Like how craft beer spun out from big beer so, too, has craft gin spun out from the big players. Future distillers – with a good portion coming up through the craft beer ranks – realised that with the knowledge they already had, to make craft gin was within their reach. Now, distillers are looking at rum. Could this be the new craft spirit? Kieran Aylward reports

Ten years ago if you ordered a gin, your choice was limited between big players Bombay, Gordon’s and Tanqueray who offered various quality levels of pretty much their same spirit. If where you were drinking was more top end, you’d expect to see maybe Hendrick’s or Brockman there as well. 

In 1999 Johnny Depp stared in Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate, which would have been forgotten except for endless repeats on the Horror Channel. But what most remember from the movie was Depp’s character drink of choice being gin – straight up. In a movie that dealt with summoning the Devil, the gin drinking was probably the most unbelievable part.

But, that was then. Now craft gin distillers are making unique, flavourful creations with can stand on their own, as well as being part of creative cocktails.

The question now is, can craft rum do as well as craft gin?

In many ways, the two distilled beverages are as different as day and night. Usually the skill in gin making is in the careful manipulation of volatile botanicals, infusing them into a neutral spirit that in the majority of cases, the craft distiller does not produce but instead buys. 

With rum, the skill begins with selecting refined cane sugar, usually molasses, nurturing a fermentation and performing a distillation to produce a spirit – light or heavy – from the fermented wash, and finally sometimes aging the spirit in barrels and adjusting the colour with caramel.

And rum is seeing a resurgence, a burgeoning interest in rum production methods, and an appetite for rum consumption, and this it has in common with gin. 

Indeed, in some instances, rum is outperforming gin. Paul Courtney, of Courtneys of Wimple in Devon, who makes gin and imports and blends Guyanan Spiced Rum has noticed rum sales outstripping gin sales. 

“We are selling more than two bottles of rum for every bottle of gin. We’ve found that gin is such a saturated market that its harder to get traction, but there is a growing demand for rum, and supply hasn’t caught up”, says Courtney.

According to Kantar Worldpanel, the retail market for rum in the UK has shot up almost eight percent in value of volumes that are up five percent. 

Nearly 80 percent of 25-to 34-year-old spirit drinkers are partial to rum, according to a poll of over 1,400 consumers conducted exclusively for The Grocer by Harris Interactive. This compares with just half of those over-55. This trend with youth should continue with 70 percent of drinkers 16-24 saying that they prefer rum. These younger shoppers are prepared to go higher end than older generations. 

“We know that millennials are drinking less than their parents,” says Faith Holland, head of category at Captain Morgan. “As young people are drinking less, they are seeking higher quality in their purchases. We’re finding that customers are drinking less, but better.”

Sarah Doyle, Bacardi Europe’s VP of marketing, tells The Grocer that is an exciting time for rum, with the category undergoing a “massive premiumization” in the UK market. “There is a space for premium rum which consumers are really interested in,” she says.

One thing that rum suffers from is a lack of clear definition as to what is rum.

Rum is best known for being a product of the Caribbean region, as well as South and Central America. But it is also produced in North America – including nearly 25 US states – Africa, Australia, Asia and Europe.

Because in almost all cases ‘Rum’ is not geographically defined, such as Cognac, Bourbon or Scottish Whiskey, this makes it difficult to make international rules for when the contents of a bottle are actually rum, and in fact there are zero all-encompassing regulations. In Jamaica sugar cannot be added to rum, in the EU it can. In the EU, spices can be added to rum and still be called “rum”, but you cannot add flavourings. Captain Morgan Spiced Rum can be called rum; Captain Morgan Spiced Gold cannot.

Almost all would say that rum has to be made from fermented sugar cane, but what if you use sugar beets for your source of sugar? 

A drink made from sugar beets and artificial rum flavour in the Czech Republic used to be called Tuzemsky Rum, but when the Republic joined the EU in 2004, “rum” had to be dropped from name and it is now called Tuzemak. The name change hasn’t seen to hurt sales with Czechs spending three billion koruna (£104m) on the drink last year, which translates to one out of every four bottles of alcohol drink sold in the Czech Republic.

In the USA, the Tax and Trade Bureau (TBB) regulates spirits and it defines rum as: “An alcoholic distillate from the fermented juice of sugar cane, sugar cane syrup, sugar cane molasses, or other sugar cane by-products, produced at less than 190-proof in such manner that the distillate possesses the taste, aroma, and characteristics generally attributed to rum, and bottled at not less than 80-proof; and also includes mixtures solely of such distillates.

Sounds clear? It’s not. The TTB has recently allowed a Colorado distiller who uses sugar beets to call his product rum. Thrown into this mash are US terms such as Standards of Identity, which are essentially legal descriptions for various spirits as they apply to the US market, and Geographical Identification (GI). 

The West Indies Rum & Spirits Producers Association (WIRSPA) says that rum is any spirit distilled solely from the fermented sugars derived from the sugar cane plant and distilled below 96% alcohol by volume is rum. The sugars may be in the form of fresh juice, cane syrup or molasses.

