The REAL story Dept: of "Rum, the Noble Spirit"

[Capn Jimbo]

"Rum the Noble Spirit"...


...has long been the mantra of the Preacher, and even he doesn't know why. Rum is anything but "noble" except perhaps to the sycophantic simians who also bought into the subheading of "...it's all good". Nobody with a working human pre-frontal lobe should agree. No one around these parts does.

The word "noble" has been coopted - of course - by the marketeers and is applied to anything to which they wish to attach a premium price. Ergo you'll see reference to "noble-anything": whiskey, cognac, et al, and of course by the Preacher - to rum. In truth the word really has one main real application in terms of actual nobility, and that is to what have long been called the "Noble grapes", referring to a known group of different species of wine grapes. That's it.

The rest of the uses are forced.


But as it turns out rum really IS "the Noble spirit"!

...as I recently discovered - but not at all as proselytized by the pompous Prophet! I came across this amazing information quite by accident in my idiotic wanderings, as I did some research on Hass' authentic Cuban rum drinks. As always I defer to my library of scholarly and well-cited books on rum when I was reviewing the early 1900's leading up to Prohibition. And then I saw it! Yuppers, I did. Guess what phrase was used to refer to Prohibition? Give up?

Prohibition - a huge effort, and a huge mistake - was referred to as "The Noble Experiment".

"The Noble Experiment" was a complete failure and widely ignored. It led directly to the establishment of speakeasies, of moonshine, of bathtub "gin" and to some of the worst, most dangerous alcohol ever produced. Which led directly to - yup - a massive resurgence of rum and rum running - supplied by millions of gallons of illegal, but much better quality and safe rum, supplied by Cuba and Bacardi. Thus "the Noble Experiment" led directly and massively to...

Yup! To the spirit that fueled it - rum - which might be called either "The spirit of the Noble Experiment" or in the alternative: "Rum, the noble spirit". According to me, natch. Both the grand experiment and the rum that fueled it ultimately failed, and in other words were both...

A Noble Failure.




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Note: one might even include Canadian whiskey - the spam of spirits - as "noble" on this twisted basis. Even today Crown Royal is frequently called a "noble spirit" based on its "great craftsmanship and history." Really.