Rum

Molasses is what remains once sugar has been crystallised out of the cane, and it makes the heavier, sweeter style most people picture when they hear the word rum. Rhum agricole, made in the French Caribbean, ferments fresh cane juice instead, and it tastes grassy and vegetal in a way that catches first-time drinkers off guard. Cachaca from Brazil works from fresh juice too, under rules of its own. Same plant at the start of all three, and quite different spirits by the time they reach a bottle, which is why one rum can tell you almost nothing about the next.

Dark rum is not automatically old rum. Caramel colouring is permitted and widely used, so a deep brown bottle may have spent little time in wood, while a pale one may have been aged and then filtered clear. Some producers also add sugar after distillation, which rounds the finish and makes a young spirit read as older than it is. An age statement and the producer's own notes are more use than the shade in the glass, and where neither is given the colour tells you almost nothing.

A barrel in the Caribbean sits in far more heat than one in Scotland, so the spirit moves in and out of the wood harder and picks up colour and tannin much sooner. Evaporation losses are steep for the same reason. Six years in that climate can leave a rum tasting considerably older than the number suggests, which is why age statements on rum are not directly comparable with whisky.

White rum is the usual base for a daiquiri or a mojito, where lime and sugar do the work and the spirit stays in the background. Gold sits between the two and suits a punch. Dark and heavily aged rums carry enough of their own flavour to hold up in a stirred drink or over a single large block of ice. Jamaican pot still rum brings a pungent, fruity note that some recipes are built around.

Overproof means the rum was bottled well above the usual 40 percent, often somewhere in the region of 60 to 75. Recipes calling for it use much smaller measures, and it is not poured like an ordinary rum.

No. Dark rum describes colour, which may come from wood or from added caramel, while spiced rum has had flavouring added after distillation, typically vanilla, cinnamon, clove or orange peel. Plenty of spiced rums are pale gold rather than dark.