Resurrecting Forgotten Rums

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From the Editors

Resurrecting Forgotten Rums

One of the most enjoyable –and often challenging aspects of our job as rum consultants and blenders is to help clients resurrect old, almost forgotten rums.  Sometimes we have the advantage of being presented with production notes that include the names of the yeast strains and other related parameters (pH, pitch rates, fermentation times) so the work is rather straightforward. Other times we are presented with actual samples that we must evaluate to determine their original acidification and esterification levels and then work backwards using educated guesses as to the equipment, quality of water available, state of the sugar industry at the time, etc.

The end result of this work is akin to preserving animals in a zoo or, as in the movie Jurassic Park, to injecting prehistoric dinosaur DNA into living organisms in order to bring the former back to life. We are aided in our quest by the use of modern laboratory equipment, such as HPLC and GC capable of precisely dissecting products into their building blocks. This process is so enjoyable to us, that any outing into an antiques market or old neighborhood bar could uncover a treasure trove of old rum bottles, some with rum still in them, others with only crusty sediment, but to the trained eye, even the latter has tales to tell.

Rum has changed a lot over the past 100 years, even more over the past decade, and old bottles are silent witnesses to these changes. So next time one of your friends pulls out an old bottle of rum, consider storing a few milliliters of it into a small vial and saving it for posterity, keeping in mind that you may have in your hands one of the last members of an endangered species.

Cheers,

Luis Ayala, Editor and Publisher