Iceberg! All hands on dreck!

I was on a bootleg run to Canada recently, slipping across the border to New Brunswick to pick up some rums not available in Maine — Havana Club, Lemon Hart, Young’s Old Sam. (The last is an old-fashioned London Dock-style Demerara rum, made in Guyana and bottled in Newfoundland. It’s rich and molassasey and tasty.)

As I was reaching for the Old Sam, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye: Iceberg Rum, packaged in a vaguely iceberg-inspired bottle. Well, what have we here? Of course, I bought a bottle.

I knew a bit about products made of harvested icebergs — I did a story for the Atlantic Monthly five years ago (link here, subscription required) about two Newfoundland companies that chase icebergs and turn them into drinking water, beer and vodka. (One later went bankrupt.) The process was not terrifically complex — it involved unemployed fishermen and chainsaws lubricated with vegetable oil. Still, it’s an expensive way to get water.

The cost was supposedly justified for marketing purposes. (One of the company founders put it this way: "It's great that a large inland city can clean its drinking water and strip out impurities. But ten million people pee in it on a daily basis. And you know what? Nobody peed in mine. Isn't that worth an extra ten cents a bottle?") Vodka sells clean taste and purity, so blending it with 10,000 year-old, pee-free water makes some sense, I guess.

But rum? Not so much. Rum’s flavor has nothing to do with crisp and clean — it’s muddled and complex, and, actually, a little pee would probably improve most cheap rum.

So how is iceberg water supposed to enhance rum? The marketing copy throws a long bomb: "the warmth of the tropics meets the chill of the northern waters." One sort of imagines Godzilla vs. Mothra in taste wars.

Who wins? Fire wins over ice, and, my friend, it's no contest. This is one of the hottest, harshest rums I’ve had the misfortune to sip. The flavor profile was vaguely like a decent light rum (say, a Cruzan two-year), but that was hard to discern because of the flamethrower it applies to your tongue and throat. It’s more like a harsh, cheap vodka with a bit of rum flavoring.

But it’s got icebergs in it. And that’s worth about three minutes of bar chat.

Angostura Bitters: Breaking Away

It’s taken nearly two centuries, but Angostura bitters has finally secured a beachhead in the United States.

Actually, two of them.

This week Trinidad-based CL Financial —- which acquired Angostura from spirits giant Pernod Ricard earlier this year — bought Lawrenceburg Distillers in Indiana and the Charles W. Medley distillery in Owensboro, Kentucky, in two independent transactions. That’s a lot of acquisition for a company whose flagship product is a four-ounce bottle containing a product that’s rarely served more than three drops at a time.

Angostura began in 1824 as an elixir to quell grumbling guts. It was made of various herbs, barks, and roots steeped in rum, and was invented by the German adventurer Dr. Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert, who served as the surgeon general to Simon Bolivar at a town called Angostura on Venezuela’s Orinoco River. (It’s now Ciudad Bolivar.)

Siegert made lots of infusions, but the one that caught on was called "amargo aromatico," or aromatic bitters. After the Bolivarian wars, Siegert remained in Angostura and continued to sell his bitters. Customers appreciated them not only for their relief of gastric distress, but because they made alcoholic drinks taste much better.

Siegert’s bitters operation relocated to Trinidad some years later, and has since been bought and sold several times. (Bacardi owned it for a while.) The Angostura plant in Trinidad now produces not just bitters but lots of rum — they make their own 1919 brand rum, produce 10 Cane for Moet-Hennessey, and distill many other rums sold regionally — but under the new owners, have aspirations globally. And a good place to start seemed Kentucky bourbon, which is in great demand now in Europe and Asia.

The Lawrenceburg distillery is the largest in the country, producing nearly one out of ten bottles of spirits consumed domestically (much of it for Seagram). The plant will also serve as the U.S. headquarters for Angostura. It’s unknown if they’ll start producing their own rum here. But they do plan to shift some bottling of their bitters to Indiana.

Will Angostura bitters be made in the U.S.? I hope not. The ingredients in this fine and complex bitters are guarded as closely as Coca-Cola’s formula, and the plant in Trinidad has top-secret locked rooms, mysterious chutes to convey ingredients from place to another unwitnessed, and a convoluted supply chain to ensure no one can track what herbs and barks enter the plant.

