First Look - Inside the Modern Caribbean Rum Book

After three years of research, writing, editing, and laying out, our new book, Modern Caribbean Rum, is off the printing press and for sale at the Wonk Press store.

A brief tour of the book’s structure and contents follows.

By the Numbers

As a former software engineer, I like using numbers to help tell the story:

170,000 words: There wasn’t any particular word count in mind for this book, but once the chapters were assembled and exported to Microsoft Word, I was shocked to see how many words we’d written. As a point of reference, the typical Ph.D. thesis is around 80,000 words.

38 chapters: The first 18 chapters cover rum and the rum industry collectively. The final 20 chapters focus on individual rum-making regions.

20 rum-making regions: To cover Caribbean rum, you can’t just cherry-pick a few well-known rum-producing countries and call it done. All the expected players are present, e.g., Barbados, Jamaica, Cuba and Martinique, but I don’t ignore the lesser-known players. Think Grenada, St. Vincent, and Suriname.

70+ Rum Producers (+): All the expected household names are present: Mount Gay, Appleton Estate, Demerara Distillers, Bacardi, and Saint-James. But I’m particularly proud of seeking out the lesser-known yet still-important Caribbean rum makers. For example, Cuba has at least nine rum distilleries, and none are named “Havana Club.”

In the Dominican Republic, we visit Alcoholes Finos Dominicanos, which distills rum for Barcelo and the Yazoo Investments brands. In Venezuela, we look at Destileria San Javier, which makes Ron Veroes. Guadeloupe’s SIS Bonne Mère is the island’s largest rum distillery, but virtually unknown; Modern Caribbean Rum has the photos and production details.

A few Caribbean distilleries seem to shy away from public attention, notably Jamaica’s New Yarmouth and Le Galion in Martinique. Again, Modern Caribbean Rum has the imagery and inside scoop.

900 (+) images: As someone fortunate to visit quite a few distilleries, I’ve always sought to recreate my memories as a virtual distillery tour for those yet to visit them. There are also dozens of historic images, many extremely rare and unseen by 99.9% of rum enthusiasts. A subsequent post will detail the enormous effort to source, edit, and track this enormous set of images.

850 pages: Between the 170,000 words and 900+ images, keeping the final page count to “only” 850 pages was a huge struggle, even using 10” x 10” pages, which are 50% larger than a typical 7” x 9” book.

8 lbs (3.6 kg): Simply put, Modern Caribbean Rum is a beast. The combination of page count, page size, and high-grade paper makes for a very heavy book.

Before we continue the tour, a quick opportunity to subscribe to future Rum Wonk news and commentary. It’s free!

Touring the Contents

Part One contains high-level introductory topics relevant to all rum, regardless of where made.

Chapter 1: What Is Rum? – Introduces key concepts, e.g., “what is rum,” and outlines the book’s scope and approach.

Chapter 02: Rum History – This chapter isn’t a comprehensive history of rum. Rather, it highlights key moments in the evolution of rum to provide context for subsequent chapters.           

Chapter 03: Classifying Rum – A detailed look at the pros and cons of various oft-used classifications and categories. Key takeaway: Nearly all existing classifications are far from ideal for the task at hand.

Chapter 04: The Many Misconceptions of Rum – Debunks various misconceptions about rum, including “rum is sweet,” misleading age statements, and pirates.

---

Deep dives into each of the essential phases of rum making. As with the prior section, the material in these chapters is relevant to all rum, not just Caribbean rum.

Chapter 5: Rum Production: Sugarcane – Rum’s source material, from sugarcane breeding to harvesting, milling, and subsequent processing to make cane juice, cane syrup, molasses, or panela.

Chapter 6: Rum Production: Fermentation – The chemical process of fermentation, types of yeast, and ways to supercharge flavor compounds, e.g., dunder and muck.

Chapter 7: Rum production: Distillation – Why we distill and how the process works at a molecular level for both batch and continuous stills.

Chapter 8: Rum Production: Aging – Why we age spirits, the various organic processes that occur during aging, and how they affect flavor.

Chapter 9: Rum Production: Blending – The often-overlooked phase of rum production, from additives to carbon, coloring, and chill filtration.

Chapter 10: Rum Production: Rum Flavor Science – The science of distilled spirits aroma and tastes and how production choices affect the intermediate and final results.

Chapter 11: Common Elements of Spanish Heritage Rum – Despite being the most common style of rum made (Bacardi, Havana Club, Tanduay, etc.), there are many knowledge gaps and misconceptions surrounding it.

---

Takes the reader behind the scenes of the rum industry to provide crucial insights into why things are the way they are. Such topics are ignored by most rum media.

Chapter 12: Behind the Brand – The three types of brands — original producers, private labels, and independent bottlers. How to differentiate between them and what to expect from each.

Chapter 13: Bulk and Sourced Rum – The bulk and sourced rum trade, with deep dives into E&A Scheer (bulk, blended rum) and Main Rum Company (high-value single casks.)

Chapter 14: Free Trade: Tariffs and Subsidies – How certain large countries put their thumb on the scale for their rum producers, e.g., the US Rum Cover Over, French excise quotas, and the Cuban embargo.

Chapter 15: West Indies Rum and Spirits Producers Association – An in-depth overview of the Caribbean’s largest producer group, working collectively to help put Caribbean rum on an equal footing with other distilled spirits.

Chapter 16: French Overseas Departments – While many people treat Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyane, and Reunion Island as independent entities, they all have similar geographical indications, excise reductions, and oversight by the French government. Several surprises are to be found in this chapter.

Chapter 17: Rum Regulations – Thoroughly debunks the notion that “rum has no rules.” Detailed summaries of the geographical indications and/or rum standards of 13 Caribbean rum-making regions. Also covers the CARICOM rum standard, the EU rum standard, and the US Standard of Identity for rum.

Chapter 18: Evolving Trends in Rum – The “looking ahead” chapter. Changes in sugarcane supply, environmental and social consciousness, transparency and disclosure, and growing diversity in rum styles.

---

The remaining 500+ pages iterate through Caribbean rum makers, region-by-region, and producer-by-producer.

Each chapter starts with a brief history and background of the region’s rum-making tradition. Next, the chapter iterates through the region’s rum producers. Each producer section starts with its history and backstory, then transitions to its production: source material, fermentation, distillation, aging, and blending.

The twenty rum-making regions in order are:

• Barbados

• Jamaica

• Guyana

• Trinidad

• Grenada

• St. Lucia

• Antigua

• St. Vincent

• Belize

• Haiti

• Cuba

• Puerto Rico

• Dominican Republic

• Venezuela

• Guatemala

• Nicaragua

• Panama

• Martinique

• Guadeloupe

• Suriname

What You Won’t Find

This book’s core is about Caribbean rum and the producers that make it. The key word here is producers, not brands. While it’s impossible to ignore brands completely, this book pays relatively little attention to any brand’s current lineup or marketing taglines. You won’t find fluffy soft-focus photos of cool people drinking <brand X> on a beach or near a campfire. Instead, Modern Caribbean Rum’s imagery is primarily inside the distillery: cane crushing, open fermentation vats, stills, and aging warehouses.

Likewise, you won’t find a single tasting note or rating, nor how a rum pairs with any particular mixer. Reviews are subject, and there are plenty of reviewers to choose from. Modern Caribbean Rum leaves that aspect of rum to them.

---

If you’ve made it this far, bravo! I’ll share about the making of Modern Caribbean Rum in future posts here.