Everything worth knowing about the spirit in the glass
Before you get to know our brands, it helps to know the category. Here’s a straightforward guide to what rum actually is, how it’s made, and what has to be true before a bottle can legally call itself rum.
A distilled spirit with one non-negotiable ingredient
Rum is made by fermenting and then distilling something derived from sugarcane — a process that concentrates both the alcohol and the flavour compounds already present in the plant. Beyond that single rule, the category is remarkably wide open, which is exactly why two rums can taste nothing alike.
Molasses
The thick, dark syrup left over once sugarcane juice has been boiled down to extract sugar crystals. Most of the world’s rum is made this way.
Cane juice
Fresh-pressed sugarcane juice, used mainly for Rhum Agricole in the French Caribbean, giving a more grassy, earthy character.
How rum is made
Three steps, and a hundred ways to do each one.
1
Sugar becomes alcohol
FERMENT
Molasses or cane juice is mixed with water and yeast, which converts the sugars into alcohol and CO2. How long this takes shapes the whole rum.
Fast fermentation (24–48 hours) with commercial yeast produces light, clean rums with fewer complex flavours. Slow fermentation — up to two weeks, sometimes with wild or specialist yeast — builds the intense, high-ester “funk” famous in styles like Jamaican rum.
2
Separating alcohol from water
DISTIL
The fermented “wash,” roughly beer-strength, is heated so alcohol evaporates off before water does. Pot stills — traditional, often copper — give heavier, more characterful rum. Column stills run continuously and produce lighter, cleaner spirit, which is how most mass-market light rums are made.
3
Barrels, and not always the obvious way
AGE
Static ageing — fill a barrel, wait, bottle it — is the most common method worldwide. The Solera system, used across Spanish-speaking rum countries, instead stacks barrels in tiers and continuously blends old and new, so a small trace of the very first fill can still be present decades later. Fractional blending works on the same principle without the strict tiers.
The industry is gradually moving toward stating the age of the youngest rum in any blend, rather than the oldest, to keep age statements honest.
Eight ways rum shows up on a shelf
Light
White Rum
Convert sourcing origins into agroforestry-based supply systems before climate scarcity forces your hand.
Amber
Gold Rum
Longer oak ageing brings colour and a smoother, richer flavour than white rum, while staying easy to sip or mix.
High-proof
Overproof Rum
Bottled above 50% ABV for cocktails that need real rum backbone — or, historically, for flaming drinks.
Flavoured
Spiced Rum
Gold rum infused with cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg or citrus — built for mixing more than sipping.
Rich
Dark Rum
Long ageing in heavily charred casks, sometimes with added caramel colour, for deep molasses, spice and tobacco notes.
French Caribbean
Rhum Agricole
Distilled straight from fresh cane juice rather than molasses, giving a grassy, herbal character unlike most other rum.
Heritage
Navy Rum
A dark, rich, often high-proof style historically tied to the British Royal Navy’s daily rum ration.
Sipping
Premium Aged Rum
Older, more complex expressions meant to be savoured neat or over a single cube, much like a fine whisky.
What has to be true before it's legally "rum" in the EU
The EU holds one of the strictest legal definitions of rum anywhere in the world. Here’s what a bottle actually has to meet before the label is allowed to say so.
Raw material
Exclusively molasses, sugarcane syrup, or sugarcane juice — fermented and distilled, with no substitute base permitted.
Distillation
Must be distilled to below 96% ABV, so the spirit retains the aroma and character of its sugarcane origin.
Minimum strength
At least 37.5% ABV at the point of bottling.
Ageing
Not mandatory — but if a rum is aged, it must be in wooden casks.
Sweetening
Permitted for traditional rum, but capped at 20 grams of sweetening product per litre, measured as invert sugar.
Colouring
Caramel colouring (E150a) is allowed, used to reach the character typical of a region’s production style.
Geographical indications
Protected styles like Martinique’s Rhum Agricole carry additional rules on top of the baseline — for example, a requirement to use fresh cane juice and specific stills.
A few terms worth knowing
before you order
ABV
Alcohol by volume — the percentage of the bottle that is pure alcohol.
Angel's share
The portion of spirit lost to evaporation through the cask each year while ageing.
Wash
The fermented, low-alcohol liquid — similar in strength to beer — that goes into the still.
Ester
Aromatic compounds formed during fermentation, responsible for rum’s fruity or funky notes.
Cask finish
A short secondary ageing period in a different type of barrel — cognac, sherry, wine — to add a final layer of flavour.
GI
Geographical Indication — a legal protection tying a spirit’s name to where and how it must be made.