Kiel, Germany (dpa) – No sooner has winter crept round the corner than out comes the rum – in Germany, certainly, and many other parts of northern Europe.
Most popularly served as grog – mixed with hot water – in tea or even hot chocolate, the lower the temperatures sink, the more Germans are tempted to reach for a “Buddel” or bottle of the golden liquid.
“You can literally read it from the sales figures,” says Angelika Wiesgen-Pieck of the National Association of the German Spirits Industry in Bonn. “Really cold winters mean a boomtime for rum.”
Robert Augustin agrees. The manager in charge of rum production, at Berentzen, a large drinks manufacturer in Lower Saxony state, he helps the company maintain a wide palette of traditional brands: “Hansen Rum, for example, enjoys its highest sales in winter,” says Augustin. That has a lot to do with tradition. Some German rum labels – Ole Christian Balle is one – have been made since the early 17th century. Asmussen, another popular brand, has been in production since 1860.
German tradition dictates that rum belongs in tea. Yet two recent trends care little for customs. For a start, rum is finding increasing acceptance as a component of cocktails. That’s especially true of the white varieties: Bacardi, for instance, has long been a favourite in the shaker. The other major change these days is the fashion for drinking rum neat, or “pur” (pure) as the Germans say, despite the fact that, on its own, the high-proof liquor hasn’t got the best reputation.
Think of rum sloshing around in a tumbler and you can’t help seeing “Treasure Island” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s swashbuckling pirates.
“Rum is underrated and unappreciated,” says Kai Lyck from Kiel. “And yet the taste can be fantastic.” The rum aficionado, who has just written a book with the enticing title “The Rum Myth” (“Mythos Rum”) – as yet unpublished – became a fan through pure accident. “I brought a few bottles back from holidays in the Dominican Republic and Haiti as souvenirs,” says the man from Germany’s far north. “The two bottles stood around for a while until they were empty and then I decided to keep them.”
Lyck developed a taste for the taste, as it were, and began to collect in earnest. Soon he had ran out of place in the living room. So he built “shelves from floor to ceiling and illuminated from behind.” Now he has a second storage wall to hold his 350 bottles. Not that the ones on display in his living room are there for wild parties: “I paid 800 marks (now almost 350 dollars) for a bottle once,” says Lyck. “The oldest one in my collection is from 1929.”
But that doesn’t mean that an affection for rum need lead to an uncontrollable urge to hoard the stuff. There’s nothing unusual in discovering a palate for rum on holiday. “Many tourists want to take that Caribbean feeling back home,” says Angelika Wiesgen-Pieck. “They are the ones who tend to keep replenishing their supplies.”
And they drink it neat, just like they do on Jamaica or Tobago. It’s a trend that rum enthusiast and author Edward Hamilton has noticed too.
Knut Hoeffgen, the owner of importers H. Doris Luetgens, in Norderstedt near Hamburg, specialises in exclusive varieties from the Caribbean, Mauritius and the Canaries. “We don’t touch blends,” says head of sales Philip Kermani. “If Grandma Krause wants to bake a cake that’s fine, and you can put it in tea as well.” But for “pure enjoyment” there’s nothing like a real rum. “An eight-year-old is good on the rocks,” says Kermani. “I personally drink a 15-year-old without ice in a cognac glass.”
Kermani has noticed a definite rise in quality-consciousness among customers in Germany. “High-grade rum is still a niche market, but demand is growing all the time.”
Juergen Dietrich has certainly put his money in the trend. A year and a half ago he opened the Cologne Rum Emporium (Koeln Rum Kontor), a specialist spirits retailer dedicated to unusual drops from Cuba, Barbados, Martinique and elsewhere. “Older rum especially is simply fantastic,” enthuses Dietrich. Just like malt whisky, rum improve with ageing. “There are some excellent eight-year-olds,” says the Cologne connoisseur. His rule of thumb is: the older the better.
Rum is mostly matured in old bourbon or cognac casks. “Rum varies far more in taste than, say, cognac,” says Dietrich. Added to which, there are around 1,500 types of rum worldwide. “The one from Cuba is probably the best known, but it isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be,” he says.
“There are fantastic drops from Guadelope or Reunion, and Australia is one of the world’s biggest producers.” Drinking rum neat is “pure enjoyment” in any case, says Dietrich. “More often than not I light up a cigar to go with it.”
