry, mineral finish. The blanc is often bottled at 50% ABV or more and goes into a Ti’ Punch: 60ml of rhum agricole blanc and 10ml of cane syrup over a disc of lime. Aged agricole folds the grass into vanilla and dried fruit.

Haiti makes cane-juice rum outside any appellation. Rhum Barbancourt distils cane juice twice by a method modelled on Cognac and ages it in French oak.

Cachaça is Brazil’s own cane-juice spirit

Cachaça is distilled from fresh cane juice, like rhum agricole, but Brazil defines it as a spirit of its own. The US rule of 25 February 2013 quotes Brazil’s Decree No 4,851 of 2003: cachaça is the cane spirit produced in Brazil, at 38% to 48% ABV, from the fermented must of sugar cane. That rule recognised cachaça as a distinctive product of Brazil, and US law classes it as a type of rum.

Aged cachaça is often matured in native Brazilian woods, amburana among them, as well as oak. Unaged cachaça is the base of the Caipirinha.

Arrack is a family of Asian spirits

Arrack is the older name for several Asian spirits. Batavia arrack, from Java, is distilled from molasses fermented with red rice, and it went into the punches of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sri Lankan arrack is distilled from coconut palm sap. Neither is arak, the anise spirit of the eastern Mediterranean.