Spiced rum

Spiced rum is a rum-based drink to which herbs, spices or flavourings have been added. Which herbs these are is up to the maker. For its Tamboo Spiced, for example, Angostura names cinnamon, cardamom and clove as Caribbean spices in the blend.

The base remains a distillate of sugar cane: molasses, syrup or sugar cane juice. The difference from regular rum therefore lies not in the raw material or the distillation, but in what is added to the spirit afterwards. That makes spiced rum a category of its own on the shelf, alongside white, gold and dark rum.

Not as a legal designation. Regulation (EU) 2019/787 states literally under the rum category: 'Rum is not flavoured.' Rum must also have at least 37.5 percent alcohol, may only be colored with caramel and may be sweetened to at most 20 grams per liter, expressed as invert sugar.

A drink with added aromas does not meet that. The regulation prohibits using a legal designation for a drink that does not meet the requirements of that category, even in combination with words such as 'type', 'style' or 'flavour'. If a drink fits no category, the legal designation is 'spirit drink'. That is why European labels of spiced rum often say 'spirit drink' or 'distilled drink', with the word rum in the product name.

The difference is the addition of spices or flavourings. For ordinary rum, including dark rum, the European regulation only allows caramel as a colouring and a limited amount of sweetener to round off the taste. No alcohol and no flavouring may be added.

For spiced rum, the restrictions of the rum category do not apply, because the added spices or flavourings place the drink outside that category. The alcohol content is also freer: a spirit drink must have at least 15 percent alcohol, compared with 37.5 percent for rum. So the label tells you which of the two you are holding.

A spiced mule is a highball of spiced rum with ginger beer and lime. For its spiced mule, Bacardi gives 50 ml Bacardi Spiced, 100 ml ginger beer, two dashes of Angostura bitters and a slice of lime. Fill a mule mug with ice, add the rum, ginger beer and bitters, stir and garnish with the lime.

Captain Morgan describes a comparable drink using Black Spiced: 50 ml rum and 150 ml ginger beer in a chilled highball glass with ice, a squeezed wedge of lime, stir briefly and garnish with orange zest and lime. In both recipes the spiced rum comes first; the ginger beer and the lime turn it into a long drink.

In de winkel staan nu 15 flessen spiced rum van merken als Bacardi, Captain Morgan, Kraken, Angostura, Duppy Share, Naga, Old Captain, Naud, Queen’s, BrewDog, Schotman en Zuidam met Flying Dutchman. De herkomst loopt van Nederland, Cuba, Jamaica, Panama en Barbados tot Trinidad en Tobago, Italië en Schotland.

Examples on the shelf are the Angostura Tamboo Spiced Rum, Bacardi Spiced, Captain Morgan Black Spiced, Kraken Spiced Rum, Duppy Share Spiced Carribean Rum, Naga Malacca Indonesian Spiced, Naud Hidden Loot Original Amber Spiced Rum and Old Captain Rum Spiced. Would you like to know which bottle suits a spiced mule, or what is on a label? Feel free to call or drop in at ’t Bockje, Brink 2 in Bathmen.

The shop is at Brink 2 in Bathmen. Open Tuesday to Friday from 09.00 to 18.00 and Saturday from 09.00 to 17.00. For advice, call 0570 541 278 or email info@bockje.nl.