Barrelling Through History

Alcoholic beverages of various sorts conjure up distinct images. Wine suggests French vineyards or Tuscan villas; beer, English pubs or German gasthäuser; and whisky, either Scottish oak casks or cowboys in rough Western bars. Rum is no exception, evoking thoughts of Caribbean plantations, crusty one-eyed sea dogs, and bottle-label pirates like Captain Morgan. The spirit has inspired quotations from famous figures, well beyond Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Yo‑ho‑ho, and a bottle of rum!” Lord Byron deemed it a partner of “true religion” (with which, by all accounts, his acquaintance might be described as “complicated”) as an effective calmer of the soul. Winston Churchill, the one-time First Lord of the Admiralty, was not a rum drinker (preferring whisky in the morning, champagne at lunch, and brandy in the evening) and supposedly dismissed it as a naval tradition coequal with “sodomy and the lash.” More favourable was the golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez, who drank an entire...