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It ’ s natural to expect the most agricultural , “ field to bottle ” version of a spirit to be its origin story ; the seed that grew the tree ; the stalk that grew the cane . The history of rum and sugarcane however , tell a different story .
The first rum distillation traces back to the 17th century , when it was discovered that distilling molasses , the dark and heavily caramelized waste left over from the process of refining and crystalizing sugar from sugarcane , could be distilled into alcohol . It would be another couple of hundred years before the Caribbean distillers in Martinique would connect the spirit more closely to its agricultural roots .
Around 1870 the price of cane sugar was decimated by the introduction of beet sugar . Commercial sugar mills in the Caribbean were failing and disappearing , and the abundance of cheap molasses went along with them . As a resourceful response to these conditions , distillers in Martinique began fermenting fresh cane juice into “ cane wine ” for distillation . This alleviated the need for molasses and allowed them to skip the market-distressed refinement process altogether , while also creating a whole new tradition and flavor profile , rhum agricole .
This bit of history helps shed some light on why our rich rum-making legacy in America has so few ( and only modern ) examples of rhum agricole . Sugarcane is a grass that needs a near-tropical climate to grow well and requires considerable processing infrastructure to be viable as a commodity crop . This eliminates most of the United States ’ potential sugarcane regions . Today , sugarcane is a commercial crop in Florida and Louisiana , and to a lesser degree in Texas , but of the few other U . S . regions it is grown in , it is limited to small-scale family farms .
Sugarcane is so highly fermentable that it must be milled into juice and processed within hours , or the wild yeast it carries will begin to ferment and degrade the juice before your very eyes . Unless you ’ re in a cane growing region , it stands to reason that the tradition of rum distillation in your area has been limited to making what the French would call , “ rhum industriale ,” rum made from distilling stabilized molasses .
As America ’ s craft renaissance has progressed , enterprising and creative entrepreneurs have made a habit of reviving age-old traditions , reshaping them into new ideas and blending various inspirations into innovative interpretations . It was this sort of thinking that led several American distillers to look past rum ’ s industrial beginnings , toward an agriculturally expressive rum , by focusing on the most important , yet previously missing piece of the puzzle : sugarcane .
Erik Vonk , a native of the Netherlands , was inspired by his grandfather ’ s diverse collection of agricoles . In 1999 , eight years after moving to Georgia , he discovered southern Georgia ’ s history of growing sug-