Phil Prichard Interview Part One

[jankdc]

Part one: Categorizing Rum


We started talking before I got permission to start recording. We were talking about the problems with rum and he asked me what the different styles of rum are. I replied, barbadian, jamaican, cane juice/agricole, demeran, and cuban. He said that I was ahead of most people with their understanding. He argues rum should be categorized similar to whiskey:


Prichard: . . .The public walks in and goes to somebody like that (guy at counter) “I want a bottle of rum”. “Well you want a light rum or a dark rum?” My problem is if rum is going to be the next big thing as they keep advertising like they’re going be. . . Now when I started my rum business, when we started making rum back in 2000, the reason that we got into the rum business is because if you go back to 2000, vodka was the darling of the industry. Whisky was in the doldrums. But tequila and rum in 2000 were still growing at the rate of about 3% per year. But we . . . when we launched our rum officially with our first sales in 2001 everybody was saying that “rum was going to be the next big thing” so. And it was, it was a little bit of a ride there, we got a nice bump. We came out with a $30-35 bottle of rum. And our sales you know went proportionally with that. But here comes whiskey roaring back and rum got stifled. So we’ve been sitting here with this “rum’s gonna be the next big thing” you know for the last 15 years and it never has been. So I contend the problem is the public doesn’t know what their buying. When they walk into a liquor store, the only thing they know are the key brands or a spiced rum, a light rum, or a dark rum. But rum is far more compl . . . far more interesting than that.

To answer your question, whiskeys are defined by what we call their feedstock. What they’re made out of. Whiskey is made from grain, well whiskey can be made from malted barley, it can be made from a whole . . . If it is made from malted barley in Scotland, we call it scotch and if it’s made from malted barley in Ireland we call it Irish whiskey. If it’s made from corn in the U.S. and certain procedures that go into it we call it bourbon. The bottom line is that whiskeys are defined largely by the grains from which they’re made.

Rum is not defined by anything. If we are in Brazil we can call it pisco or we can call it cachaca. If we are in the French islands we call it agricole, it can all be white. But I’ve tasted some really nice agricoles. . . I’m sorry cachacas that have been aged in whiskey barrels and you would be thinking you were drinking a fine brandy. I like to think that was the first rum that people drank. That they started fermenting the juice and then distilling that juice and they discovered that it made pretty good alcohol and then of course they had to start barreling it. So we have that first level of rum that was made like a classical rum 300 years ago.

The next problem that you have is how do you get that sugar cane juice to New England where the American Colonies were needing that sugar cane juice to make sweetening. Well obviously you evaporate the water out of it and made a sweet molasses. So 250 years ago, we made a traditional rum out of sweet table grade molasses like you would might put on your pancakes or cornbread. That was the path we chose to go down.


Me: Now why did you you choose that?

Prichard: Because, number one . . . We were really focused on recreating that rum that Thomas Jefferson referred to as the poor man’s brandy. He wasn’t talking about a blackstrap rum. There are 2000 rum distilleries in this world, and the vast majority of them are making rum out of essentially the residue out of the sugar refining industry, a product called blackstrap. Well blackstrap is 32% sugar and 68% “lord only knows.” I’m not going to take you down the path that blackstrap rums are bad, but blackstrap rums are a type of rum that is characteristically different from rums made from sugar cane juice and characteristically different from rums made from sweet molasses.


Me: Now to my knowledge you are the only one using sweet molasses.

Prichard: That could well be, now having said that, I belong to a little group of 15 rum distillers in America and I don’t know what they’re using for using for feedstock because I hadn’t talked to all of them. But when we set about to. . .


Me: What is this group?

