Cuban Rum News

Cuban Rum News

We will post Cuban rum news here but be sure to visit Havana Journal's Cuban Rum Forum for lots of information and Cuban rum reviews.

Also, we are following the Havana Club rum trademark dispute.

Havana Club to launch Master's Choice rum

Havana Club International S.A. will soon launch a new brand of rum created in 1878.

“Seleccion de Maestros” (Masters’ Choice) is the name of this new 86 proof rum.

Sergio Valdes, director of the Exports Division of Havana Club company said that because of the high quality of the product, its price will be almost double that of the Havana Club 7 Years.

He added that the company is currently working on improving the image of their products with new bottles and labels with the history of Havana Club Rum.

Havana Club currently sells more than 3.2 million cases of rum in more than 140 countries, with revenues of over $122 million.

Cuban Rum History

The first distillation of rum took place on the sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean in the 17th century.

Plantation slaves first discovered that molasses, a by-product of the sugar refining process, fermented into alcohol. Distillation removed impurities and produced the first true rum.

Tradition suggests that rum first originated on the island of Barbados.

Ancient History of Rum

The precursors to rum date back to antiquity. Development of fermented drinks produced from sugarcane juice is believed to have first occurred either in ancient India or China, and spread from there. An example of such an early drink is brum. Produced by the Malay people, brum dates back thousands of years. Marco Polo also recorded a 14th-century account of a "very good wine of sugar" that was offered to him in what is modern-day Iran.

To support this demand for the molasses to produce rum, along with the increasing demand for sugar in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, a labor source to work the sugar plantations in the Caribbean was needed. A triangular trade was established between Africa, the Caribbean, and the colonies to help support this need. The circular exchange of slaves, molasses, and rum was quite profitable, and the disruption to the trade caused by the Sugar Act in 1764 may have even helped cause the American Revolution.

Rum in Colonial America

After rum's initial development in the Caribbean, the drink's popularity spread to Colonial America. To support the demand for the drink, the first rum distillery in the colonies was set up in 1664 on current day Staten Island.

Boston, Massachusetts had a distillery three years later. The manufacture of rum became early Colonial New England's largest and most prosperous industry.

The rum produced in Boston was quite popular, and was even considered the best in the world during much of the 18th century. Rhode Island rum joined gold as an accepted currency in Europe for a period of time.

The popularity of rum continued after the American Revolution with George Washington insisting on a barrel of Barbados rum at his 1789 inauguration. Eventually the restrictions on rum from the British islands of the Caribbean combined with the development of American whiskey led to a decline in the drink's popularity.

Rum's association with piracy began with English privateers trading on the valuable commodity. As some of the privateers became pirates and buccaneers, their fondness for rum remained, the association between the two only being strengthened by literary works such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

The association of rum with the British Royal Navy began in 1655 when the British fleet captured the island of Jamaica. With the availability of domestically produced rum, the British changed the daily ration of liquor given to seamen from French brandy to rum. While the ration was originally given neat, or mixed with lemon juice, the practice of watering down the rum began around 1740. To help minimize the effect of the alcohol on his sailors, Admiral Edward Vernon directed that the rum ration be watered down before being issued. In honor of the grogram cloak the Admiral wore in rough weather, the mixture of water and rum became known as grog. The Royal Navy continued to give its sailors a daily rum ration, known as a "tot," until the practice was abolished after July 31, 1970.

A story involving naval rum is that following his victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, Horatio Nelson's body was preserved in a cask of rum to allow transport back to England. Upon arrival, however, the cask was opened and found to be empty of rum. The pickled body was removed and, upon inspection, it was discovered that the jack tars had drilled a hole in the bottom of the cask and drank all the rum, in the process drinking Nelson's blood. Thus, this tale serves as a basis for the term Nelson's Blood being used to describe rum. The details of the story are disputed, with some historians claiming the term originated instead from a toast to Admiral Nelson.

Rum became an important trade good in the early period of the colony of New South Wales. The value of rum was based upon the lack of coinage among the population of the colony, and due to the drink's ability to allow its consumer to temporarily forget about the lack of creature comforts available in the new colony. The value of rum was such that convict settlers could be induced to work the lands owned by officers of the New South Wales Corps. Due to rum's popularity among the settlers, the colony gained a reputation for drunkenness even though their alcohol consumption was less than levels commonly consumed in England at the time.

When William Bligh became governor of the colony in 1806, he attempted to remedy the perceived problem with drunkenness by outlawing the use of rum as a medium of exchange. In response to this action, and several others, the New South Wales Corps marched, with fixed bayonets, to Government House and placed Bligh under arrest. The mutineers continued to control the colony until the arrival of Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1810.