Originally published with the article
Rum: The Once and Future King
Although the United States Government Standards of Identity appear to give a broad interpretation as to what kind of sugar cane or sugar cane derivative spirits can be called “rum,” in practice there has been much ambiguity and confusion among both distillers and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) regarding this issue.
For example, a few distillers have sought to produce a rum-like product whose raw ingredient is sorghum. Like sugar cane, sorghum is a species of grass whose juice can be processed into sweet, fermentable syrup. So far, the TTB has stated that spirits made from sorghum cannot be classified as rum. Because of this, such products have often fallen under the “spirit specialty” catch-all designation. However, Colglazier and Hobson Distillery in Indiana has recently produced a sweet sorghum spirit they call “Sorgrhum” and refer to it as “America’s First Sweet Sorghum Rum” as well as “Sweet Sorghum Spirit” on their website. They are currently awaiting label approval, so it will remain to be seen as to what class within the Standards of Identity this spirit will fall.
Another point of ambiguity concerns rum-like distillates produced from fresh cane juice. This category ordinarily consists of cachacas from Brazil and rhum agricoles from Martinique and the French West Indies. Cachaca, for instance, has not been separated into a class of its own in U.S. Standards of Identity nomenclature. However, in recognition of the fact that cachaca is intimately intertwined with Brazilian culture, the Brazilian government has taken strong measures to secure use of the name “cachaca” as a spirit that is internationally recognized as being exclusively produced in Brazil. Clearly, Brazil and the French West Indies are not the only places that make distillates from fresh fermented cane juice, but American distillers are dissuaded from using the terms “cachaca” or “rhum agricole” to describe their similarly produced spirits.
These are but a few of the legal issues and questions of nomenclature interpretation confronting rum distillers in the United States.
