Rum is one of the oldest and most fascinating alcoholic beverages in history. Born from the distillation of sugar cane or its molasses, rum has accompanied the adventures of pirates, sailors and colonists in the exotic lands of the Caribbean and America. Today, rum is produced in almost all the sugar regions of the world and comes in different types and qualities, from the most valuable to the cheapest.
The origins of rum date back to ancient times, when fermented drinks were produced from sugar cane juice in India and China. An example of these ancestors is brum, a distillate produced in Malaysia dating back thousands of years and brought to Europe by Marco Polo as “excellent sugar wine”. The first distillation of rum took place in London with Indian sugar cane in the 15th century.
The true birth of rum as we know it today, however, occurred in the Caribbean in the 17th century, thanks to slaves on sugarcane plantations who discovered that molasses, a byproduct of the sugar refining process, fermented into alcohol. Later, distillation of these alcoholic byproducts concentrated the alcohol and removed impurities, producing the first true rums.
