What are the Spanish, English and French styles of rum?

The classification follows the colonial history of the Caribbean and the production habits that arose from it.

Areas that belonged to Spain, to Great Britain or to France each developed their own way of working and their own words on the label. The threefold division is therefore a collective term from the trade and not a legal category. In European legislation there is only one type of rum.

No. Regulation (EU) 2019/787 has a category rum and mentions no Spanish, English or French style.

Annex I only prescribes that rum comes from molasses, sugar cane syrup or sugar cane juice, is distilled to below 96 percent and contains at least 37.5 percent alcohol. The regulation does recognise two additional terms linked to origin or method: agricole and traditionnel. Further protection comes from national rules.

The term agricole is reserved for rum made from fresh sugar cane juice from the French overseas departments and Madeira.

Regulation (EU) 2019/787 ties that additional name to two requirements at once: sugar cane juice as raw material and production in that area. In France the INAO guards the appellations d’origine, the system in which origin and method of production are laid down together. Rum that meets the first requirement but is made elsewhere may not use the term.

Countries such as Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad work from molasses and set out their rules in their own origin protection schemes.

Jamaica set down its rules in the designation Jamaica Rum, registered on 1 December 2016 in the name of the Spirits Pool Association: maturation only in Jamaica and, after distillation, only water and caramel. In Guyana, Demerara Distillers operates historic wooden stills, including a Coffey still that has been running since 1880. Such agreements and tools shape the picture of this group more than the European regulation.

Countries such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Venezuela work from molasses and put Spanish words on the label.

Terms such as anejo, reserva and gran reserva come from that tradition. Regulation (EU) 2019/787 attaches no maturation period to such words; only an age in years is regulated, and under Article 13 it must refer to the youngest component. Tequila is different, because NOM-006-SCFI-2012 does attach fixed periods to reposado, anejo and extra anejo.