Known as a bottom-shelf spirit or not at all, rum has a less-than-stellar reputation in Asia despite its long history in the region. We highlight the craft rum distilleries hoping to change that once and for all.
Last year, as the pandemic forced lockdowns around the world, two curious things happened: firstly, online alcohol sales boomed as people denied nights out in their favourite restaurants and bars resorted instead to buying their tipple over the internet; and secondly, sea shanties—a musical relic of the rum-swigging sailors and pirates of maritime history—suddenly made a viral comeback among teenagers on TikTok thanks to a rendition by Scottish singer Nathan Evans of Wellerman, a 19th-century ditty that has since garnered over seven million views on the social media platform.
Both trends bode well for rum, an oft-neglected category among the primary spirits that is "probably the last major category to premium-ise, and that’s because it was associated with big brands with not a lot of product quality," according to Venezuelan rum producer Diplomático's global marketing director, Edouard Beaslay. This is even more the case in Asia, where rum is almost uniformly a low-quality product, imported en masse to be hastily mixed in mojitos and daiquiris the region over.
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Made from the fermentation and distillation of sugarcane byproducts such as molasses or sugarcane juice, rum's ties to Asia arguably stretch back even longer than in the Caribbean, which today is widely regarded as the birthplace of the spirit. Sugarcane was first domesticated 6,000 years ago in New Guinea, while the oldest recorded mention of rum was in the 7th century AD, when Indian Ayurvedic physician Vagbhata suggested in his Heart of Medicine text that fermented sugarcane liquor mixed excellently with mango juice, alongside mentions of a sugarcane wine called shuddi. Among the Malay people, a fermented sugarcane spirit called brum had been drunk for thousands of years.