All this mystery sure makes it taste better. I’m pretty sure Indiana Aromatic Bitters just wouldn’t taste the same.

Tasting: Lucia Duque Rum

Take a moment to scan the store shelves today for a new and much-hyped rum being launched amid one of the most expensive marketing campaigns I've ever seen. Lucia Duque Rum formally rolls out today — available in white, gold, and anejo.

But don't look on the liquor shelves. It's stocked only in the magazine racks. In the current Rolling Stone (on shelves September 7), there’s a splashy ad for Duque rum with a sealed pouch that allows you to taste a nonalcoholic “rum mojito” made with Duque.

Duque Rum is part of a clever campaign to advertise Cane, a new CBS series revolving around the complicated doings of a family of Cuban exiles growing sugar and making rum in Florida. (I’m thinking: Dallas, with sugar replacing oil.) As far as I know, it’s the second fictional rum coming out of Florida in recent months. Bacardi’s Havana Club, which premiered earlier this year as a spin-off of a complicated court case, was, of course, the first.

I was hoping to taste the Duque rum mojito today via the proprietary “multi-sensory marketing” technology (an upgrade of the old scratch ‘n sniff), and see if any rum taste comes through. But I read that the “Peel ‘n Taste” flavor pack is being included only in Rolling Stone editions sold in New York and Los Angeles. Ah, well, and here I am in Maine.

I did explore the very impressive site at www.luciaduquerum.com — and, seriously, this could be any upscale rum website, complete with the requirement that you enter your birthdate to proceed, and full of shots of improbably beautiful but vapid young people enjoying rum at those parties you and I are never invited to. The site features a very professional ad (grizzled men hacking at sugar cane with machetes; labeled bottles rolling off a production line), a serviceable mojito recipe, and a (real) call for a Duque spokesmodel — apparently this is an actual contest and the winner gets to appear on a future episode.

This all raises a couple of questions. Can an actual Duque rum far behind? With all the millions of dollars spent on building brand awareness, it seems a little silly to let it go to waste. I haven’t seen any reference to a licensing agreement anywhere (yet). But who knows?

And what’s up with the “rum mojito”? Is this to distinguish it from the “vodka mojito”? Perhaps Absolut is behind the whole campaign, clearing brandspace to invade the popular mojito market.

It’s just so hard to tell what’s real these days.

Lucia Duque Rum

New Orleans Rum, new and old

Last week I joined a half-dozen other rum lovers at Celebration Distilling's factory in New Orleans for a late afternoon sampling of some of the new rum products now working the way through the pipeline.

We sipped some of their commendable amber rum (aged three years), both the version currently on the market and one that's been slightly reformulated. We tried their new spiced rum (not yet released – but worth looking for when it comes out). We admired their handsome new, type-driven labels – Celebration Distilling has been nothing if not prolific with their labels in the past, since the company is owned by a New Orleans artist.

And best of all, we sampled some of their 10-year-old rum, which was strikingly complex, and filled with the suggestions of ripe fruit. The company recently found 10 barrels of the quietly aging stuff (the company has been producing rum for 14 years), with about half it lost to evaporation. That still leaves some 300 gallons of honey-colored barrel-proof rum, making it worth considering a limited bottling rum. They're still debating whether to put it up as a straight ten-year rum, or blend it with some younger rums. But they do know it will be available exclusively at their factory when it does come out, probably some time this summer.

Which is yet another entry on the growing list of reasons to visit a happily reviving New Orleans these days.

Celebration Distilling

St. Lucia, gnarly brown, and peanuts

I recently laid my hands on a bottle of Castries Peanut Rum Crème because, well, it's got rum in it. And I sometimes like an emulsified cream liqueur, like Bailey's. But I have to admit, my first thought was: Peanuts? Ewww.

Castries has a story and tradition behind it: peanut punch is pretty common throughout the West Indies, just like soursop punch, pumpkin punch, and banana punch.

It's way to take a common ingredient and put it to work as a cooling potion. It's often made with peanuts ground up and mixed with water, milk (often evaporated), sugar and maybe some vanilla or nutmeg.

