Rum Starts with an Arrr!

If it were me, I’d schedule Talk Like a Pirate Day for the Saturday before Memorial Day rather than September 19^th.  Because the onset of warm weather puts me in the mood for rum drinks.  And drinking rum always makes me feel like a pirate.  I have been led to believe that pirates love to sing.

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest–
…Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest–
…Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
– Robert Louis Stevenson

Rum isn’t a popular spirit.  It is often not taken seriously.  And that is a crime.  But there is an upside to this.  You can get some of the world’s best rums at a pittance in comparison to say, the world’s best whiskeys or brandies.

You just need to know what to look for.

And what to look for really depends on what kind of pirate you are feeling like.

If you are feeling like a red-bearded pirate sailing around Bermuda, you will likely be going for a Dark and Stormy.  The ingredients are easy to find if you are pillaging villages in Bermuda, but much more difficult if you are further afield.  It is a simple mixture of Gosling’s Black Seal rum and Barritt’s ginger beer.  Should you add lime, be prepared to walk the plank.

If your pirate likes to take port in Cuba, and has a taste for the classics, you will likely want a white rum of character to mix with lime and sugar for a traditional daiquiri.  Bad white rums are plentiful and are primarily to blame for the spirit’s tarnished reputation.  Good white rums are surprisingly hard to find.  A couple to look out for are Brugal from the Dominican Republic and Myers Platinum White from Jamaica.  There are some very good white rums that are a good bit more expensive, like 10 Cane, but unless your pirate has a lot of booty those might be best reserved for sipping.

But your pirate may eschew mixers, and prefer to drink rum straight from the bottle.  In that case, you probably want a rum that is dark like your pirate soul, assuming of course you still have a soul.  I say go for the gusto and find yourself a bottle of the 15-year-old Rhum Barbancourt from Haiti.  Albany pirates don’t even have to make the long trip to the island.  $40 gets you a tipple that F. Paul Pacult called:

So smooth, it’s sinful—so ripe and sweet, it’s decadent—a true benchmark rum that’s as elegant as brandy and as complex as a blended Scotch; it blew me away, period.
5* Highest Recommendation

I understand there are also less hardened pirates, who may want something dark, but may want to mix their poison into a cocktail on occasion.  Those should look for the Appleton Estate V/X from Jamaica or Brugal Añejo from the Dominican Republic.  A small step down, but still a solid contender, would be Mount Gay from Barbados.

This of course assumes that you are shopping in the U.S.  If you make it to Canada or Mexico or anyplace else that doesn’t have a trade embargo with Cuba, you should seriously try some of the forbidden fruit.  I hear it’s twice as sweet.