REBOOT
Rum deserves a super-premium reputation upgrade, and some producers are ready to take on the challenge.
RUM
W
hen will it be rum's turn? To climb the price
and reputation ladder that is.
It's not like there aren't a slew of su-
per-premium, high-quality rums in the
market - just this June at the Beverage Alcohol Retailer Con-
ference in Minneapolis, two brands (Don Q from Puerto Ri-
co's Seralles Distilleria, and Ron Abuelo from Panama's Varela
distillery) showed exceptional aged rums. In the former case it
was a vintage 10 year old and the Gran Añejo 9 - 12 year old;
in the latter, expressions with Oloroso and Port cask fi nishes.
There are numerous super-premium, aged expressions of
rum from virtually every producer and brand made. But the
rum category has a problem in that its
most popular styles - white, spiced and
fl avored - haven't seemed to be able to
create customers who want to step up in
price or quality.
Long dominated by two enormously popular brands (Bacardi
and Captain Morgan), the rum category lost ground for the fourth
year in a row in 2016, dropping just over one percent to 24.4 mil-
lion 9-liter cases. Rum has also clearly had a harder time partici-
pating with the trend among spirits for premiumization - it now
accounts for about 11 percent of all spirits sold in the U.S., but just
under ten percent of the value.
The absence of many broadly successful higher-end rums has
been noted by many, and changing that isn't going to be easy.
The attributes of the still popular but stagnant types of rums -
fresh, mixable, fl avored, easy to drink - don't transfer easily to
more aged expressions, though of all aged spirits, rum might be
the most approachable.
StateWays | www.stateways.com | July/August 2017
18
by JACK
ROBERTIELLO
