American Rum 26: The Decline and Fall of American Rum

by ,

American Rum 26:  The Decline and Fall of American Rum

After the 1802’s repeal of the excise tax, importers and distillers of rum and molasses continued to pay the import duties, and, adding the costs of its transportation within the country, their product became too high-priced to be competitive, except, for the moment, along the seaboard. So while rum was expensive because it was distilled from imported molasses that paid a duty, whisky was cheap because it was distilled from cheap domestic grain, and at a time of great growth in alcohol consumption, production of American rum remained stagnant, while imports of rum from the West Indies decreased.

“The decline of the rum industry was accompanied and hastened by the rise of cheap, plentiful whiskey. The success of the whiskey industry was due, in part, to the fact that many Scottish, Irish and Scottish-Irish grain distillers had immigrated to America during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. These whiskey-drinking peoples had experimented with distillation for two centuries and had developed efficient stills that produced large amount of fairly high quality liquor. When these Irish and Scots settled on the American frontier, they found conditions favorable for the exercise of their talents: plentiful water, abundant grain, and ample wood to fuel their stills.” 

Moreover, the Appalachian Mountains formed a barrier to the transport of grain to east coast markets. “As for sending grain to the East, corn was so bulky that a horse could not carry enough across the Appalachian Mountains to provide his own feed. Indeed, it was calculated that grain could not be sent profitably by land more than twenty miles.” (The quotes of this article are from “The Alcoholic Republic” by W.J. Rorabaugh”)

Some farmers shipped their grain to New Orleans along the Mississippi. Though it was a long trip, it was not expensive; but often some of the grain would go off on the long voyage, and in any case New Orleans had plenty of grain and could not fetch a good price. As the cost of transportation made it impossible to take it to the east coast, transforming it into spirits was the logical choice: whiskey was worth more than grain, about six times as much for the same volume, and so a horse could carry enough whiskey to make a profit. Over the years the population increased, and so did production, and when transportation to the east coast became much more economical thanks to the earliest canals and steamboats, a river of cheap, relatively good quality whiskey began to flow into the markets of the east.

During the early nineteenth century the American whiskey industry benefited also from radical technological improvement in stills with the introduction of the Flat Still and of the Perpetual Still. For a good technical description of these new kinds of stills, the reader is referred directly to Rorabaugh’s book. Let is suffice to say here that with these innovations distillation was quicker, less expensive in terms of fuel and labor, and produced a higher quality liquor. But, very sadly for the rum industry, this new, shallow, flat still was of no use to rum distillers, for while grain mash could be heated rapidly and intensely, molasses would scorch.

Last, but not least, the taxes on rum and molasses were relatively easy to collect as these products landed at ports, while whiskey had a huge advantage: it was close to the customers and far from the tax collectors. Americans had never drunk New England rum for its taste; it was the alcoholic effect that people wanted. And now it was cheaper to get inebriated on whiskey than on rum.

Difficult supplies and higher prices for rum had encouraged the shift to whiskey, but rum also suffered from rising nationalism. After the war, the US wished to affirm its national identity, its break with the colonial past, and its differences from other nations. A wave of nationalism affected American culture. This is the time of Noah Webster’s efforts to make the American language under taken different from English, culminating with the publication of “An American Dictionary of the English Language” in 1828. And it was in this new cultural climate that imported molasses and rum soon became symbols of colonialism and economic dependence, while whiskey, made at home with American grain, became a symbol of national identity.

Harris Hall writes in the Preliminary Observation of his famous manual “The Distiller” (1818): “It should therefore became the particular aim of the American distiller to make a spirit purely American, entirely the produce of our own country; and if the pure, unadulterated grain spirit cannot be rendered sufficiently palatable to those tastes that are vitiated by the use of French brandy or Jamaica rum, let us search our own woods for an article to give it taste sufficiently pleasant for these depraved appetites.

The French sip brandy; the Hollanders swallow gin; the Irish glory in their whiskey; surely John Bull finds ‘meat and drinks’ in his porter – and why should not our countrymen have a national beverage?”. A Dr. James Tilton boasted that he had renounced foreign wine and spirits: “I indulge in a cheering glass of spirits and water, once or twice a day. For this purpose, I prefer good rye whiskey or high-proof apple-brandy; for I scorn to go abroad for anything that I can get better at home.”

To sum up, more or less in the 1830’s, whiskey finally supplanted rum as the favorite spirit of the Americans.

The golden age of the American Rum was ended.

-Article written by Marco Pierini- 

My name is Marco Pierini, I was born in 1954 in a little town in Tuscany (Italy) where a still live. I got a degree in Philosophy in Florence and I studied Political Science in Madrid, but my real passion has always been History. Through History I have always tried to know the world. Life brought me to work in tourism, event organization and vocational training. Then I discovered rum. With Francesco Rufini, I founded La Casa del Rum (The House of Rum), that runs a beach bar and selects Premium Rums in Italy, www.lacasadelrum.it

And finally I have returned back to my initial passion: History, but now it is the History of Rum. Because Rum is not only a great distillate, it’s a world. Produced in scores of countries, by thousands of companies, with an extraordinary variety of aromas and flavors; it has a terrible and fascinating history, made of slaves and pirates, imperial fleets and revolutions.

All this I try to cover in this column, in my FB Profile: www.facebook/marco.pierini.3 and in my new Blog: www.therumhistorian.com

I have published a book on Amazon: “AMERICAN RUM - A Short History of Rum in Early America”.