What is gold rum?

[Dave the Cook]

Over here on the "House" selections topic, the term "gold rum" is invoked.

I've got a number of rums on my shelf, and they run the color-transparency gamut from water-clear (Mathusalem) to those that would give wastewater sludge an opacity challenge (Cruzan Blackstrap). But what's gold? Is it anything between Flor de Cana 4-year-old and Gosling's? Is it a style, as Dave Wondrich alludes to in Killer Cocktails (what is Barbados-style rum?)

Maybe I already have some. But until someone gives me some examples, I'm rum-blind, and I don't like it.

[Alchemist]

Over here on the "House" selections topic, the term "gold rum" is invoked.

I've got a number of rums on my shelf, and they run the color-transparency gamut from water-clear (Mathusalem) to those that would give wastewater sludge an opacity challenge (Cruzan Blackstrap). But what's gold? Is it anything between Flor de Cana 4-year-old and Gosling's? Is it a style, as Dave Wondrich alludes to in Killer Cocktails (what is Barbados-style rum?)

Maybe I already have some. But until someone gives me some examples, I'm rum-blind, and I don't like it.

←

• Light-bodied rum (or white or silver): spends up to a year in barrels and is filtered before bottling. Very subtle. Example: Bacardi Light.

• Medium-bodied rum (or gold or amber): richer and smoother as result of production of compounds during fermentation called congeners, or the addition of caramel, or aging in wood barrels. Examples: Mount Gay, Appleton Gold, Mathusalem Classico (my favorite).

• Heavy-bodied rum: includes blended and colored dark rums like Myer’s, Cruzan Blackstrap, Coruba and full-bodied, well-aged “brandy style” or sipping rums like Angostura 1824 and Barbancourt 15 year.

Does this help?

toby

[Dave the Cook]

It does help a bit. But where do I categorize Flor de Cana white (aged four years)? Or Inner Circle (take your pick of proofs: 80, 90, 115, 151), which is dark-colored and deeply flavored, but doesn't indicate age?

The recommendations for Mount Gay, Appleton Gold and Mathusalem Classico are welcome; I'll seek them out. How are they best employed?

[Alchemist]

It does help a bit. But where do I categorize Flor de Cana white (aged four years)? Or Inner Circle (take your pick of proofs: 80, 90, 115, 151), which is dark-colored and deeply flavored, but doesn't indicate age?

The recommendations for Mount Gay, Appleton Gold and Mathusalem Classico are welcome; I'll seek them out. How are they best employed?

←

Ah, there is the rub.

Rum has no international ruling body imposing rules on it so it is almost impossible to categorize except like this

Swill that shouldn't even be poured out on the ground unless you are looking to kill the local flora, and elicit a heafty fine from the EPA.

Stuff that you can bring to a party of people you don't perticularly like. Your flask tucked neatly in an inner pocket.

Something that is not nearly as bad as you think it's gonna be. But make sure that the mixers are strongly flavored.

Eh, You would drink that if it was 3am, and everything else was gone. And you'd had a few.

Ok, not what you would buy but it'll do.

Hey, do you have fresh lime wedges to make this a Cuba Libre?

Cool, do you have some limes, and a juicer, I'll whip up some classic Mai Tais.

Ok, stand back. I need some brown sugar from between the tropic of cancer and capricorn, some ice, twice filtered, and some artesinal bitters STAT. And you had better have a channel knife for a proper pigtail twist.

How is your ice? Because there is a special place in hell for people who contaminate this nectar with ANYTHING ELSE.

Put down that bottle or I will chew your f&%king arm off.

Does that help?

The only authority on rum is you. You are blind now but you will see the light...Hallauah!!!

Edited because of serious rum drinking.

Edited March 1, 2008 by Alchemist (log)

[Mayur]

I think you just won eGullet... or the Spirits and Cocktails forum, at least.

FWIW, I agree with the Alchemist 100%. It actually annoys me to no end that I have to stock so much rum (along the spectrum from hooch to ambrosia) as I do. But the marginal return at each point is unparalleled.