There are also spirits which, though rum by definition, are described as sugar cane spirits or by other synonyms. For example, ‘Cachaça’ the national spirit of Brazil, is distilled from fermented sugar cane juice. 

But, says the WIRSPA, if the product is fermented from sugar cane juice, syrup or molasses and distilled below 96 percent alcohol, it is rum, pure and simple, no matter what someone chooses to call it.

Back to the States, in searching through TTB rule change proposals, there are no proposals for Jamaican, Guyanese or Martinique rum standards for identity. There is only one to be found, Brazilian Cachaça. Would going to Brazil and discovering the secrets behind the often overlooked Cachaça help solve the rum mystery?

Journey to Brazil

Call it what you will: Cachaça; Brazilian cachaça; Brazilian rum; or Brazilian cachaça rum; just don’t call its production small. With an annual production of over 1.4 billion litres, it is the world’s third most produced spirit, with most of it consumed in Brazil. 

The reason cachaça is overlooked has a lot to do with the structure of the industry, Rum is dominated by the large distillers, with a business model based on export sales and big marketing budgets to make the model work. 

Cachaça, too, is also dominated by large producers who are responsible for over 70 percent of production, but their main market is domestic. Artisan producers, which are many in number and have an appetite for export, are geographically fragmented so find marketing outside their regional state – let alone outside of Brazil – is more difficult.

As someone from the UK, you will find that alambique (artisan) cachaça producers have a lot in common with the traditional UK cider makers, both in how they process their own crops to add value, and use little or no raw materials from outside of their farm.  

Both also harvest a ripe crop, low in starch and high in simple sugars, which is milled and pressed and then the juice fermented. Most – but not all – cidermakers stop there, but cachaca producers take one more step and distill the ferment.   
To learn more, Belmiro Ribeiro Da Silva Neto can help, and to meet him expect a six-hour drive heading northwest of Sao Paulo, to a part of Brazil that while beautiful, it well off the foreign tourist radar. Belmiro is a professor at FGV University in Sao Paulo while also owning and running Ribeiro Da Silva Cachaça from his farm in Sao Jose Do Rio Preto.

“Cachaça does have an export market,” says Belmiro, “but it’s small, at around one percent of Brazil’s total production. Europe is the largest market taking 61 percent of the exports, with Germany on its own accounting for 35 percent. 

“The majority of these are exports are the cheap commercial brands, which are used to make Caipirinha, the famous Brazilian cocktail. These exports give people bad hangovers and ultimately undermine the reputation of Alambique Cachaca.”  

Belmiro, like many of Brazils artisan producers, has no interest in producing industrial cachaça, but he certainly has nothing against the Caipirinha, saying that you should try the cocktail with a good Cachaça Branca. 

His main interest is producing premium sipping cachaça. This is usually cachaça that has been aged in wooden barrels to introduce colour and flavour and, depending on the wood, a level of sweetness.  

Sometimes an oak barrel is used, but Brazil has numerous hard woods – some indigenous – which can also be used like Balsam, Jequitiba, Jatoba and Amburana. These hard woods give a completely unique character to aged cachaça, and these new flavours are beginning to get noticed. 

The flavour of these hardwoods haven’t escaped the attention either of craft brewers, with beers aged in the barrels beginning to appear in competitions. One example is 70K Amburana, a 13% ABV imperial milk stout from Against The Grain Brewery in Louisville, Kentucky, which picked up Gold in the wood aged category at the Great American Beer Festival.

Most regions in Brazil have a large number of alambique cachaça producers, including the UNESCO world heritage site of Paraty, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. When the Brazilian goldrush erupted in 1696, Paraty was the main port supporting the extraction of gold from the neighbouring, and landlocked state of Minas Gerais and produced their “cane brandy” for the miners and merchants. 

Minas Gerais is still an important mining area, though more for iron than gold these days, but it is also the place to be for anybody interested in drinking craft cachaca. 

The region is a vast, hot, rolling landscape of mountains, cattle ranches, winding roads and in November, heavy rainclouds. Its seemingly infinite forests are bright green, punctuated with the purple flowers of the occasional Jacaranda tree. The land grows perfectly the varieties of sugarcane that yield the best cachaça. To give you an idea of how many cachaça distilleries are in the region, Minas has more than 8,500 registered distilleries, but it is thought that only 15 percent of cachaça distilleries are registered. 

Some cachaca distilleries welcome visitors, but to see process unembellished, you need an introduction to a man like Jovelino Saldanha, one of the owners of D’Lourdes Cachaça. You travel with Jovelino to his family farm in Congonhas do Norte in the State of Minas Gerais, a four-hour drive into the interior, north of the state capital Belo Horizonte. 

Five years ago, the family decided to diversify into cachaça production and with a plan ultimately to pursue an export market, they invested heavily in a new copper alambique (still) and constructed new buildings, hygienically finished and purpose built for each stage of the process.

