After at least a decade in the barrel, rums such as Clément Cuvée Homère and Samaroli have gained the character and complexity of the best whiskeys
FOR MANY, rum is the stuff of boat drinks and sea legs, the clear and anodyne vodka of the tropics. At summer’s peak, that may feel like enough, but this is also a great time to explore the less-known category of sipping rums: rare beauties that, after at least a decade in the barrel, have gained the character and complexity of the best whiskeys.
Wanting to better understand how these great rums develop their nuanced flavors, I began with a glass of fresh-pressed sugar cane juice. It smelled of coconut and cut grass, clove and banana. The flavor was sweet, but also complex—hints of pineapple and allspice, a butterscotch roundness. I tasted it alongside a glass of Clément Cuvée Homère, from Martinique. The Homère is an agricole rum, made from fresh cane juice as opposed to molasses, the raw material for most rums. It had the same butterscotch note, but this time on the nose. The sweetness was mostly gone; in its place was a more austere woodiness. But there was an unmistakable resemblance: newborn and grandfather at a family reunion.
The agricoles made on Martinique and other Francophone Caribbean islands represent only one in a range of styles that roughly align with old colonial spheres of influence: Former British colonies like Jamaica and Barbados tend to produce heavier, darker, molasses-based rums. Rums are distilled from molasses in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, too, but these tend to be lighter in character.
The market for carefully aged rum has never developed as robustly as the one for, say, Scotch. This is a shame, but also an opportunity. Super-premium labels like Clément and Samaroli may not be cheap, but considering their low yield and high quality, they are still, relatively speaking, bargains. At right, a few bottles that make for especially satisfying sipping—with or without a cane-juice chaser.
