12 Essential Bottles of Rum [Timeline]

Rum’s history is equal parts complicated and convoluted. The spirit as we know it today originated in the 17th century, when slave traders shipped African slaves to the West Indies to cultivate sugar cane. This led to the production of molasses, which New England colonists distilled into rum for drinking and trading. It didn’t take long for this newfangled spirit to become the preferred beverage of colonial Americans, British naval officers, and Caribbean pirates alike.

Thankfully (and finally), rum is getting around to acknowledging and reconciling the more troublesome parts of its past. It’s also evolving its image. While pirates, sailors, and tropical motifs still make for convenient — if not clichéd — marketing tropes, a new wave of modern rum brands have moved away from such imagery in an effort to shift its reputation from good-time party beverage to a sophisticated spirit suitable for sublime sipping. Such progression has helped round out a broad international spirits category with enough variance to ideally match an individual’s mood, whether they’re chilling poolside on vacation or enjoying an elevated evening out.

Over the past 300-plus years, several known brands produced key moments to move rum toward its modern identity. Each touchstone helps flesh out rum’s complete contemporary narrative, giving detailed depth to a spirit with a dark past and a bright future.

1655: The British Royal Navy Starts to Get Its ‘Tot’
Bottle: Pusser’s Rum

The traditional intertwining of rum and the high seas dates back to the 1600s, when thirsty pirates drank a mix of rum, water, sugar, and nutmeg dubbed bumbo to stay hydrated and lift morale. The British Royal Navy added some civility to this connection between spirit and seafaring folk in 1655, when it started occasionally issuing “tots” of rum to sailors docked in the Caribbean. (Daily rations across all British fleets started around the mid-18th century, contrary to popular belief.) The ships’ pursers, often nicknamed “pussers,” doled out roughly 2.5 ounces of juice blended from different Caribbean sources.

The Navy ended the practice on July 31, 1970 — a day later referred to as “Black Tot Day” — finally realizing that a daily ration of rum may not be the best idea for people involved with active military operations. In 1979, entrepreneur and rum enthusiast Charles Tobias secured the rights to the carefully guarded recipe from the Royal Navy and recreated the juice according to spec, naming the finished product Pusser’s Rum.

1703: The Oldest Commercial Rum Distillery Launches in Barbados
Bottle: Mount Gay

It makes sense for Barbados to be home to the world’s oldest rum distillery. The tiny Eastern Caribbean island was the epicenter of rum production in the 1600s, as its terroir was perfect for growing sugar. Rum production on the hilltop site in St. Lucy parish where Mount Gay stands today may have begun as early as 1654, but that’s speculation. Mount Gay’s claim as the oldest continuously operating rum distillery is legitimate, and it has the receipts to prove it. A title deed to the distillery was issued on Feb. 20, 1703. It’s been in operation ever since, although it wasn’t called Mount Gay until 1801, when it was renamed in honor of longtime manager, distiller, and anti-slavery advocate Sir John Gay Alleyne.

1862: Bacardi Smooths Out Rum’s Rough Edges
Bottle: Bacardi

There’s always a point in a spirit’s timeline where it becomes refined and improved through technological innovation. In rum’s case, this quantum leap in quality happened in 1862, when Spanish immigrant Facundo Bacardi launched his namesake rum in Santiago, Cuba, along with his partner, Jose Leon Bouteiller. Once opened, Bacardi began experimenting with different yeast samples and distillation techniques. His tinkering eventually led to a lighter rum with fewer impurities and greater flavor consistency, leaving an impact on the spirit that exists to this day. Bacardi would also have a hand in shaping rum’s trajectory in the cocktail world — it’s generally agreed Bacardi Carta Blanca was used for the creation of the Daiquiri in 1898.

1865: Puerto Rico Gets on the Rum Map
Bottle: Don Q

Rum is big business in Puerto Rico. Most sources around the web claim the small island U.S. commonwealth is responsible for more than 70 percent of the rum sold in the States. Bacardi moved production there in 1936 and hasn’t looked back. So we know how it’s going, but how did it start? The answer is a little tricky. Most people cite Puerto Rico’s oldest rum to be Ron del Barrilito, founded by Pedro Fernandez in 1880. However, Don Q technically started distilling juice on the island in 1865. It was called Destileria Serralles back then — the brand didn’t adopt the name Don Q until 1934, after American Prohibition ended. So Don Q is technically correct, which is the best kind of correct. Of course, it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, as both are fine rums in their own right.

1887: The ‘Godfather’ of Rhum Agricole Arrives
Bottle: Clément

The rise of rhum agricole largely stems from an act of economic salvaging. In 1887, Homère Clément bought a 106-acre plantation in Martinique. Alarmed by how the collapse of the French-controlled Caribbean island’s sugar trade impacted its economy, he advocated for the production of rum made directly from sugar cane instead of molasses. This streamlined production and lowered costs. In 1917 Clément opened another distillery to meet the desires for alcohol as World War I raged. His efforts rescued Martinique’s economy, and it also helped push rhum’s vegetal, herbaceous funk into the mainstream.