[Alchemist]

So, I have switched to non navy proof rum and I will try to answer this question.

The color of the rum has only a little bit to to with the flavor for a couple of reasons

1.) Sometimes rums will be aged and the "bleached" so you get the flavor and not the color.

2.) Once in awhile some scurvy dog will add carmel color to try to fool a land lubber like you.

3.) On a rare occurance, yummy additives will be added to make something...yummy.

3 1/2.) Note to self, stop hanging out with girls younger than the rum you are drinking. I am drinking 23 year old Zacapa. Really.

4.) When the sun is going down off the coast of Pangdangaran, and the parrot is screaming "liquor, liquor, I didn't even bring her" in your ear, and the eye patch is giving you hives...

5.) Some products are better than others. (a cop out as I have forgotten the question)

How shall we drink the stuff...

Mt. Gay. Three lime wedges and soda. Wicked on a hot night when you have graduated from rum & coke-ah-co-la.

The Classico. A glass, a bottle, a mouth and an arm to connect 'em.

Appleton. Hmm.

But also on the Classico, I like to use it when a drink needs a little rounding. If there is some clawing in the throat, bring in the Math.

My glass of Sailor Jerry's is empty...

Toby

Edited March 1, 2008 by Alchemist (log)

[thirtyoneknots]

It's true that there is no legal definition for 'gold rum' but to me it means lighter bodied Spanish-styles, like the Flor de Cana 4 year (gold). The minimal aging and lack of color filtration I guess kind of define it, along with the lighter body. For dark rum, see Goslings, Meyers's, Appleton Extra, etc. If you can't see your hand through the bottle, it's a dark rum. For all the types that fall between dark and gold (as I defined it here), I call them amber rums. You could call them gold rums, but I think most recipes calling for gold rum want the lighter style, whereas recipes calling for amber maybe want the medium-bodied types. Of course I could just be talking out of my hat. It's all pretty subjective.

[slkinsey]

Gold rum to me says just that: Rum that is right around the same color as a lager beer. This will, then, be lighter in color and less intense in flavor/wood than an amber rum, which I see as being right around the same color as a good bitter ale.

Ultimately, though, it's not clear that these are great distinctions to make. All you're really doing is describing the color and approximate degree of wood aging. You could describe Flor de Caña Extra Dry as a "white rum" but you could also describe La Favorite or, for that matter, Wray & Nephew Overproof as "white rums." I think we will all agree that these three are radically different products. Rather, Flor de Caña Extra Dry is a Cuban-style white rum and La Favorite is a white rhum agricole.

Going back to your earlier questions about Dave's description of a certain rum as "Barbados-style" -- that has to do with the fact that different areas have different traditions associated with rum distilling. A Cuban amber rum by Havana Club or a Cuban-style amber rum by Flor de Caña is not going to be the same as a Guyanese amber rum by Lemon Hart or a Jamaican amber rum by Appleton. If you're making a Queen's Park Swizzle, it's just not going to turn out right with the Cuban rum or the Jamaican rum. This is why it's possible to make the full range of stylistically appropriate rye drinks with one or two different brands of rye, but in order to make the full range of rum drinks you need to have around a dozen bottlings of rum or be comfortable with a good bit of stylistic approximation.

I remember going to an rum event maybe 3-4 years ago and running into Dave there. We just so happened to be standing together when we were called in to a side-room to offer some comments on rum for a video they were shooting (which for me involved keeping my mouth as shut as is constitutionally possible for me and looking at Dave). Among the many interesting things he said for the tape was one that stuck with me: He said that rum has by far the widest range of all other spirits. You can go from rums that are so light and subtly flavored that they are practically vodka to rums that are so dark, thick and full flavored that they're practically still molasses -- and ever imaginable variation between those two extremes (this is all the more true when you consider that cachaça could be considered rum as well). So it make a certain amount of sense that we'd need a lot more bottles of rum to cover the available ground than we'd need whiskey, gin or tequila.

