Nobility Dept: There's NOTHING noble about rum or cane...

For officers only! Relevent history and facts about the growing, harvesting, fermentation, distillation and aging of Cane Spirits. Master this section and you master rum. Otherwise just masterbate...
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Capn Jimbo
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Nobility Dept: There's NOTHING noble about rum or cane...

Post by Capn Jimbo »

Let's get real...


When the Preacher headed his now puny site with the subhead of "Rum, the Noble Spirit", it soon became apparent that highly altered rogue rum is anything but. But how about the sugar cane itself?


"Noble Sugar Cane" - an actual variety

I came upon this alleged species of rum when - no surprise - the marketing monkeys of a particular made-up blend decided to promote their use of super fantastic, amazing, rare species of "Noble Sugar Cane". Now of course this was intended to imply that this was somehow special and really, really awesome. Think the promotion of "blue cane" in Martinique. Sounds good, eh?

Nope.

Actually, there's nothing all that special insofar as this writer is concerned. It's just sugar cane - which has never, ever, ever expressed terroir to any noticeable degree. So what's noble about "Noble Sugar Cane"? Nothing really. This species simply has more potential sugar to be harvested for either table sugar or for cane juice rums.

It simply allows the grower/distillers to squeeze ever more alcohol out of each acre. It's really the same sugar as any other species, just a wee bit more of it. Compare to the force feeding of factory chickens, pigs and cattle to produce fatter animals, faster.

A fowl, er foul endeaver, si? Yup, that's about it.


Credit to Luis Ayala per his email...

"Also, back to the "noble" sugarcane, a botanist commented to me that the term "noble" is often given to varieties within a species that are particularly profitable or generous in their yields. Thus, a grape variety can be called "noble" if its sugar yield is particularly high. In the case of sugarcane, "noble" canes are those with higher yields of sugar per acre/ton."
Carry on...
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