Prichard: It’s the American rum distillers guild or I don’t know what it is. You send me an email and I’ll figure it out. (I think it is the American Rum Association) But it’s a relatively new group but you know their focus is more tax oriented. The Virgin Island distillers get their federal excise tax refunded. But I’m not sure that I want to go down that path. Because even though we could make rum on the tropical islands and get that federal excised tax back, the other side of that is that I’m would have shipping costs have shipping costs that would offset so don’t need to go down that path too far. But my bailywick this year is that I really do want to make . . . I want the rum producers to realize that until we start providing the customer the information that they need to walk in and have an educated approach to the type of rum that that person wants. In other words if I walked in . . . now I’m not purporting that these should the classifications for rum. But for example, If I walk in and I see a classical rum that I’ve got to know that that classical rum is going to be made from sugar cane juice. And we can have classical rum, we can call it aged or we can call it anejo if we want to refer a classical rum as being aged. But there is something that I know about that classification “classical rum” that tells me that it’s a rum made from sugar cane juice exclusively. As opposed to trying to figure out the difference between pisko, cachaca, and agricole. so we have three classifications of a sugar cane juice rum.


Me: That could be aged or could be white.

Prichard: That in itself is confusing, and then any one of the three could be aged or white.

Then I said let’s talk about rum as it was made 250 years ago when it was made from sweet molasses. and let’s call that “traditional”. Well we can spanishize if you want to use that word and we can call it “traditional”. Now we have a traditional rum, aged or unaged. White or Crystal or aged or any category you want to put.

And then the next category. . . Now this is going to be the rub. The next rub is what do you call a rum made from blackstrap molasses? The only classification of rum that exists out there today for rum that is made out of blackstrap molasses was one coined by the French and it’s called “Industrial”. I don’t think we are going to get anybody to buy an Industrial rum. But that’s a character in itself.

And then of course you’ve got another classification of rum that’s coming at that’s the one that I think a lot of these American producers are going to be doing and that is they are either taking white table sugar or brown sugar or perhaps evaporated sugar granules and making a rum. but that’s going to be a completely different type of rum than an agricole or a blackstrap rum. So it’s going to have a completely different character and flavor.


Me: So you’re saying that we should re-categorize rum from what it’s made out of rather than the style of rum that it is made or how long it’s fermented or how long it’s aged.

Prichard: Those can all be a kind of subcategories. We always create subcategories for things. We have to tell the person that when he walks in and sees that bottle on the shelf, there is a word on that that person can look at it and say “that rum is made from”. At that point that customer can then go down “Well I want a classical rum that is aged” Or “I want a traditional rum that is white” or “clear” . That’s what I’m giving masters clinic on at the Rum Renaissance in April. OK, where can I throw my coat?

[Dai]

In a way I agree with Phil on classification. The average guy knows diddly squat about rum the older it is and cheaper he can buy it is good. You have to think that the vast majority of sales go to people who have no knowledge or enthusiasm for rum like we do. It's only after they taste it and find they really like it do they then stick to that one rum. That accounts for about 70% of all spirits drinkers not just rum drinkers. Now it's the other 30% who are the enthusiasts who gain the knowledge and spread the word.

I personally think rum should characterised by taste a bit more like wine is (and I don't even like wine) people predominantly buy it for the taste of it. We buy rum to drink. Usually the first question from a mate or colleague is what's that taste like. So if you pick a rum based on it's predominant taste and say it was fruity, sweet, smoky, dry etc

Try it next time you go into a large wine shop they will probably describe it to you by it's taste characteristics. There are far more wines than there are rums.

It's a lot easier to pick a rum based that than the shillery telling me that the gnat that sat on my glass has pissed in it and, not only that they can tell me what the gnat had for breakfast. Your average person doesn't pick up half of this stuff that is described in reviews.

Whisky does something similar with peaty or fruity whisky etc. Rum should be along similar lines. Far easier for the undereducated non enthusiast to pick a bottle that way.

[Dai]

I absolutely love this advert!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr5CIkVl6T4

[Capn Jimbo]

Brilliant!


Our good friend Jank, thank you for this wonderful contribution from a guy that is really an American classic, Phil Prichard. A great read, can't wait to read the rest. Your contribution is what The Project is all about - a small bunch of talented people who truly love spirit, and love true spirits. Thank you for all the time and effort you took.

BTW, the link provided for the American Distillers Assoc. (not to be confused with the American Distillers Institute) was contacted some time ago regarding the petition to Save Caribbean Rum. They have published two articles about the problem, but have yet to link the petition, and were contacted again, this time citing the many key signatures (Broom, et al) that now exist.