verschnitt , German for “cut,” is used in Germany to designate a product that has been blended from an imported spirit (e.g., rum, arrack, genever, or brandy) and locally produced neutral potato or grain spirits. The amount of the imported flavoring spirit can be very low: for rum verschnitt, by far the most popular of these blends, according to EU regulations, the rum can be as little as 5 percent of the whole (for other categories of spirit the minimum begins at 10 percent).
Rum verschnitt owes its origins to a series of tariff increases imposed by the Zollverein, the German Customs Union, in 1889, which made it uneconomical to import Jamaican and other rums for direct consumption. In concert with German marketers (principally Finke & Co., of Bremen and Kingston), Jamaican producers perfected a style of rum with ester levels so high as to be practically non-potable. This “German” or “Continental” rum could be cut with a very high proportion of neutral spirit and still taste like rum. Even though rum verschnitt itself has mostly fallen out of use, the flavoring rums it spawned have become an essential rum blender’s tool.
In Germany, verschnitt spirits must be clearly labeled as such. In other countries, the same practice—mixing a little straight spirit with a lot of neutral spirit—also prevails, without the unambiguous labeling; thus in Austria it is inländer rum, in the Netherlands jonge genever, and in the United States “blended” whisky.
See arrack, Batavia; blending; and rum, Jamaica.
Andreae, Illa. Alle schnäpse dieser welt. Zurich: Transitbooks, 1973.
Cousins, H. H. “Jamaica Rum.” Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture, Jamaica, 1909, 62–65.
Delbruck, Max. “Verschnittbranntweine.” In Illustriertes brennerei-lexicon, 626. Berlin: Parey, 1915.
By: David Wondrich