Ableforth'S Rum Rumbullion, 70cl

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There are instructions to make rum drinks and a few recipes that are either inadequately explained or painfully obvious. The LIVE virtual tastings are carried out in the last week of the month. Please keep an eye on our socials for confirmed dates! If some, a very few, Barbadian planters did become immensely rich overnight, the dawn was a long time coming. It took over two decades for the pioneer planters to gain prosperity, and as the value of their crops increased, so did the value of land on the island, making access to vaster and vaster sums of capital crucial to the profitable planting, tending, harvest, refining and distilling of the cane. A thriving post-Annales school of historiography has developed. Practitioners like David Abulafia at Cambridge University emphasize the primacy of human will and structures both physical and political on historical phenomena. Human enterprise, whether the choice of crops to plant or goods to trade, is more important in this view than the natural world that Braudel considers paramount. As to fashion, “[i]n the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, no one had a good word to say about the West Indies,” Barbados not excepted. It was not just the denizens of the Barbadian underclass that the English despised; the privileged classes envied and snubbed the sugar barons as parvenus, the kind of people who, to plagiarize Alan Clarke on Michael Heseltine, had to buy their own furniture.

I didn’t find out what the base rum so I’m none the wiser. The information on the Spicing was interesting though. I didn’t pursue it any further as to be honest I can probably guess that it will be a fairly young Trini rum. It would be unfair to continue piling on, but worst of all Broom does not even include in his international directory of rums the Editor’s three favorites: Coruba, Pampero Anniversario and Westerhall.For me I appreciate the authentic flavour of the spicings used but I have found myself only really able to mix this and when I do that I find the Cinnamon a little off putting. I think this is actually a pretty decent Spiced Rum but like Chairman’s Reserve Spiced it is perhaps just not to my own personal tastes. Fortunately it has quite a lot going on in the mix so unlike the Chairman’s it doesn’t dominate and take over the drink. There are a number of small mysteries about the introduction of sugar culture to Barbados, but the main outline of the story is clear enough.” Arawaks who accompanied the English had planted cane on the island during the first year of settlement, but neither they nor the English knew how to make sugar and in any event the plants failed to flourish. (Dunn 61) Early cultivation of tobacco and cotton on Barbados produced indifferent results: By 1640 its enterprising and ambitious inhabitants had determined that the island needed a new crop. (Dunn 61; No Peace) Whenever it first appeared, however, brandy “only broke away from doctors and apothecaries very slowly.” (Braudel 243) Customs records identify brandy merchants at Colmar in 1506, but not in Venice until 1596; its appearance in other sixteenth century locations remains conjectural, and after sifting the evidence Braudel admits “that we are still no nearer to the answer to the problem: when did distilling begin?” (Braudel 243, 248) In any event he considers distilled alcohol a “great innovation” and in his judgment “[t]he sixteenth century created it; the seventeenth century consolidated it; the eighteenth century popularized it.” (Braudel 241) The nose is wonderfully spicy, with clove and orange zest at the front. Orange, clove, caramel, and various other spices on the tongue. Good sweet and spicy finish. The Portuguese had produced sugar in Brazil for over a century before the English settled Barbados in 1627. Those planters in Brazil also produced a distilled drink from cane, agua ardente, but it probably was something closer to cachaca or vodka than to rum, and in particular the amber and darker rums produced by the English in the Caribbean. As Richard Dunn notes, they “were apparently the first sugar makers to discover how to distill molasses and other sugar by-products into a potent alcoholic drink with a sweetly burnished taste.” (Dunn 196)