The season has just finished and the machines are idle, but if the distilleries of Rio are any indication, D’Lourdes would have loudly hummed with the rolling motors of the sugarcane crusher and press, and the warm, humid air would have been filled with the aroma of engines, green sugarcane, sweet distillate and smoke from the steam boiler. The smell would change in its ratio as you moved around the distillery.

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As you now approach the new buildings, Jovelino stops to point out five water tanks, each containing 20,000 litres. This water, pumped from a natural spring on the farm, is a critical resource and is used for washing equipment, adjusting the brix (measurement of sugar content in an aqueous solution) of the pressed cane juice, and in huge quantities to chill the distillate as it leaves the still.

The site is built into a hill, so Jovelino can use gravity to move liquid for most of the process. From the unloading bay, where the cane is emptied from the tractors ready for milling and pressing, there is a vantage point looking across the green and yellow cane fields. 

You ask Jovelino which cane varieties he grows, expecting an exotic name and some romantic reasoning, but the cane varieties have names like RB-8675515 and are the ones recommended by the federal university – it turns out that cane selection is taken very seriously. 

The process at D’Lourdes and at most small distilleries in Brazil, is probably best described as “mechanically manual”. Machines are in use, from the tractors to harvest the cane, to the mill and press to extract the juice, but most of the machinery relies on a degree of skilled manpower to make the process work. The mill, for example needs to be fed by hand, and the operator needs to know a dud cane when they see one.

After milling and pressing, the pure cane juice runs through series of rectangular troughs with alternate high and low gates designed to trap both sinking impurities and floating impurities. From there, the juice runs into cylindrical tanks where the brix and temperature are adjusted to ensure optimum conditions for the yeast, which in the case of D’Lourdes, is the yeast naturally living in the cane. The juice then flows under gravity into the 2,000 litre fermenting tanks, where the fermentation occurs at around 28 degrees C and when complete – usually within 24 hours – the wash is quickly distilled.

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Steam powers the still and is produced in a solid fuel boiler, which runs nearly entirely using “bagasse” – the dry fibrous solid waste material from the pressed sugarcane. 

The still is copper and has four bubble plates to refine the spirit in just one distillation, and a dephlegmator, or pre-condenser, to control reflux. The vapour passes first through a coil in a large water bath before the final condenser. The water bath is designed to recover some of the heat used in distillation and to preheat the next batch, so like most of the cachaça making process at D’Lourdes, it is very efficient.

After distillation, the cachaça can stay white (Branca) and if so will be aged for six months in stainless steel or it can be aged in wooden barrels. D’Lourdes uses American oak for up to three years and blends the barrels for a consistent product. 

D’Lourdes has a good market locally, but in an effort to expand, has partnered with Ledvick Wedzicha from Cachaça Festivals. Ledvick, a great fan of alambique cachaça, helps D’Lourdes and other producers by showing their products at festivals around Europe.

Still production

The term “alambique cachaça” refers to the pot still used in its production and is an important distinction between it, and industrial cachaca produced in continuous column stills. Much of the craft distilling equipment used in Brazil and South America is made by Alambqiues Santa Efigenia, which has been in operation for over 70-years. When you drive to the factory, you find that building copper pot stills is as artisan of practice as producing cachaça. 

You arrive in Conselheiro Lafaiete, close to the factory in Itaverava, coincidently just in time for its regular craft beer festival. It turns out that just as Brazil is quietly a craft distilling powerhouse, it is also a quiet leader in craft brewing. 

Alambiques Santa Efigenia continues to be a family run business, managed by the sons of the founder, and the stills are made in much the same way. TIG welding has taken the place of brazing, but the copper sheets are still worked by hand.

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At the factory, a symphony of hammer on metal greets you as workers beat and shape copper sheets into any geometry of pot or column that a craft distiller could want. Cachaça stills are the most common type for the factory to produce, and usually consist of a pot still with a column containing bubble plates and a dephlegmator directly above and fired by steam jacket or directly by an open fire below. 

Recently  the demand for whiskey, gin and universal distillation sets has increased and Santa Efigenia are proud to have built the still that produced Brazils first single malt called 3 Lobos and has recently built gin making equipment for Pernod Ricard. In 2019, Alambiques Santa Efigenia began a partnership with Vitikit Ltd from the UK, making all of their distillation systems and providing knowledge to European craft distillers.

Training in Brazil

Santa Efegenia also run, in partnership with the Federal Universities Biotechnology Department, a research and education centre, where they can test new systems, educate new master distillers and run courses in cachaça. It has recently added gin production and gin recipe development to the cirriculum. 

In October 2020, the centre plans to host a five-day course on the production of rum and cachaça, beginning with sugarcane selection and cultivation, and  covering everything to barrel aging and, of course, consumption. 

The course will be taught in English, and will be aimed at anyone in the distilling industry, including retailers, with an interest in the technical aspects of rum and cachaça production. The course will be run in partnership with Vitikit Ltd who will be offering places to anybody in the UK or USA with an interest in distilling.