But mixed with rum? Not all that common.

Castries Rum Crème is made on St. Lucia, and uses African vanilla, peanuts, a few spices, and local rum. It's sold in an opaque bottle that looks a bit like it swallowed a few tennis balls. It's 32 proof (about the same as Bailey's), and thick and luscious. And it smells like peanuts.

The taste: actually, not all that peanuty. At least not at first sip. The initial hit is more of cream and liquor, although the liquor isn't immediately identifable as rum. The aftertaste is slightly peanuty, and in a good way. Not roasted peanuts, but raw and fresh. My chief hesitation: the product is thick and viscous – it seems somehow thicker and more mealy than the always-velvety Baileys, but that might be more the power of sensory suggestion ("peanuts!") than anything tactile.

I started thinking about a cocktail that might employ this to good effect. Castries has some cute drink suggestions, including a peanut butter cup (with chocolate liqueur and vanilla vodka). That's not bad. I also played around with a peanut-butter-and jelly cocktail using crème de casis, but that's not an experiment I need to repeat any time soon.

Then I started thinking about Thai food. Mmmm... Thai food. So I mixed it with ginger ale – it's my belief that peanut and ginger is one of the world's great combos. And this mix actually worked fine – about two parts ginger ale to one part Castries yields a concotion with a taste that engages. You don't think "Thai," but it strikes the comfort food chord better than the peanut butter cup or the PB & J. (At least it did for me.)

Problem: the appearance. You know how it looks when you mix vanilla ice cream with root beer – you get those filmy, gnarly brown bubbles that climb up the side of the glass. Yeah. And what looks like a bit of curdling, or at least de-emulsification. (Lime with your peanut and ginger? Don't go there.)

But lean back, close your eyes, and sip – and it's pretty OK.

It's probably still best served neat, consumed by someone who truly loves peanuts. That, sadly, is not me.

Castries Peanut Rum Creme

Learning from Ybor City

A number of surprises cropped up in last week's Cane Spirits competition in Ybor City.

Tortuga five-year-old and twelve-year old rums swept two of the three best-in-category honors among the aged rums. (It tied with the statesmanlike Diplomatica Resesrve Exclusiva in the nine to fifteen year rums.) Who knew? Tortuga's appearance in both categories was not predicted by me, nor by anyone else, and it provoked a general murmuring among the judges. I was especially surprised that Tortuga soundly beat the Santa Teresa Gran Reserva from Venezuela, and both Appleton Estate entries, including the much touted new Estate Reserve, which garnered only a bronze medal. (And was very woody tasting, I thought, and some of the judges I spoke with concurred.)

In the no surprise department: Prichard's Crystal rum winning best in the white rum category. I've been talking this up for some time, and was pleased to see others agreeing with me. It's good straight up, and it's good mixed in cocktails.

Also no surprise: the sweep of the agricole rums by Clement and J.M. That was in large part because they were the only ones (other than Depaz Blue Amber) entered from Martinique. Some of the other great Martinique rums are imported by Ed Hamilton, who was instrumental in arranging last year's competition. But he and Dori Bryant, who organized the fest this year, are communicating only through very low-tech means: lawyers. So Ed's rums – Niesson and La Favourite – weren't represented in the competition.

Another non-surprise surprise: Zacapa 23-year-old shared the best in the older-than-15-year category with another rum: Santa Teresa 1796. Zacapa usually takes its category in a walk, and it was slightly startling to see it sharing the honors. Santa Teresa is certainly a worthy co-winner, although I'd still give the edge to Zacapa.

And speaking of Zacapa, I chatted one evening with a rum distiller whose company has a sophisticated lab to analyze their own products as well as that of the competition. How about Zacapa? I asked. It's often a source of speculation that they doctor it with various somethings to make it so good, since it's often so far ahead of the others. They put it through the paces, he reported. "And nope," he added. "Nothing unusual."

What they did find in analyzing Zacapa, he said, were heavy alcohols – the kind produced from pot stills, which are blended in with the lighter column-still alcohols. This isn't a big secret – Jamaican rums often perform this trick, and Mount Gay is likewise a blend. Since Zacapa is made from sugar cane syrup and not molasses, the distiller can probably get away with a lower proof off the still, bringing across flavors without the off-taste of low-proof molasses-based rum. Anyway, I'm always looking for clues as to what makes Zacapa Zacapa, and this offered small insight.

