The Case for Craft Distilled and Aged Rum
When our founder Karen first tasted rum thirty years ago—and even as she started making it in 2008—rum was a commonly misunderstood spirit. People generally assumed that it was “low brow” and poorly made. A connoisseur of spirits simply didn’t drink rum the way he or she might enjoy whiskey or scotch.
Over the last decade, consumers have started to understand that craft distilled rums offer the same complexities and quality elements as any other spirit. From the type and size of the still to the ingredients and aging practices, there is so much to talk about when you talk about rum.
Here we make our case for craft distilled rum. You probably won’t be surprised that we think rum is better than any other spirit!
With Craft Distillers You Can Really Get to Know Your Maker
Just like going to a farmers market and meeting the people who grow your zucchini, tomatoes and peppers, craft distilling offers the opportunity to get to know the people behind your favorite spirit. It doesn’t take long to realize that a craft distiller has a lot to share: how they make spirits, why them make it that way, and even the values and passions that guide the company.
On the one hand, getting to know your maker is a great way to know if the company shares your values. Some rum-making practices have negative consequence: poor treatment of the workers who grow the sugar cane; the burning of sugar cane fields, which releases particulates and pollution into the air; and the release of polluted water back into the water cycle. (We have shaped our supply chain and production practices to avoid these kinds of effects, which you can read about here.) With craft distillers, it’s often much easier to get to know production practices and company values because you’re dealing directly with the people who make the liquid.
Montanya Founder and Owner Karen Hoskin adjusting what’s called the “lentil” on the still.
Lead Distiller Gilles Hügi adds sugar cane to the fermentation tanks.
On the other hand, getting to know your maker is just plain interesting. Consider the difference between a company that selects a rum or a blend of rums from another producer versus distillers who make the rum themselves. In the first example, you can talk about flavor profiles, selection process, and the story behind the name or brand. Often, however, the owner can’t speak to the technical side making of the rum in an in-depth way because he/she lacks the direct experience. With a craft distiller, you can dive deep into topics like ingredients and sourcing, the type and size of the still, aging practices, and the distillery’s location—all factors that influence the final product—because he or she lives it everyday. It makes any discussion about flavor and the experience of tasting the rum more nuanced and insightful.
There’s So Much Variety in Craft Distilling
When you visit a micro-brewery, you can generally expect a selection of beers that fall into familiar categories: lagers, blondes, ambers, IPAs, stouts, sours, seasonals, etc. Yet within each of those categories, one brewery’s blonde may taste very different from another’s. There is a diversity among breweries that makes the experience of trying a new one more interesting.
The same can be said of craft distilling. A craft rum distiller makes so many choices that influence the final product:
The type of sugar cane (fresh pressed sugar cane juice, crystalized sugar cane, molasses) and where it comes from (often referred to as terroir)
Whether it is batch distilled or column distilled, and how the shape or material of the still influences the flavors
How it is aged and for how long, including: the type(s) of barrels; whether it is single barrel (the same batch of rum aged together) or blended; and whether it is single or double maturation or more (meaning the number of barrels it ages in)
The water used for fermentation and bottling (water makes up 60% of the bottle in an 80-proof spirit, which means that good water can actually enhance the final flavor)
The potential use of additives to provide flavor, color, mouth feel or sweetness (we don’t use artificial additives of any kind)
These choices are, in fact, the very factors that can help you distinguish one rum from another and start to discover the ones you love. We write about them in-depth in this blog post, and classify Montanya Rums in this post. The main takeaway here is that each of these factors influences how a rum will taste: will it be sweet? Funky? Tannic? Have grassy notes? A Rye finish? Spice? They introduce subtleties into the rum, and all the complexities that other spirits have traditionally gotten the credit for having.
We see this everyday in our rums. We distill at nearly 9,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies, which enhances the aging process and gives us access to phenomenal water. Aging Platino, our white rum, in American white oak barrels from Laws Whiskey House and filtering it through a coconut husk carbon filter creates a flavor profile unique from other white rums. Finishing our Exclusiva in a French oak barrel that previously held Cabernet Sauvignon and Port gives it a dry, tannic finish rare in rums.
Montanya Platino, made in the Rocky Mountains.
Why We Love Craft Distilled Rum More than Any Other Spirit
As a whole, rum varies widely depending on where it’s made and how. There’s currently a debate in the world of rum as to whether the spirit should be more regulated. We worry less about regulation than we do about transparency. If consumers have access to accurate information about what’s in the bottle, how it’s made and by whom, we trust them to find and support the rums they love. Their tastes are likely to evolve and change over time, but there is no one right answer, no perfect rum. Just the rum you love most.
We also love the variety and the versatility of rum, and draw on it every day in our Tasting Room. In addition to tastings, we serve over 30 cocktails using only 4 rums. Those rums all begin with the same ingredients and the exact same distillation process (practices that help to set us apart from other distilleries). It’s the aging process that differentiates them from each other as well as other rums, and allows us to create classic rum cocktails, reimagine drinks traditionally made with other spirits, and create brand new recipes. If variety is the spice of life, then craft-distilled rum provides it.
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