The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails Definition of Jamaican Rum.

Jamaican Rum. Jamaica has been one of the leading rum producers in the Caribbean since the eighteenth century. The Spanish settled the island in 1494, though it remained a sparsely settled colony consisting largely of cattle ranches until the English took control of the island in 1655; a little sugar was made there, however, and—according to Francisco Morales Padron, the historian of Spanish Jamaica—some “raw spirit.” The capture of Jamaica from the Spanish was part of Cromwell’s plan to develop British interests in the Caribbean. Many of the troops that participated in the capture of Jamaica were from Barbados, where sugar production had emerged a decade earlier. These Barbadians shaped Jamaica’s sugar industry and, therefore, its rum industry. The first governor of Jamaica was Colonel Thomas Modiford, who was a Barbadian plantation owner. Modiford’s plantation had one of the first alembics in Barbados. Another Barbadian involved in the capture of Jamaica was Francis Dickenson, who was the original owner of the property that would later become the Appleton Estate, which is one of the oldest rum companies in the world and known today for its premier dark rum. Rum making developed quickly on the island, and indeed the first mention of the use of molasses to supplement the fermented skimmings from which the earliest rum was distilled comes from Jamaica in 1687.

In the eighteenth century, rum making in Jamaica soared alongside its expanding sugar industry. Jamaica produced an enormous amount of sugar in the eighteenth century, which generated a great deal of molasses and skimmings for distilling. See molasses and skimmings. Jamaicans were not the most efficient rum producers in the Caribbean. Unlike Barbadian sugar planters, Jamaicans exported lower grades of semi-refined muscovado sugar, which contained a high amount of molasses that Jamaicans could have distilled into rum. They did, however, distill their rum to a higher alcohol content than many other Caribbean distillers, which reduced shipping costs. In the first two decades of the eighteenth century, Jamaicans exported an annual average of about 100,000 gallons of rum to the British market. By the 1770s, exports reached more than two million gallons annually, and rum from Jamaica represented nearly 90 percent of all rum imports into the British market. British merchants appreciated Jamaican rum for its high alcohol content, which they adulterated with water once it reached British ports. Jamaican rum made its way to North America, where it was exchanged for provisions and plantation supplies. An illegal rum trade also existed between the Jamaicans and the Spanish colonists in Cuba, which supplied Jamaica with livestock. And perhaps most importantly, Jamaican rum became a staple in the British Royal Navy. Although sugar generated the greatest wealth for Jamaican planters in the eighteenth century, rum often contributed 10–20 percent of plantation revenues.

Rum took a more prominent role in the Jamaican economy in the nineteenth century. The abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the emancipation of enslaved peoples in the British colonies in 1834 devastated Jamaican sugar production and raised the economic importance of rum. Competition from new sugar-cane-growing regions, especially India, Mauritius, and Cuba lowered the value of sugar on the British market and put many Jamaican planters out of business. The declining output of sugar meant a decrease in rum production. Jamaican rum exports dropped from 13.25 million liters per year in 1830 to about 5.7 million liters a decade later (today the figure is about 20 million).

Such market fluctuations became a theme in Jamaican distilling. In the 1890s, a hefty import tax on rum levied by Germany prompted Jamaican distillers (there were 148 of them in 1893) to develop a “Continental rum,” whose fermentation drew in part on a “muck pit” full of cane refuse to produce very high levels of esters. See esters. This rum brought a high price in Germany, where it would be diluted with neutral spirit and sold as “rum verschnitt.” See rum and verschnitt. On the other hand, at some point in the early twentieth century, the Royal Navy stopped buying Jamaican rum: not only was it too expensive, but the sailors found it too pungent for their tastes.

By 1901, Jamaica was down to 110 distilleries. Although it was universally recognized as, essentially, the best rum in the world, good Jamaican rum was expensive to make, and the demand for it was limited. Yet Jamaican distillers refused to abandon their traditions. As the distiller at the legendary Vale Royal estate wrote in 1882, “The chief vehicle of flavour is supposed to be the skimmings and other refuse added to the mixing cistern, as rum made with pure … molasses is nearly always devoid of anything like flavour” (the Demerara distillers considered using skimmings “primitive,” as one of them testified to the Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits in 1908). Only after World War II did they change. With distilleries down to forty-eight and falling fast, the survivors added column stills, moved to pure-molasses distilling (with sugar making further consolidated, skimmings were increasingly unavailable), and focused on lighter rums and blends. Independence, which came in 1962, only intensified these trends.

Pierre Ferrand and rum, demerara. The historic Hampden Estate and Worthy Park are both well-regarded independents. Despite the ups and downs, Jamaica remains one of the top rum producers in the world, exporting such brands as Appleton Estate rum and Myers’s rum. See Appleton Estate and Myers’s. What’s more, after many years of relative inertia, Jamaican pot still rums have recently seen a surge of interest and are beginning to regain their former status in the world of rum.

Jamaican Rum.

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