Another pleasant surprise: the Ron Barcelo Imperial. I hadn't had it before, and I found it full and complex, with pleasing cherry and chocolate notes. It seemed to be not too far off the flavor profile of Zacapa, but with a less cloying aftertaste. It's been.... well, never, since I tasted something I thought might give Zacapa a run for the money. This was a first. Not quite pulling ahead, but damned close.

Cane Spirits Competition results

Here are the result of the Cane Spirits Competition in Ybor City last week. I'm still awaiting a list of the rums by number (all were tasted blind), so I can check my notes against the group results. Some interesting results here. I'll post a bit of commentary when I get a chance.

DARK RUM
BEST OF CATEGORY: ONE BARREL RUM
GOLD
Khukri XXX
One Barrel
Vizcaya VXOP Cask 21
SILVER
Pirate’s Choice Molasses Reef
BRONZE
Jack Tar Superior Dark Rum
Rogue Dark

RUM, AGED UP TO & INCLUDING 8 YEARS
BEST OF CATEGORY: TORTUGA 5 YEAR OLD
GOLD
Goslings Black Seal
Mount Gay Sugar Cane
Prichard’s Fine Rum
Ron Barcelo Imperial
Tortuga 5 Year Old
SILVER
Bacardi 8
Cockspur Fine Rum
Diplomatico Reserva
Goslings Gold
New Grove Oak
Santa Teresa Gran Reserva
BRONZE
Appleton Estate Reserve
Appleton Estate V/X
Bacardi Select
Centenario Anejo Reserva Especial
Mount Gay Eclipse
Ron Botran Anejo 8 Year Old
Ron Botran Oro (Gold)

RUM, AGED 9-15 YEARS
BEST OF CATEGORY: (TIE) DIPLOMATICO RESERVA EXCLUSIVA
& TORTUGA 12 YEAR OLD
GOLD
Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva
Tortuga 12 Year Old
SILVER
Mount Gay Extra Old
Ron Botran 12 Year Old
Ron Zacapa 15 Centenario Year Old
Santa Teresa Selecto

RUM, AGED +15 YEARS
BEST OF CATEGORY: (TIE) RON ZACAPA CENTENARIO 23 YEAR OLD & SANTA TERESA 1796
GOLD
Pyrat XO Reserve
Pyrat Cask 1623
Ron Macuro Anejo Ultra Premium
Ron Zacapa Centenario 23 Year Old
Santa Teresa 1796
SILVER
Centenario Fundacion
Goslings Old
Ron Botran Solera

WHITE RUM
BEST OF CATEGORY: PRICHARD’S CRYSTAL
GOLD
Mount Gay Special Reserve
Prichard’s Crystal
SILVER
Bacardi Ruby Rey Reserve
Ron Botran White
Santa Teresa Blanco
BRONZE
Havana Club (Bacardi)
New Grove Oak Plantation
Mainstay Cane

RHUM AGRICOLE, UNAGED
BEST OF CATEGORY: CLEMENT PREMIER CANNE
GOLD
Clement Premiere Canne
SILVER
J.M. Rhum White

RHUM AGRICOLE, AGED
BEST OF CATEGORY: (TIE) J.M. VSOP & J.M. 1997
GOLD
J.M. Rhum Vieux X.O.
J.M. Gold
J.M. VSOP
J.M. 1997
SILVER
Clement Cuvee Homere
Clement V.S.O.P.
Depaz Blue Amber Rhum

CACHACA, UNAGED
BEST OF CATEGORY: AGUA LUCA
GOLD
Agua Luca
Leblon
SILVER
Beleza Pura
Fazenda Mae De Ouro
BRONZE
Cabana
Cuca Fresca

CACHACA, AGED
BEST OF CATEGORY: YPIOCA 160
GOLD
Fazenda Mae De Ouro Single Barrel 5 Year Old
GRM ‘Small Batch’ 2 Year Old
Ypioca 160
SILVER
Cuca Fresca Gold
Rochinha ‘Single Barrel’ 12 Year Old
Ypioca Ouro
BRONZE
Armazem Vieira ‘Onix’ Solera 16 Year Old
Ypioca Prata

