Ron Zacapa XO Rum

Part 1

Rum is so intimately associated with the Caribbean Islands, pirates, and Stephenson’s fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, that you can be forgiven for not knowing that sugar cane, from which it is made, is native to Southeast Asia and India, where it was first cultivated nearly two millennia before Columbus stumbled upon the West Indies and decided they were the East Indies (a minor navigational mistake of 11,300 miles, nearly half the circumference of the earth).  

However, you shan’t be so easily forgiven if you don’t know that the cultivation of sugar cane—especially in the Caribbean and Brazil—also cultivated some of the most brutal excesses of the slave trade.

The growing and fermentation of sugar cane spread westward during the first millenium CE—beverages we might classify as a proto-rum are mentioned in Sanskrit texts and by Marco Polo.   It was produced in quantity in Cyprus in the Middle Ages. It was the New World, however, that was to provide the ideal climate to make Saccharum oficinarum and its products a huge global commodity (to this day it is the world’s largest crop by production quantity: 1.8 billion tons were produced in 2017 according to Wikipedia). It was introduced to Brazil in the early 1600s, and subsequently to the Caribbean, especially in Barbados where several plantation owners would go on to become among the richest men in the world.

There was only one problem. The climate and rainfall of the region might be perfect, but the labor situation was far from it, since most of the indigenous peoples had been driven extinct thanks to imported diseases against which they had no resistance. But then it wasn’t a problem: There was an entire continent to the east that could provide replacements. Between 1526 and 1867, twelve and a half million Africans were shipped to the New World as slaves—and 90 percent of them went to the Caribbean and South America. The fatality rate on the Trans-Atlantic journey averaged 10-12 percent; once in the fields the annual fatality rate was three to five percent.

Ironically, some think it was slaves in Barbados who first figured out how to distill a particular alcoholic beverage from molasses, which at the time was considered a waste product of the sugar refining process. However it came about, this “rumbullion,” as it was apparently first known, quickly caught on—and one of the most lucrative markets for it turned out to be the American colonies.

In the mid-17th century there was a bit of a crisis in the struggling settlements and towns still mostly clustered along our eastern seaboard. The area was unsuitable for growing the kinds of grains or grapes that could easily be turned into beer or wine or liquor. Imported brandy from Europe, a mainstay, was expensive, and Britain was experiencing a shortage of ale at the time, leading to reduced exports. So when rum (both cheaper and stronger than brandy) was introduced, the colonists welcomed it with slightly slurred enthusiasm. Sales soared, plantation owners on the islands cleared more land and planted more sugar cane—and bought more slaves.

Meanwhile the clever colonists, not content to save money on Caribbean rum, figured out they could make their own by importing the raw molasses and distilling it themselves. By the late 1600s, such towns as Salem, Boston, and Newport had become huge producers of rum, selling it not only to residents but to slave traders as well, who used it as currency (this vicious involute interdependency between slave traders, slave owners, and producers was known as a triangular trade). Soon rum accounted for more than three quarters of all exports from New England.

You might have thought things would settle down to a supply-and-demand balance amenable to everyone except the enslaved Africans. But it seems the New Englanders were getting their best deals on molasses from plantations on the French-colonized islands in the Caribbean—and that did not make plantation owners in British-colonized islands happy. In 1733 they lobbied His Majesty’s government to impose a tax on molasses not sourced from their plantations; the colonists, however, found ways to circumvent it. So in 1764 the Sugar Act was passed, halving the tax but increasing enforcement. As it was enacted during a recession, protests erupted, and leading citizens such as Samuel Adams condemned the tax as an infringement of colonists’ rights. Mutterings began to be heard about the injustice of taxation without adequate representation.

Sound familiar? Indeed, and now you know, as they say, the rest of the story: The germ of rebellion in the American Colonies; the spark that ignited the fuse that would explode in 1776, came about not from a dispute over tea—it was all about booze.

“I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes.” 

John Adams

Part 2

Fast forward two and a half centuries—and, blessedly, past rum’s ugly slave-trade legacy (also past the heady tradition of naval rum, which we’ll explore later). In the latter half of the twentieth century the reputation of the liquor wavered between literary highs (Hemingway’s daiquiris) and dormitory lows (college students’ binge rum-and-cokes). But in the 1970s, a Guatemalan doctor named Alejandro Burgaleta began paying attention to the potential of fermented sugar cane, and introduced Ron Zacapa Centenario, named for the centennial of the town of Zacapa. Just as vintners have coaxed superlative character from grapes, distillers from grains, and brewers from barley and hops, Ron Zacapa and other premium makers now produce rums that stand head to head with the world’s finest cabernets, single-malts, and ales. My first sip of Ron Zacapa XO elicited the identical transcendent euphoria as did my first experience with Macallan 25 whisky and Fuller’s 1845 ale (alas, as a wine heathen, I’ve had no similar angels-singing intercourse with products of the vine). 

This is not a rum to be sullied with anything, not even an ice cube in my opinion. Roseann has never been a fan of rum, but her first experience with the Ron Zacapa XO—which she bought me to celebrate the publication of Clayton Porter’s first adventure—made a convert. “Oh . . . . my,” was her first reaction, and she immediately wanted more than the “tiny sip” she had asked for.

Much of the excellence of Ron Zacapa products for the last 35 years can be laid at the feet of Master Blender Lorena Vásquez, one of the few women to hold such a position. Other practices to which the company adheres make her job easier. Sugar cane for Ron Zacapa rum is still harvested by hand (using a company-designed machete), so that only perfectly ripe stalks are collected. Zacapa rum is made only from first-pressed cane sugar, not molasses, and the just-distilled liquor is trucked to an aging facility on the slopes of a 7,500-foot Guatemalan mountain, where cooler temperatures encourage slower, more consistent maturation. The oak barrels in which the rum is aged come from various sources and histories, selected by Lorena to enhance certain flavor profiles—American white oak formerly used to age whiskey, others of European oak that formerly held cognac or sherry. The result, in the case of the XO, is a nearly opaque yet luminescent root beer/caramel color—you might think the bottle-glass is tinted until you pour some out. 

Master Blender Loreena Vásquez

I tend to roll my eyes at those who try way too hard to describe the taste of wine or beer with overwrought similes, so you’ll get nothing from me along the lines of, for example, this actual review posted on the (otherwise excellent) Beer Advocate site, regarding my favorite ale, Fuller’s 1845: “Smells of toffee pudding, honeyed bread crust, marmalade, pecan pie, sultana raisin and some soft earthy hops.”

Seriously?

I’ll just say that Ron Zacapa XO was a fitting gift for Clayton Porter to take to his friend Alberto Maldonado. If you can swing the hefty price, try a bottle. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. If you are, I’ll happily take the remainder of it off your hands.