1944: ‘Trader Vic’ Invents the Mai Tai
Bottle: Wray & Nephew

Rum provides the liquid backbone of several classic tiki cocktails, and the Mai Tai is the tropical drinks scene’s grand poobah. Tracing the cocktail’s origins usually steers the conversation toward the amicable rivalry between the two men primarily responsible for shaping the country’s colorful cocktail subculture, Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron and Donn Beach. While some people think Bergeron swiped the Mai Tai specs from Beach, most folks agree the drink was Bergeron’s baby. According to lore, Bergeron first built the drink in 1944 at his Oakland-based bar Trader Vic’s, starting with a base of 17-year-old Wray & Nephew and augmenting it with fresh lime, orange Curacao, rock candy syrup, a smidgen of French orgeat, and a mint garnish. The guest taking the first sip proclaimed “Mai Tai — Roa Ae,” a Tahitian phrase loosely translated to “out of this world — the best.” Bergeron truncated the phrase, and his creation had a name.

1980: Goslings Trademarks a Cocktail
Bottle: Goslings

Cocktail history tends to be convoluted, but there are times when it gets outright weird. The Dark ’n’ Stormy falls in this latter category because there is technically a little bit of legal protection involved. The cocktail was supposedly created somewhere in Bermuda in the 1920s by British sailors who thought mixing ginger beer with Goslings Black Seal Rum would be a fine way to ward off getting seasick. It’s not known if the combo worked medicinally, but it did make a killer cocktail.

Goslings spent the next several decades promoting its place in the drink’s creation until 1980, when it decided merely hyping the connection wasn’t good enough. So the company trademarked the “Dark ’n’ Stormy” name in Bermuda. It would also go on to trademark the cocktail in the U.S. in 1991. This doesn’t mean bartenders can’t whip up the simple two-ingredient drink with a different rum than Goslings. They can — they just can’t legally call it a “Dark ’n’ Stormy.”

1984: Spiced Rum Comes to the States
Bottle: Captain Morgan

The same year Bergeron invented the Mai Tai, the Seagram Company purchased a Jamaican distillery and launched Captain Morgan Rum Company. When the company decided to bring its spiced rum to the U.S. four decades later, it didn’t want to just occupy shelf space. Captain Morgan wanted to stand out and cut into Bacardi’s dominant share of the market. The solution? A makeover. The brand always used a buccaneer in its marketing — fitting, since the brand named itself after a real-life pirate. The problem was, he looked fat and frumpy. A leaner, more athletic-looking pirate designed by legendary sci-fi artist Don Maitz mutinied the old logo before it washed ashore in the States. The swap worked: The brand was a hit, and spiced rum took off. As of 2023, the niche rum category accounted for 35 percent of all rums consumed in the U.S.

1997: Rum Shatters the Industry’s Glass Ceiling
Bottle: Appleton Estate

Jamaican rum’s reputation for delivering the funk described through terms like dunder, muck, and hogo are celebrated among rum enthusiasts. In 1997, Jamaica’s Appleton Estate delivered something far greater than a peculiar yet delightful flavor note by granting Dr. Joy Spence the title of master blender. By doing so, Dr. Spence became the first female master blender in the spirits industry. Not just rum, but spirits entirely. This wasn’t the first time Appleton Estate made history: Founded in 1749, the distillery stands as the oldest continuously active distillery in Jamaica. Its longevity helped shape Jamaica’s place in the rum world. Nearly 40 years after Dr. Spence assumed her role, she and the brand are still helping to knock down doors.

2009: The Kingston Negroni Is Born
Bottle: Smith & Cross

Sometimes, a small tweak in a cocktail can produce massive results. Such was the case with the Kingston Negroni, a rum-based riff on the Italian classic invented one fall afternoon in 2009 at the famed New York City bar Death & Co. The story goes that legendary bartender Joaquín Simó was doing his thing when Eric Seed, founder of the distribution company Haus Alpenz dropped in to taste him on Smith & Cross’s Navy Strength rum. Simó was into the Jamaican rum’s hefty funk and started experimenting. Rather than build something from the ground up, he simply made a Negroni, swapping the traditional gin for the rum. It worked so well, he named the drink after Jamaica’s capital and put it on Death & Co.’s subsequent spring menu. It didn’t take long for Simó’s casual experiment to turn into a modern classic. And the cocktail helped push rum out of the frilly umbrella drink category and into more sophisticated territory.

2012: The Philippines — and ‘Sugarlandia’ — Enters the Chat
Bottle: Don Papa

For centuries, rum’s identity was so strongly linked to the Caribbean, it may have been difficult to fathom a product coming from anywhere else. In reality, any region capable of growing sugar can produce rum. The Philippines proves this axiom. The tropical Southeast Asian archipelago began producing rum under Spanish colonization in the 1800s. Don Papa brought this history to the forefront of the rum scene when it launched in 2012. It also introduced new terms like “Sugarlandia,” a nickname for the prolific sugar-growing island of Negros Occidental. Thanks to the acclaim the brand received in the past decade-plus, it feels like Filipino rum — and perhaps rums from other non-Caribbean tropical environments — are an established commodity.

2019: Ten to One Expands Rum’s Narrative
Bottle: Ten to One

When Marc Farrell launched Ten to One rum in New York in 2019, he didn’t put any pirates, sailors, wenches, or other stereotypical marketing tropes on the bottle. The decision was bold. After all, such imagery is, to an extent, rum’s calling card. But that was Farrell’s point. The native Trinidadian’s mission was to showcase rum as an elegant, sophisticated spirit capable of enjoying neat or on the rocks, like they do in his homeland. The brand’s ongoing success in the market since its modest debut didn’t upend the category’s old-school symbols, nor does it intend to do so. Rather, it helps give rum a holistic story, signaling the spirit can truly be enjoyed by anyone any way they please.

*Image retrieved from Mdv Edwards via stock.adobe.com