The Rum Historian title
In this issue you won’t find the customary article from the series HISTORY OF CUBAN RUM. Not because the series is over, quite the opposite. As you may recall, the last three articles in the series (January to March 2025) were dedicated to the fascinating book by Basil Woon “When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba”, published in 1928. We still have a century to narrate, as I would like to reach the present day and, perhaps, even take a look at the future of Cuban rum, therefore many more articles will follow. However, I’m taking a few months’ break from Cuba and its rum for two reasons: the first is that the present compels me to make some reflections that I want to share with you with regard to an important and alarming issue of the present and, I fear, the future. The second reason is that Cuba is a complicated country, going through a very difficult situation. Accessing the necessary documentation to continue my research is not easy, and a break will be useful for me to gather some material.
I’ll end this long but necessary introduction with a frank warning to our readers: in this article, I am dealing with things I know little about. I repeat, things I know little about and have not had the time and means to explore in depth. I do not want to appear presumptuous, but, generally, my articles are based on rather accurate research. Often, I carry out research on primary sources, and sometimes I even manage to discover and bring to light real hidden gems (thanks, Margaret). Other times I have had to resign myself to using only secondary literature, but always within the framework of as accurate research as possible, and therefore on a rational and verifiable understanding of what I write. This time is different. This article is based only on my intuitions, or rather, on my nose. And my nose has been sensing the smell of a grand return of Prohibition for some time now.
I got the first hints about it around a decade ago. You may remember, Finland and Sweden (if I’m not mistaken) published a list of rums to which sugar had been added. At that time European regulations prohibited any addition of sugar to rum, therefore in Europe those products, in theory, were illegal. It was a bit of an open secret because everybody in the rum world knew that many companies, even important, prestigious ones, added sugar to rum to make it more appealing to many consumers, and sometimes even to hide some defects. A few years later European regulations changed and now it is legally possible to add a limited amount of sugar, but that’s not the point, here and now.
The publication of the aforementioned lists was welcomed by all rum enthusiasts, myself included. It was a step forward towards the authenticity of the product, its specialness; in short, towards the high quality that all of us in the rum world aspire to. And it was successful. Soon after, when I was attending various Rum Fests, it became normal to hear consumers asking how much sugar there was in the rums displayed on the stalls. Of course, those were extremely passionate and discerning consumers, precisely the attendees of Rum Fests, but still, there were many of them. I’ll say that again, I too was pleased.
Shortly afterwards, however, news began to circulate about the request of some organizations and some European countries to include the presence of sugar and its nutritional values on the labels: that is, how many calories, etc. The rationale was that the consumer should be informed about what they were drinking, for reasons of transparency, health, and wellness. That’s when I started to have niggling doubts, to sense a smell that I didn’t like.
Then, the first real hammer blow fell. Ireland introduced a law that mandates the labelling of alcoholic beverages with health warnings. This law, which came into effect on May 22nd 2023, requires that the labels of alcoholic beverages indicate the calorie content and grams of alcohol in the product, as well as warnings about the health risks associated with alcohol consumption. These risks include the link between alcohol and cancer, liver diseases, and the risks related to alcohol consumption during pregnancy. The law will be fully enforced on May 22nd 2026, after a three-year-transition period. This decision has sparked contrasting reactions. While some appreciate the initiative as an important step to safeguard public health, others, including wine and spirits producers and some EU member states, have strongly criticised it, considering it scaremongering and penalizing for the entire world revolving around the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages, including wine.
This made me reflect. I began to think that behind the declared aim of transparency, health and wellness, there might also be, perhaps not only, but certainly also, a grand style return of the old prohibitionist culture camouflaged in new clothes. And that the requests for transparency etc., were in actual fact a Trojan Horse to disguise a new attack of prohibitionism on the beverage citadel. In short, Prohibition, which has never really been vanquished, is now back on the attack. In Europe, the new wave of prohibitionism has its champions especially in Northern countries. I am well aware that in some of these countries excessive alcohol consumption is a real scourge, but I also know that prohibitionism does not solve the problem; if anything, it makes it worse, as is clearly shown by the American Prohibition (see HISTORY OF CUBAN RUM 20. PROHIBITION in the July 2024 issue of GOT RUM? and subsequent issues).
And in America? Let’s see. From what I understand from the little I have read, in 2024 the debate and the confrontation centered on the reform of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans whose new edition should be published in 2025. The debate between Neo-Prohibitionists and defenders of moderate alcohol consumption seems based almost entirely on health issues. The former argue that alcohol, in any quantity whatsoever, is harmful; the latter deny this and advocate the beneficial virtues of moderate consumption, with the word ‘responsible’ frequently used. Each side is fore-armed with studies and research that support their respective positions.
