Rum History

The origins of rum reach back to 1637, when Dutchman Pieter Blower brought in the first sugar cane plants from Brazil. By the 1640s sugar plantations and factories were developing and molasses – the cane juice residue – was being distilled into a spirit known as ‘kill devil’. Made in simple pot stills, adjacent to the wind driven sugar mills on each plantation, ‘kill devil’ helped to make the planters wealthy. They sold it to taverns and ships, and by 1650 over 200 thousand gallons of the fiery liquid were being produced. The first recorded use of the name ‘rum bullion’ appears in 1651 by an unknown visitor to Barbados and shortly after it was abbreviated to ‘rum’. Hence why Barbados is generally regarded as the birthplace of rum. Indeed Barbados rum became truly famous throughout the years and was being exported in large quantities by the eighteenth century, to become the favorite tipple of Europe and North America. Today rum remains one of the biggest foreign exchange earners for the Barbados economy, and is the spirit most widely consumed in the country’s 1000 plus rum shops on a daily basis.