Over the years of reading online opinions and statements regarding rum one of the most consistent words that’s been thrown around when it comes to Latin American rum is
culture. They’re mostly either about the light column-distilled style of rum imparted by their former Spanish colonizers. Or the tendency of most to sweeten their rum and not being honest about it.
I understand the statements regarding the light style of rum because of a Spanish royal decree, which only ended in 1796. The gist of this decree was Spanish colonies, at that time, weren’t allowed to produce their own rum. Spain wanted their colonies to consume only Spanish made alcohol such as brandy, sherry and wine. This led to the Spanish colonies ending up being behind the rest of the Caribbean, who were mostly under the English and French, in rum production. Maybe even other types of alcohol were not allowed to be produced. Though this guess could be invalidated by mezcal². Relative to how trends change in
Just like my No Master in Class article, this may come across as a strong viewpoint. It’s not surprising as anything worth being talked about will most likely get flagged as controversial these days. Vague and often ignorant terms seem to get thrown around as a category tries to grow. We’ve seen it with Mezcal being initially pitched as a smokey Tequila. But someone who has extensive experience with Mezcal will know
smokey Tequila is a huge misconception. Not all Mezcal are smokey. Nor are they supposed to be smokey.
One of the vague terms I’d like to tackle is when