We’re Obsessed With: Brown Sugar Rums

While rums made from fresh cane juice or molasses remain bar staples, a growing range of brown sugar rums offers exciting new options to pour. No, these rums don’t taste like brown sugar. Yet, they offer remarkably complex flavors, with fruity or grassy nuances that molasses can’t match.

Fans of global cuisines will want to snag a bottle of brown sugar-based rum. This nascent category reflects a wide range of cultures that use brown sugar in various forms for cooking. Think India’s jaggery, Japan’s Kokuto or panela, piloncillo, chancaca and rapadura—just some of the names used in Mexico and Latin American countries.

“It’s many names for the same thing,” explains rum expert Peter Holland—in short, cane juice boiled down to an unrefined sugar (as opposed to refined white sugar), and sometimes packed into shapes like cones (panela/piloncillo), bricks or balls (jaggery). In this solid form, it offers numerous benefits to rum makers, he notes: “You’ve got a source that can be more readily stored, and takes up less space, has a smaller carbon footprint to transport and generally retains a strong connection to the source.” Once reconstituted, these brown sugars can be fermented and distilled into rum with attitude.

For example, Hilton Head Distillery in South Carolina makes Panela Rum, a lively white rum with bright hints of lemongrass and toasted coconut that would shine in a Daiquiri. The distillery works with a third-generation Colombian farm to source panela, which “allows us to support the communities and traditions that have made panela what it is today,” explains wholesale director Matt Manning. While the distillery team isn’t Colombian, “It’s about paying tribute to the rum makers who came before us,” he says. And from a distilling perspective, “Panela is a dream to work with,” he adds—a clue as to why these rums are proliferating. During the fermentation process, he continues, “It gives the yeast a little extra to work with, and that shows up in the quality of the rum.”

Elsewhere, India’s Amrut, a distillery better known for single malt whiskey, recently introduced Amrut Bella, which it calls a “single jaggery rum.” Aged in ex-bourbon casks, the new-to-the-U.S. limited edition has a maple hue and shines with luscious caramelized stone fruit and spice.

Made with jaggery sourced from Mandya, India’s “sugar city,” the base ingredient is cane juice plus pulp, which is cooked to caramelize the solids and reduce moisture content. The resulting caramel-colored solid is typically rolled into a ball and wrapped in cloth for families to use at home as a sweetener when cooking.

“Since jaggery is used for food consumption, Amrut had to obtain special government permission to distill it,” explains Raj Sabharwal, founding partner of Glass Revolution Imports, which imports Amrut. The brown sugar solids are reconstituted and then distilled to make rum. Bella is currently available only in the U.S. and India; a single-cask, U.S.-exclusive offering is planned for 2025.

In addition to cultural connections, brown sugar rums also appeal in terms of flavor. For those who find molasses-based rums too generic and agricole (fresh cane juice) rums too pungent, brown sugar rums offer an amiable middle ground: They contain just enough molasses content to evoke familiar hints of almond or toasted coconut, while delicate hints of tropical fruit or fresh-cut grass linger in the background.

Still, there’s no mistaking it for any other spirit but rum: The underlying sugarcane remains evident. Even barrel aging doesn’t overpower brown sugar, Holland observes. “It generally retains a strong connection to the source.”

Bottles to Try

Hilton Head Panela Rum (Hilton Head, South Carolina; $41)
Grassy and fresh, with a tropical fruit lilt.

Amrut Bella Single Jaggery Rum (India; $85)
Rich and caramelly, this rum is aged in ex-bourbon barrels.

Barber Lee Piloncillo White Rum (Petaluma, California; $40)
A toasty, full-flavored rum; the producer recommends it for Cuba Libres.

Furia Aguardiente de Piloncillo (Mexico; $43/ 1 liter)
Labeled as aguardiente de caña, an unaged, moonshine-y cousin to rum, this distillate is made from piloncillo.

The post We’re Obsessed With: Brown Sugar Rums appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.