CLIFFORD ROBERTS ON THE

Behold the rise of AFRICAN RUM

Rum is shaking o its sailor and pirate image thanks to the innovation of modern African producers who’ve improved its quality, writes Cli ord Roberts.

"Tell me what you think,” says the quiet man across the room. I’m blind with panic. Seconds ago, Mark Middelton—one of South Africa’s most experienced rum-makers—placed two glasses in front of me. Each contains a dash of amber liquid and now he’s waiting for my answer.

One of these glasses is going to be the hero. I tentatively sni each one, mind racing. My comments are deliberately vague; deliberately hopeful of being misconstrued for being accurate, but I’m o . And bust.

Rum, the drink of Everyman, was in its earliest, roughest form embraced by sailors and pirates, and tied to hidden treasure and scallywags. Its early names were kill-devill and eventually rumbullion, which eventually became simply rum.

Whence did this name come to be? ere’s no conclusive answer, but Hugh Barty-King and Anton Massel in Rum, Yesterday and Today make this suggestion: “ e sugarcane spirit’s most distinctive characteristic was its ability to light a blaze in the head of anyone who drank too much of it. It knocked them o balance, provoked unruly, rumbustious behaviour, rummaging about the glasses and plates on the table, rampaging through the guests, rumpling their hair; and when the toasting and boasting gathered momentum, creating an unholy rumpus and merry mayhem.” Hmm, enough rum in there, huh?

Back to Mark. He gently o ers his own insights on the deeper, more complex and integrated of the two glasses of rum. e lighter coloured one is “a pure rum, straight out of the barrel” says Mark. Nothing was added to it. “Many cheaper rums are darkened with colouring to make people think it’s good, but it’s all…[he pauses]… fabricated.

“Of course it doesn’t matter when you want rum to go with cola,” says Mark, who heads up the making of South Africa’s rst true Jamaican-style rum at Oude Molen in Elgin. LEATHERBACK is the name of the new brand. It is made in a 10 000 litre copper pot still, in a con guration typical to the Caribbean but unique in South Africa.

Leatherback was the very reason for Mark’s appointment. Milestones to his career include a BSc in the US, managing distilleries in his birthplace of Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal, and running the Hampden Rum distillery in Jamaica.

Mark needed cane juice and Grant Galloway, MD of Zululand Distilling Company, maker of TAPANGA, obliged.

A few years ago, it was a random road-trip that took me to the distillery in the district of Gingindlovu. is is the heart of sugar cane country, awash with saturated greens of cane elds and sub-tropical bushlands, and an azure sky. Just four kilometres away lies the ocean, almost as warm as the air.

It was the rst time I’d seen a distillery and plantation of sugarcane side-byside; Tapanga is an African name for the machetes used to cut the cane. Big distilleries are generally far removed from their raw material. Here, the distillery is a component of a diversi ed agri-business that includes sugar cane plantations as well as essential oils, timber and macadamias.

Rum Africole, labelled “South Africa’s rst single estate rum” is one of their brands. e name is a play on the geographically protected term of Rhum Agricole, the French term for cane juice rum.

Cane juice isn’t the be-all and end-all of rum making, but it is an important component of ner rums. Rum is made the world over almost exclusively from

molasses, a by-product of sugar-making. To set aside sugar cane for juicing therefore makes a better product and commands a higher price. is is most notable at TAKAMAKA, a 20-year-old rum distillery on the island of Mahé in the Seychelles. In the other Indian Ocean Islands, like Reunion, Mauritius and Madagascar, rum history doesn’t feature much. Few of the 115 islands of the Seychelles are habitable and the total landmass is just 458km² .

“ e little agricultural land there is, is reserved for food, not sugarcane,” says visitor guide and distillery co-owner Retha D’O ay, as she takes me around. e distillery imports molasses, but also buys cane from some 40 subsistence farmers dotted about the island.

Takamaka is available in South Africa, but along with other imports competes with a growing number of local brands. Among the oldest of these is MHOBA RUM in Malelane, which produces 10 di erent types of pure single estate sugarcane rum or pure single sugarcane rum from organic sugarcane. e rst spirit that would become Mhoba was made by founder Robert Greaves in 2013.

WHISTLER RUM is another, created in 2016 by, amongst others, brothers Trevor and Leon Bruns on a farm in the Northern Free State.

A more recent addition to this group is the distillery of Brad and Marisa O’Neill

who launched SUGAR BARON PLANTATION

FROM THE MISTS OF TIME TO SOUTH AFRICA

ORIGIN RUM in 2018. eir distillery on the Sea eld sugarcane farm is situated in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands and produces spirit in the Agricole tradition, and using a 200-litre still. “ ere is a massive need for a shi in perception to the amazing rums on o er,” says Grant Galloway of Tapanga. “ is will only come with exposure to more rum brands; each doing their own little bit to educate and convince people of the brilliance rum is capable of.”

What excites Grant about the rum category in general?

“ e awareness of ne local rum is in its infancy,” he says. “ ere’s a great opportunity for people to learn about the amazing versatility of what is a very exciting category. ere is a rum out there for everyone and for every occasion.” e devil drink is no more. Long live ne rum!

e history of commercial rum in South Africa is a vague and contested account. Rum, Yesterday and Today refers to one omas Reynolds of Oaklands Sugar Estate near Shakaskraal who in 1861 advertised his “Two-Year-Old Rum Equal to the Finest Jamaica '' in the Natal Mercury.

Industrial-scale distillery AlcoNCP, whose own history dates to 1868, claims to be the location of the rst rum distillery in South Africa. It was built on the site by Monsieur Phillippe, a Mauritian engineer involved in the budding Natal sugar industry.

Cane was rst cultivated in Mauritius in 1650 by the Dutch who brought it from Java but it only really took hold under the French in 1735.

Nonetheless, AlcoNCP notes that in its early days molasses was sourced from the farm Bishopstoke nearby. Rum produced at the distillery was rst entered into an international competition at an exhibition in London in 1873. How it fared was not recorded.

SA legislators also played a big part in the story, reserving the classi cation of a spirit as rum for imports. From 1913, local varieties had to be labelled as “cane”, with MAINSTAY pioneering the spirit and rum’s marketing in the 1950s.