Four Rum Myths Dispelled

Rum is not always sweet, all rum is made from sugar. No, that does not mean it is sweet. Yeast converts sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide before it goes into the still. A white rum can be as dry as any liquor. And aging in oak adds tannins and other wood flavorings that can produce dark rum as flavorful as Scotch.

Rum is not only best mixed with fruit juices. Rum has traditionally been a cheap spirit, and so was often mixed with cheap juices for frat parties. A good rum holds its own in classic cocktails like a rum Manhattan or a rum Old Fashioned. The finest aged rums are best appreciated neat.

Rum is not just a Caribbean/West Indian spirit. Rum’s commercial birthplace may have been the sugar cane fields of the islands and the tropics, but prior to the American Revolution, dozens of rum distilleries existed in New England. Today, rum is a North American product, with craft distillers making distinctive rums from Boston to Hawaii.

Pirates did not always drink rum. Pirates drank whatever they could plunder, and in the early days, that was chiefly Spanish wine. Contemporary accounts of the dreaded Captain Morgan do not even mention rum. It was not until the late 17th and early 18th centuries that pirates started to drink rum, concurrent with the rise of the West Indian rum trade.

Coca Cola Facts

It was originally used for medicinal purposes and sold at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, GA. Coca leaves do indeed contain traces of cocaine, which was then believed to help control one’s dependence on opiates.

John Pemberton received a medical degree at 19 and worked as a druggist in Columbus, Georgia, before joining the Confederate army during the Civil War. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel with the Third Georgia Cavalry and was severely wounded in battle.
To control the pain resulting from those wounds, he became addicted to morphine.

After the war, he settled in Atlanta, where he began work on a beverage combining coca leaves and cola nuts. His objective was to create a pain reliever but when his lab assistant accidentally mixed the concoction with carbonated water on May 8, 1886, the two men tasted it, liked it, and decided it might make a profitable alternative to ginger ale and root beer. Vernor's Ginger Ale, created in 1866 by a Detroit pharmacist, preceded Coke and was originally available only in Detroit.

Three years later, Dr. Pemberton he sold out for $2,300. He had no idea what the still very classified, secret formula would be worth. It is now used in a product that sells about 350 million cans and bottles a day in nearly 200 countries. He died a few years after his accidental invention and only a few months after the Coca Cola Corporation was incorporated.

The original medicine was sold to make people feel better. Some say it still does, minus the cocaine. Vernor's, especially with Captain Morgan, still makes me feel better than Coke.

Captain Morgan

The Captain wasn’t always just for mixing spiced rum with Diet Coke. In the 17th century he was a feared privateer.

Not only did the Welsh pirate marry his own cousin (like Jerry Lee Lewis and Einstein), but he ran risky missions for the governor of Jamaica, like capturing some Spanish prisoners in Cuba and sacking Port-au-Prince in Haiti. He also plundered the Cuban coast before holding for ransom the entire city of Portobelo, Panama.

He later looted and burned Panama City, but his pillaging career came to an end when Spain and England signed a peace treaty in 1671. Instead of getting in trouble for his high-seas hi-jinks, Morgan received knighthood and became the lieutenant governor of Jamaica. Now I know why I like the guy. . . and the rum.