WTF Dept: Why no rum tasting wheel?

[Capn Jimbo]

After all there are wheels for just about everything...


Tasting wheels are really, really common and for an amazing variety of spirits and food products. Among the most well known are the University of Berkeley's Wine Tasting Wheel (Anne Noble) , and any number of single malt Whisk(e)y Wheels (including the SMWS). But that's not all!

There are wheels for mouthfeel, coffee, olive oil, cheese, cocoa beans, chocolate, cigars, perfumes, beer, tequila, and even for maple products (invaluable for Canadian reviewers). Hell, there's even Meals on Wheels! But as for rum? For rum??

Not a fackin one. Don't you wonder why?

If you don't you're a monkey or a simple idiot. Or else you've bought into the Shillery inspired "...it's all good" mantra. But as you've come to expect of The Rum Project we are both foolish and obsessive enough to really care about this shit, and to find out why.

The answer is simple.

Rum regulations allow the addition of up to 2.5% in caramel coloring and other additives considered "traditional and necessary" to rum making. Furthermore, these regs are poorly, poorly enforced. The result: most of the rum you drink is thin, column-stilled distillate made palatable and "rum-like" by the addition of all manner of unlabeled additives and adulterants including suger, glycerol, artificial flavorings, even sherry and prune juice. It's even worse in Canada. And why do they do this?

It's cheaper.

Really, do I have to say that? Like in any business, if you can make it cheaper, if you can lower expectations, if you can redirect tastes to actually prefer additive flavorings and most important - if the dummies will buy our shit - then... Why not? The truth is this...

There are so many unlableled flavorings and alterations to your bottle of "rum", that the words "classic", "authentic" and "pure" mean absolutely nothing in the wacky world of modern, cheap rum. Great cognacs, armagnacs, calvados, bourbons and single malt whiskies - even coffee and oil olive oil fer gawdssake - are relatively pure and unaltered. There really are classic, traditional and pure profiles and common aromas and flavors.

They have wheels, and altered "rum" does not.

It can be no other way. Trust me I've tried. I've been involved in a behind-the-scenes study of rum reviews, descriptors and reports for several years now, patiently compiling lists of descriptors and looking for commonalities. Even the IP Bartenders have tried. And so far...

It can't be done. "Rum"'s lack of a tasting wheel says volumes about a spirit that is about as far from "noble and pure" as I am from being the next Pope.

Bless you, my children...