Adultery: Why you shouldn't cheat!

[Capn Jimbo]

What's in your glass? Rum? You sure?

Most of us poor souls value the notion of a fine dram of rum, right? Of course. We believe that an attractive bottle labeled "rum" is made from cane juice, syrup or molasses. We trust that if any flavoring materials are added the label will so state "flavored rums". Same for "rum liqueurs". After all it's all regulated, nicht vahr? And BTW again, there is even a category called "imitation rum", but just you try to find one. But not so fast!

Here's how crazy it really is:

Additives intended to flavor or modify your precious fine and pure "rum" are many and common. So common that most of the rums you see are adulterated with unlabeled additives. Let's first review the "Big Three"...

1. Vanilla - added in the form of mostly artificial vanillans, specifically to alter taste to, uh, add faux vanilla tones, but also to smooth the product. It would be hard to find a rum not so altered.

2. Sugar (or equivalent) - because cane is the source most of us dummies expect it to have some natural sweetness; after all, sugarcane was and remains a large source of the crystalline sugar you plop into your morning coffee. And we all have a sweet tooth. Sugar sells, ergo it's added - but not labeled, of course. Hidden sugar also smooths and hide the underlying cheaper rums.

3. Blending Sherry - in the beginning there was heaven and earth. Not long thereafter man - or more likely woman - discovered those sweet little globes called grapes. Some of these were mashed, and voila! They fermented into some of the earliest fermented, alcohol bearing drinks. For our purposes one of the biggies was sherry produced in Spain and shipped all over the world in those sherry barrels. The barrels were recycled and used to store things, including rum and whisky.

The result - sherry influenced tones that softened, sweetened, smoothed and added marvelous and sumptuous fruity tones. But this required (a) expense and (b) time for proper aging, only begun by a long sea voyage.

The modern rum barons don't have the time, seek to maximize profit and won't waste either. They soon discovered that this relatively expensive and time consuming process of expensive sherry barrel aging could be kinda, sorta be replaced by simply dumping some cheap and crappy sherry into the vat. Not nearly as effective, but it worked well enough to deceive the masses. Us.

And so it went, and goes.

The taste engineers have replaced the master distillers as they manufacture the profile of what you thought was a fine, pure aged rum. Silly us! And there's so much more in your glass...

Glycerine, glycerol and sodium bicarbonate. These are intended to smooth a cheap rum. The glycerine/glycerol also cause some pretty "beading" that makes your cheap rum look aged and expensive as it leaves those faux legs on your glass. And these are just the beginning of hidden added artificial tweakers.

Now why is this all done (do I have to ask)?

Show me the money! And follow it. You simply have no idea how much cheaper rum is, when emanating from a massive, multiple column stills that pump out untold thousands of gallons of relative low congener, low taste rum. Keep following the money and the saving of it - the objective is squeeze out as much alcohol as possible out of the ferment, while minimizing the federal taxes paid on it.

Almost like vodka - this mass produced "rum" has much of the taste distilled out. After all, the taste can be inexpensively tweaked, blended, smoothed, sweetened and flavored later. All unlabeled, of course. Now some of the "better" products may actually blend in a little expensive pot stilled rum for flavor (while retaining the cheap continuous rum to bulk it up). And a very few fine rums really are relatively pure and honestly aged.

Bottom line:

Most of the products labeled "rum" are not pure, but are chock full of profit increasing unlabeled additives designed to literally create a false but marketable taste "profile" and (more later about this) significantly reduce the federal taxes they must pay. Enforcement is lax and they get away with rummurder.

So what does this practice achieve?

1. It increases profit.

2. It emphasizes tasty but false profiles.

2. It leads to a condition where flavored products are so dominant (both the labeled and unlabeled ones) that we lose sight of what an actual pure product tastes like.

3. It's gotten so bad that the drinking public has come to actually prefer "tasty" faux rums over the few real ones/

Adultery. And you're being screwed, but you don't know it (or don't care - refer to the Arctic Wolf or the Preacher). But now you do. Spread the word...


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One little final story (yes, I know). I'm in my car all day long as I visit my clients - our tropical weather can be draining so I often stop to buy a nice bottle of real fruit juice to replenish my fluids and electrolytes. Although I prefer an expensive, 100% fresh-squeezed orange juice with "some pulp", lol, on this day I had a hankering for pure, cold real grape juice.

What better than an (expensive) bottle of Welch's 100% grape juice, ice cold! Took it back to the car, twisted off the cap and with great anticipation took a hopefully quenching and delicious swig.

Oy vey! Double oy vey!!

WTF?! It tasted flavored! Yes, my 100% grape juice, from of all companies Welch, tasted like phony flavored grape drink? Immediately, I reread the label - had I accidentally grabbed the wrong bottle? Nope - there it was - "made from 100% grape juice". But in the fine print I saw... it!

"Also contains artificial and natural flavorings".

Now if you are anything but a Compleat Idiot like me, have you gotten it yet? Yes it was "100%" juice - expensive - but still, STILL, they simply hadda add some flavoring. The reason is simple...

We have become so used to altered, phony and flavored products that even the real, pure products have to be flavored. No "roots" in root beer, no "ginger" in ginger ale. We have forgotten what a real juice or rum really tastes like and as a result have come to consider the imitation the preferred one.

I'm serious. God help us. And te hell with the taste engineers, those heartless, soulless, profit-grubbing and cheating fornicators!

[Capn Jimbo]

Fornicating with pure "rum" was bad enough... but here we go again!

Now let's get to the really unreal- the labeled "flavored rum" category. According to the US definition these are rums that contain "natural flavoring materials" and/or wine (usually sherry or what's called OTS wine). The primary "natural flavoring material" has to be labeled (eg, add real coffee flavoring and you must label it "Coffee Rum"). If the wine added is over 2.5% by volume, it too has to be labeled.

But the corporate manipulators can't even be honest even with the tasty cheap drivel they actually choose to label as "flavored rum". So-called "spiced" and "flavored rums" are the fastest growing rum category and are rapidly taking over most of the good shelf space in the rum section. The ever fewer really fine rums are literally being squeezed out of the way. But I digress.

First - and you can be sure of this - the rum used is the cheapest, fastest, flavorless bulk rum they can possibly squeeze out of the lowest grade bulk molasses on the planet. You know, the same rum they use in their "pure" products. But loaded with even more blenders, smoothers, and - are you sitting...

Artificial flavorings and spices! You know, the same ones used to tweak their so-called pure "rum" products.

That's right - these crap pushers don't even use real "natural flavoring materials", which would surely do the job, albeit for few pennies more. Nope, they use way cheaper artificial or imitation flavorings. Artificial aromas and flavors that any real taster can detect from the next room. You know what's worse?

It's cheating to save pennies. A "flavored rum" by legal definition in the US, must contain "natural flavoring materials". Do artificial additives qualify? Do the TTB (government regulators) care? Is there a loophole?

Maybe. Maybe not. Stay tuned...