Edited March 1, 2008 by slkinsey (log)

[campus five]

I mentioned "gold" rum in the other topic trying break rum into three categories, such as with tequila. Plus you often see light or white rum, gold rum or dark rum in recipes. Hence the terminology.

Anyway, is it better to have more categories? I can see the argument that there are more than three kinds of rum, especially comparing something like Bacardi Gold and Flor de Cana 7 yr - not exactly the same. Also, I didn't think FDC 7 was dark enough to be a Dark Rum like Myers or Goslings Black Seal.

My goal in the other topic was to figure out some must-have spirits. Clearly there is some serious variation in rum, so what would some better categories be?

[slkinsey]

The varieties of rum you can have are almost infinite. It all depends on the level of specificity you want in your cocktails, and whether you make cocktails that call for certain kinds of rum. No need to have a rhum agricole, for example, if you don't like to make rhum agricole drinks (e.g., Ti Punch).

As a very general statement -- and I'm no Ed Hamilton when it comes to rum expertise -- I'd say that at most any color/aging level there are two broad styles of rum: refined and funky. So, for example, in the mid-amber range you have the funky Lemon Hart demerara rum from Guyana and the refined Appleton Estate Reserve rum from Jamaica. If you were to have one funky and one refined rum at most every color level, you would be able to make appropriate versions of just about every rum drink. Perhaps at the very lightest color you'd only need the refined (Cuban) style, unless you like rhum agricole). And at the very darkest color you might be able to get by with only one example -- again, depending on what drinks you like to make.

Edited March 3, 2008 by slkinsey (log)

[Tiare]

The varieties of rum you can have are almost infinite.  It all depends on the level of specificity you want in your cocktails, and whether you make cocktails that call for certain kinds of rum.  No need to have a rhum agricole, for example, if you don't like to make rhum agricole drinks (e.g., Ti Punch).

To me there are white, golden, dark, spiced, overproof, premium rums..

There are industrial rums and agricole rums..

There are pot stilled rums and column stilled rums..and blends..

So many rums..it got to be the most vesatile spirit of all and what is better for you depends on how you are going to drink it..

As said.. an agricole is best in a Ti Punch.

[Dave the Cook]

. . . . My goal in the other topic was to figure out some must-have spirits. Clearly there is some serious variation in rum, so what would some better categories be?

←

Me too, and I'm not finding this discussion illuminating -- not that members aren't trying to help!

It finally occurred to me to go back to Wondrich's Killer Cocktails, with the thought that Mr. Wondrich is often generous in his explanations, and that perhaps I'd missed something. Sure enough, on page 10, he pontificates:

. . . Distilled from molasses or raw sugarcane juice, rum is the most variable of all liquors . . . .

. . . . pirate style, a dark, heavy distillate with notes of sulfur and funk. This used to be a Jamaican specialty, but these days Australia and Guyana lead the pack . . . .

. . . . Cuban style -- light-bodied and smooth . . . when aged, it approaches Cognac for suavity . . . .

. . . . modern style . . . many of the rums from Barbados, Jamaica and the Virgin Islands are medium-bodied affairs that sport a good deal of the woody spiciness of Kentucky Bourbons . . . as much for sipping as they are for mixing . . . .

. . . . French-style rum made . . . from sugarcane juice . . . combine the dry tang of the pirate style with the lighter body of the Cuban style.

While, absent other descriptors, I object to the word "funky" in this context (surely we can find a precise word or group of words to describe the aroma and taste of really dark rums), I find this categorization much more useful than light/gold/dark. It tells me that Inner Circle 115 is more of the pirate-style, and Flor de Cana 7, while dark, is an aged Cuban, though it verges on the modern style.

I do wonder if, a couple of hundred years ago, rummers hadn't recognized the distinctive styles and called them different things -- like Bob, Steve and Marlon -- rather than lumping them all into the single category of rum, we wouldn't be better off.