I won’t venture into this terrain. I am not a scientist, but it seems to me to be a case of wrong use of science and unnecessary excess of information. Furthermore, these studies are an example of overestimating the relationship between cause and effect, or, to put it in another way, overestimating our ability to trace the causes of the phenomena we observe. My Philosophy studies are now too far behind me, yet I remember that David Hume had already said something similar in the 1700s with his “inductive inference.” In any case, the relationship between cause and effect is at the center of our lives, and inevitably we make inductive inferences in our daily lives. Let’s look at an example taken from a dark moment in rum history.
Roughly in the second half of the 1700s, the daily allowance of rum for the British soldiers in the Caribbean was half a pint and was usually diluted with water. But soldiers bought and drank much more undiluted rum, “large quantities of which of the most execrable quality”, from private sellers at a cheap price. Actually, West Indies distillers produced for the soldiers a kind of rum that only needed to be strong and cheap. It was fermented and distilled very quickly, saving on costs, without any regard for quality. As far as we know, the heads and the tails were not removed and in all likelihood in rum there was methanol, fused oils and bad congeners. And lead powder too, because at the time lead and pewter were largely used in sugar and rum-making machinery. Thanks to the reports of the military surgeons of the time, and of the first scientific post-mortems, we know of soldiers who died immediately after they had drunk or who fell to the ground in a state of torpor. Of hardy young men who declined rapidly. Of excruciating pains, ulcerated organs, illnesses, etc.
Well, in this case, the relationship between the cause—excessive consumption of a toxic beverage—and the effect—pain, illness, and death—is clear.
Today the situation is quite different, though. The people who are the subject of modern studies certainly do not drink alcohol in the same quantity and quality as those wretched soldiers. Study protocols generally follow two groups of people, one that drinks moderate amounts and one that does not drink at all, for a certain period of time. The problem is that they should be followed for decades, and even that would not be rigorous enough. Drinking or not drinking is only one element of the lives of the people studied. There are many other factors that affect their lives and, therefore, the possibility of getting sick and dying. Just to name the most obvious ones: the environment in which they live, the work they do, their lifestyle, their genetic heritage, and that indefinable thing that is their personality: for example, being more or less optimistic or pessimistic, laid-back, or prone to depression. And no one can seriously claim that a certain disease that manifests itself years or decades later or that death depends on the fact that years back they had or had not drunk one or two drinks a day.
Let’s therefore put aside this misuse of science and try to resort to common sense. I was born, raised, and grew old in a country, Italy, where alcohol consumption has been habitual for millennia. Especially wine, but also beer and spirits. And common sense has always known that drinking moderately, during meals with family and friends, is one of life’s great pleasures. And that sometimes, in certain difficult moments, even sipping a glass alone, perhaps at the end of the day, meditating on life, has never brought anyone to the grave before their time. The same common sense has always known that drinking too much, getting intoxicated often times, is harmful, very harmful. It damages the body and mind, weakens the ability to work, wears out family relationships, etc.; in short, it causes serious, sometimes even fatal, harm.
But someone might ask how much is drinking moderately and how much is not? I believe that every adult consumer must and can find the answer for themselves, according to their tastes, habits, weight, health, etc. Often the Neo-Prohibitionists claim that they strive to achieve a risk-free situation for healthy living. Well, I am sorry to disappoint them, but life is not risk-free. And as in many other cases of our modern life, the obsession with being healthy becomes the denial of the pleasure of living.
To conclude, prohibitionism has returned and is part, I believe, of that neo-Puritan wave that has been rising in the West for years. And on this, I would like to quote once again a passage from Prof. J. McHugh, in his seminal book “AN UNHOLY BREW Alcohol in Indian History and Religion,” 2021.
“In many contemporary Western societies, drink – and especially drink considered as a drug – is associated not only with intoxication but with addiction. In her essay “Epidemics of the Will”, Eve Sedgwick wrote of the philosophy and development of the modern ideology of addiction. In a pervasive modern framing of drug consumption, taking drugs is not simply an act; consumers themselves are a type, with a distinctive identity: addicts. Pathologized addiction has now been extended from drugs to food, sex, shopping, exercise, and other activities, so that the object pursued by the addict can no longer be defined automatically as a foreign substance or even an unhealthy behavior. Rather, addiction today is found in ‘the structure of the will that is always somehow insufficiently free, a choice whose voluntarity is insufficiently pure’. Inseparable from our modern concept of addiction, therefore, is the search for a reified, absolute free will, a pure voluntarity, thwarted at every turn, ironically, by the apparent tendency of voluntary acts to become compulsory addictions.”
Today, unlike in the past, Neo-Prohibitionists do not want to ban alcohol, or so they say, but only to discourage consumption by informing the consumer. Therefore, they do not ask for legal bans, but information and limitations. For now …
Marco Pierini
POST SCRIPTUM
As of the time I finished this article, the new edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans had not been published yet. The 2020 – 2025 edition published in 2020 is available online. For those who would like to know more, I recommend:
Tyler Wetherall What Do Neo-Prohibitionists Really Want? 12/06/2024 daily.sevenfifty.com/