A blend of the very finest high proof Caribbean rum, to which was added creamy Madagascan vanilla and a generous helping of zesty orange peel. A secret recipe was followed, and the Professor finished his hearty tipple with a handful of cinnamon and cloves and just a hint of cardamom.” For those left on the island, fortune meant sugar, and the product was a harsh mistress. Transplanting the sugar culture from Brazil to Barbados was “complicated and costly.” ( No Peace 76) Once the industry did reach the island, its requirements in a preindustrial world were forbidding. “That the work of managing a sugar plantation demanded all of the time, intelligence, and energy of the owner must be immediately recognized.” ( No Peace 92) A little less mystery surrounds the genesis if not the name of the great spirit of the Caribees, and historically of New England and beyond. Rum began, on Barbados, sometime after 1640 and before 1647. Historically, distillates based on cane have started out as a byproduct of the sugar industry and that was true on seventeenth century Barbados. The cane was crushed to extract its juices, boiled to produce crystals and then ‘cured,’ or dried and drained of molasses. Sugar planters could sell the molasses, but it was bulky to transport and fetched a lower price, much lower, than the white sugar that Europe and New England craved. In strength if not in flavor, seventeenth century rumbullion probably resembled the ‘overproofs’ of as much as seventy-five percent or more alcohol available today. A seventeenth century Barbadian statute “stipulated that any rum that would not take fire from a flame without being heated had to be thrown away or the maker would be fined L100,” a considerable sum. ( No Peace 297)

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K. Kris Hirst, “The History of Distilling,” http://archaeology.about.com/od/foodsoftheancientpast/fr/smith06.htm In a much cited anecdote, Ligon went on to add that an unfortunate slave (“an excellent servant”) sent to fetch rum from the “Still-house” hogshead to “the Drink-room” burned to death when he held a candle too close to the open cask. (Ligon 93)

At the core of this fabulous winter warmer lies a blend of the very finest high proof Caribbean rum, to which was added creamy Madagascan vanilla and a generous helping of zesty orange peel. A secret recipe was followed, finished with a handful of cassia and cloves and just a hint of cardamom. No lesser light than Ferdinand Braudel takes a more cautious approach. He states that alcohol per se “was possibly discovered in about 1100, in southern Italy” and adds that the first distillation, probably of wine to make brandy or aqua vitae, “had been attributed (probably wrongly) to Raymond Lull who died in 1315, or to a curious itinerant doctor, Arnaud de Villenueve,” who died in 1313. (Braudel 241) Rumbullion! has been so popular with Master of Malt punters that it is also now available in an XO (15 year old) and Navy Strength variation. This review focuses on the “traditional” standard Rumbullion. I do enjoy spiced rum at times, and I'm awarding this one a 9 in my "spiced" rum category, as its the best I've ever tried thus far. Its actually head-and-shoulders any spiced rum I've ever encountered. I'll hold the coveted "10" in reserve, in case I ever find a spiced rum that trumps this exceptionally fine spirit some day. Spiced Rum’s that are suitable for sipping are few and far between. Sipping Rumbullion! is a very, very spicy experience. I have no doubt that this Spiced Rum has been produced from more authentic spices and flavourings than many commercially available Spiced Rums. Synthetic vanilla essence is miles away from this rums taste. It is very much like a very spicy orange drink – almost mulled in many ways. Spiced Ginger Orange is how it tastes. Cardamon is also present giving a slight “Indian Cuisine” type curried note. Despite all this, taken neat Rumbullion! does reveal the youthfulness of its base rum. There’s quite a lot of alcohol burn as well as intense spicing. I wouldn’t choose to drink this neat, maybe over ice at a push. The extra ABV in comparison to other Spiced Rums is very evident. Perhaps too much for a sipper.

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Broom also describes seventeenth century Barbados as “an almost mythical place, a fantastical, fertile island where fortunes could be made with virtually no effort. It soon became painfully fashionable.” (Broom 92) Visitors to Barbados did find the place ‘fantastical,’ but not in a way that Broom implies, and its was a fertile environment, particularly for the cultivation of cane, at least until the planters exhausted its soil. Otherwise his breezy contentions are wrong. They settled on sugar, and at some point or points during 1640 and 1641 several of them made the journey to Pernambuco in Brazil to learn from the Portuguese how to make it. They were fast studies. By 1643 Thomas Robinson could write that Bardados “is growne the most flourishing Island in all those American parts, and I verily believe in all the world for the producing of sugar…. ” (Dunn 61, 61n37)