LIQUEURS/FLAVORS/CORDIALS
BEST OF CATEGORY: SANTA TERESA ARAKU RON Y COFFEE LIQUEUR
GOLD
Clement Creole Shrub
Santa Teresa Rhum Orange Liqueur
Santa Teresa Araku Ron y Coffee Liqueur
SILVER
Castries Peanut Rum Crème
Prichard’s Sweet Georgia Belle Peach Mango Liqueur
BRONZE
Beleza Pura Caipirinha
Pirate’s Choice Lime Rum
Prichard’s Cranberry Rum
Rogue Hazelnut Spiced Rum

J.M heads north

Good rums are easier than ever to find in many liquor stores in North America. That's a welcome trend. Now great rums are becoming almost as easy to turn up. That's an even better trend.

Among those newly available: J.M Rhum from Martinique.

I was fortunate enough to visit the J.M distillery in Martinique when researching a story on rum for Saveur magazine last summer. It's a striking place, with its sugar cane grown on the slopes of the volcano just above the distillery, then hauled down by tractor each day during the cutting season. The master distiller, Nazaire Canataous, has been working here since 1972 when he was 17, and is the son of the former master distiller. He's a man who clearly loves his job, and his passion and experience shines through in the product. Perhaps the single best sip of rum of many I had on Martinique was the 15-year-old J.M, and the 10-year old rum was a close runner-up.

The 10-year is now available in the United States. It's a barrel-proof, cask-strength rum that has a touch of sweetness but without burned-sugar notes. Benjamin Jones, who distributes J.m and Clement rums in the United States, says that he compares the Clement with cognac, and J.M with armagnac. I'd have to say that's not just marketing hype, but accurate.

J.M has been in the U.S. markets only since the beginning of this year, and for now can be found largely on the east coast – including most New England markets. It's due to roll out soon in Illinois, Colorado, Arizona, and California.

Look for it. Be pleased.

Cuba Rican Rum

OK, I guessed wrong when I wrote that Bacardi would be probably repackage one of its premium aged rums as the new "Havana Club" (see below). It turns out it's a white rum, and the bottle makes it look like a Grey Goose that ate too much and then got a 1920s makeover.

So what's actually in the bottle? I'll take it at face value that Bacardi is using the old Archebala family "recipe" to make the white rum in Puerto Rico. I won't even set off on a tangent here about "premium white rums" – the idea of which seems to me to borrow more from vodka's marketing than the tradition of quality rum-making. I'd really like to put the new product through a blind taste test with Bacardi Silver, along with some other premium white rums (perhaps Matusalem), and see how the flavor profiles differ. Then I'd like to throw history into the mix: a 1920s-era Havana Club, and the Pernod Ricard Havana Club to find out which is closest to the original.

Pernod-Ricard promises to keep fighting, noting that labeling a Puerto Rican rum as a Cuban product is misleading. (Bacardi, naturally, disagrees. ''Consumers are smart and savvy; they can read the front of the bottle,'' the Miami Herald quoted Patricia Neal, Bacardi spokeswoman, as saying. Of course, if consumers were truly smart and savvy, the advertising industry would not exist.) Bacardi also pointed out, perhaps more persuasively, that Pernod Ricard owns Malibu rum, which is produced in Barbados.

Anyway, there appears to be historic precedent for selling Havana Club Puerto Rican rum. Ads ran in American newspapers in the 1940s, during the liquor shortages of World War II, advertising "Havana Club Puerto Rican Rum."

Moving rapidly into the United States is clearly a good defensive move on Bacardi's part. Havana Club has gone from a regional curiosity to an economic powerhouse in the decade plus since Pernod Ricard put its marketing might behind it. It's gone from selling 300,000 cases per year to 2.4 million (mostly in Europe and Canada), and that's without access to the U.S. market. If the embargo were ever lifted (and with Castro's weakening that prospect seems ever closer), Pernod Ricard would be able to quickly ride a tide of interest in all things Cuban to a strong position in the American marketplace.

