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Hartford Courant (Salt Lake Tribune)
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It's the enticing welcome mat of the some of the Caribbean's most jeweled islands. It's the soul of Brazil's swinging sambas. It's the lip-smacking party favor of Central American getaway vacations. It's the hip new libation of the cocktail crowd from Miami to Manhattan, Las Vegas to London.
And it may shock you to know it's been around for what seems like forever.
It's rum.
A centuries-old spirit, rum is enjoying a rebirth of sorts as the new darling of the cocktail lounge and a comer in the sip-and-be-sipped segment of collectable hooch. It seems everywhere you turn, rum is fueling la vida loca. The posh new Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas features a rum-drenched outpost called Rum Jungle; London's trendiest new hotel group, St. Martins Lane, boasts the aplty named Rum Bar, serving up 150 different rums; and the Westin hotel group is rolling out a national promotion of rejuvenated rum cocktails like the Daiquiri and Mojito.
Rum is also the drink of choice for the club- and restaurant-hopping set in New York. Rum-soaked restaurants like the jam-packed Asia de Cuba in Manhattan are educating the pampered masses in the finer points of rum punches and elegant sipping rums. Not to be outdone, a wave of other Latin-inspired restaurants in New York - Isla, Cuba Libre and Call Ocho - are going ga-ga over nuevo, rum laced Latinopolitans and Caipirinhas.
It's a rum world. Welcome to it.
No longer the crude "kill-devil" swill of pirate days, rum is enjoying a renaissance.
Echoing the recent craze for fine scotch, aged bourbon and upscale tequila, rum is now experiencing sales growth in its premium and super-premium segments.
It's biggest gain, however, it in flavored rums (spiced rums, citrus- and coconut-kissed rums), which last year took a 27 percent jump in sales. Overall rum sales grew 3 percent in 1997, 7 percent in 1998 and were expected to grow 6 percent in 1999 to 15.4 million cases.
Spiced and flavored rums like Captain Morgan and Bacardi Limon are riding the wave of unfettered rum indulgence. And recently, a new spiced rum arrived on the U.S. market: Foursquare Spiced Rum, a super-premium rum from Barbados imported by the Spirit of Hartford.
"The thing I like the best about rum is that rum is the natural next step," said Kay Olsen, managing partner of Spirit of Hartford.
Natural step? Olsen's talking about a newfound public appreciation for upscale rums - sipping rum, and super premium spiced rums.
"It's a category that hasn't reached its own yet," Olsen says.
Don't tell that to the Latino-anything lovers who are already eage to lap up rum cocktails at hot bars in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago. They are already punch drunk on rum.
Andrea Immer, beverage director at Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, says the taste trend nationwide is for flavored and spiced rums. "It's much more a cocktail spirit than a sipping spirit," said Immer.
Immer said the Latin craze is only partially responsible for rum growth. "It's also part of the cocktail culture re-emergence," she says.
Those cocktail lizards who were gulping Martinis and Cosmopolitans a few years back are shifting their allegiance to the Cuban Mojito (rum, sugar, mint and lime) and the Caipirinha, the Brazilian national drink made with cachaca (like rum, a sugarcane-based spirit), lime and sugar. Where does rum go from here? Only up, rum expert Luis Ayala says.
"Rum is really an exquisite distilled spirit, as a new generation is finding out," says Ayala, an organizer of the Rum Expo 2000 in Barbados. "We're just now seeing the beginning of it. It's one of those things like when people first learned about premium tequilas, they had an insatiable thirst for them. It took four to five years for the concept the public to come to terms with the concept that there are tequilas worth paying top dollar for. It's going to be that way for rum, but it may take longer.
Why? Because most drinkers see rum as a party animal and not a party sophisticate.
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