Britain has always been a nation of rum drinkers. The country’s love affair with the spirit can be traced back to almost its origin. In 1655, Jamaica fell under British colonial rule and rum supplanted French brandy as the daily liquor ration for Royal Navy servicemen. That was just four years after rum was first documented in records from Barbados which told of slaves on sugarcane plantations distilling fermented molasses.
For centuries, the relationship was of consumption, but around a decade ago, on the heels of the gin boom, that began to change. In 2012, Cornwall’s English Spirit Distillery launched Old Salt Rum, the first commercial rum to be fermented and distilled in the UK. Today, nearly 30 producers around the country are producing rum from molasses and the UK is now home to the largest rum distillery in Europe, Dropworks in Nottinghamshire. And without a national rum distilling tradition, this new generation of makers has the freedom to move unencumbered by expectations of heritage. “It's so important for me to try to drive the category forward,” says Lewis Hayes, founder of Dropworks Distillery.
“I don’t have 200 years of heritage distilling, I'm not a seventh-generation producer, the history of rum is undeniable and I’m not trying to rewrite it, but I am trying to ask the question: where’s rum going next? We have the freedom to be creative and think outside the box in a way that bigger brands might not feel comfortable doing.
“The marketers will tell you it’s about the Caribbean, they’ll tell you it’s about pirates, they’ll tell us about sea monsters. Historically, there are links, but it’s a load of rubbish.”
The shape that British distilled rum is taking is in some ways a response to the hands-off, paint-by-numbers model that became widespread during the craft gin boom a decade ago.
“We’ve always been dead against using anybody else’s alcohol,” says Ian Warborn-Jones, co-founder of Outlier Distilling on the Isle of Man. “A lot of that’s to do with the gin boom, so many distilleries were making gin and there’s not a whole lot that’s local about it. Once you get the ethanol from France and the juniper from former Yugoslavia, and grains from West Africa, there’s not much, other than the process, that is actually local. With rum, we import the raw product from the Caribbean, but the thing that fascinates me is how we go from molasses – which frankly tastes like shit – to rum and all the different stages along the way that contribute to the flavour you end up with.”
Creating a buzz
While these new rum distilleries are beginning to create a buzz by focusing on keeping things in-house, as rum continues to grow as a category many producers in the UK are following a model that more resembles that gin process.
“We love the fact that more people are talking about rum being made in the UK compared to a lot of ‘British’ rums that buy rum from the Caribbean, add their own spices and still call it British rum,” says Gemma Wakeham who founded the carbon negative Two Drifters distillery with husband Russ in Devon.
“I think that takes away from the story of the Caribbeans which have such a heritage with rum. What we need to do as British rum distillers is forge our own story about it. I have no Caribbean heritage, so I can’t say anything about Caribbean rum – we wanted to make our own rum. We like molasses-based rums, we like dry spiced rums. We like punchy white rums. They were always the styles we were going to create.
“We don't have our 50-year-old rums ageing in Caribbean climates, but we're doing some really exciting things, the choices of yeast we use, and the pH we can work with. That's where the excitement is. So we need to make sure the story we’re telling as a collective is very positive and different to the Caribbean story.”
And by building it from scratch, that story can be one of modern spirits industry ideals: transparency, provenance, and sustainability.
“Rum is a sugarcane byproduct, fermented, distilled and maybe matured – our rums focus on that,” says Hayes. “Dark Drop is a celebration of molasses, Funk Drop is about fermentation, and Clear Drop is a celebration of distillation and the clarity of liquid you can produce through high-quality column stills. We’ve got a product on the horizon, Barrel Drop, which is a celebration of what maturation can bring to the table. Spice Drop looks at a whole different category, flavouring. Rum has so much flavour already so I don’t need to add flavour, I can generate exciting flavours that will appeal to spiced rum drinkers but I can do it naturally. There’s a small following of people who know how versatile and exciting rum is.
“If I take a neutral-based spirit and I add vanilla and cinnamon, that product is only ever going to taste of vanilla and cinnamon. Whereas if you do it naturally, and you ferment it properly, and you don't add flavourings, then your product will taste complex, rounded and interesting. If someone tastes banana, they are correct, if someone else tastes Szechuan pepper, they are correct. Rum is the broadest spirit category. I can produce something on my column still that would trick people into thinking I’d made vodka, and on my double retort still I can create something so fruit-forward that if I laid it down in a Cognac cask, they’d think it was a Cognac. We’re making quality liquid and we’re making it accessible for people.”
Perhaps no other spirits category puts as much emphasis on inclusivity and education as rum. In general, its fan base is eager to share and, in the UK, that rum community is growing and will be what shapes the current crop of British rum distillers and any that follow.
“The rum community, those who drink and those who produce, is a warm, welcoming, and inclusive community,” says Rick Dacey, co-founder of Outlier Distilling. “As distillers, we need to embrace that, work together and share knowledge. Right at the beginning, when we were setting up the company, we had a few guiding principles, we wanted to do something more interesting and more creative. It’s way better to have 1,000 people love what you’re doing than 10,000 think it’s alright and then never buy a bottle again. If it’s not fun, what’s the point?”