In truth, I'm less concerned about two foreign companies wrestling over a symbol than I am about the vodkaization of rum. (Something that plagued the industry in the 1950s). But that's another post.

Havana Club – or is that “Havana Club”? – comes to Florida this week

It truly has not been a good week for Fidel Castro.

On August 3 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of the Bacardi corporation – in effect, decreeing that the Cuban government no longer owned the Havana Club trademark in the United States, and that Bacardi was now the legal owner of it.

Bacardi wasted no time. It announced today that the new Havana Club will be on sale in Florida later this week as a premium product priced at $20 a bottle. (Just in time to toast Fidel's ill-health, I suppose.) It will roll out to other states as the market warrants. Links to a Miami Herald story and the Bacardi release are below.

The struggle over the Havana Club name dates back more than a decade, and I won't rehash it here. (I touch on it slightly in the book, but, really, a whole other book could be dedicated to the legal wrangling of this case – which includes Bacardi's contributions to Tom Delay and Connie Mack to get favorable measures put into law, Castro's threats to start producing a product called "Coca-Cola," and much, much more.)

The upshot is that there will now be two Havana Club rums for sale globally. The Havana Club produced in Havana by the Castro government (and distributed worldwide by liquor giant Pernod Ricard since 1993), and the Bacardi Havana Club, which will be available only in the United States.

So which should be regarded as the original, and which gets the "quotation marks"?

The Havana-made Havana Club has the rights of claiming terrior, if there is such a thing in rum-making. Bacardi's Havana Club, in contrast, is made in the giant factory in Puerto Rico. Point: Cuban version.

As for taste, I'm not sure. The Miami Herald story quotes Ramon Arechabala, who is from the family who made the original rum in Cuba, as saying the current Cuban product is unpotable. "Fidel lacks the formula of the right Havana Club,'' he said.

I used to be a big fan of Havana Club – it was one of the first rums that I tried years ago that showed me that rum could be complex – but I don't think it's as good as it once was. Perhaps the demand in Europe and Canada caught the Cubans with short stocks of good aged rum, and some shortcuts had to be taken. (Imagine Gaelic shrug of shoulders here.) A former employee of the company once told me diplomatically, "At Havana Club, maybe they use a different calendar than you and me."

Bacardi does not say in its press release that it plans to resurrect the original Arechabala family techniques in distilling the old Havana Club. If I had to guess, I would think that the Havana Club moving into Florida this week will be some variation or blend of the Reserva or Anjeo or Bacardi 8 with a new label. (And I haven't seen the label yet - and I'm curious.)

But a blind tasting might be in order. I would love to sample three bottles: an original, pre-Castro Havana Club, the Pernod Ricard distributed version, and the Bacardi version. Paging Stephen Remsberg.

The U.S. courts and trademark office have spoken. Now let the people decide.

Miami Herald story
Bacardi press release

Live from New York!

Last night I had the great fortune to be able to talk about rum to 150 folks at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I love to talk about rum, I do it often, and I find that I like it better when there's somebody there to listen.

We served up four rum drinks over the course of the 90-minute evening. Everyone began with a mini-mojito, which would have tasted even better if it were 95 degrees out, and this was followed by three drinks, each marking an interesting rum era – bombo (colonial North America), El Presidente (Prohibiton), and a shot of Ron Zacapa Centenario served neat (rum today).

The audience really knew its rum and had a lot of good, focused questions. I wanted to do the Andy Kaufman thing and take everyone out for drinks afterwards. But that would have been pretty expensive.

When I mentiioned some worthy rums to look for today, I offered up a list of some of my favorites, and said I'd post it for reference. So here it is:

Zaya (Guatemala)
Ron Zacapa Centenario (Guatemala)
Pyrat XO (and XO 23) (Anguila)
Barbancourt 5 Star (Haiti)
Rhum Clément VSOP (Martinique)
One Barrel (Belize)
Barrilito 3 Star (Puerto Rico)
Appleton VX (Jamaica)
Mt. Gay Extra Old (Barbados)
El Dorado 15 (Guyana)
Cruzan Single Barrel (Virgin Islands)
Pampero Anniversario (Venezuela)
Santa Teresa 1796 (Venezuela)
Flor de Cana Grand Reserve (Nicaragua)