Rum has long been thought of as a sailor’s drink, discovered on voyages to the Caribbean and stored on board the ship to cheer up the sailors. In fact it’s said that following Nelson’s death at Trafalgar, his body was preserved in a vat of rum until the ship reached its home port.
Appleton Estate, supplier of rum to Sainsbury’s, has been producing Jamaican rum since 1749. Located in the Nassau Valley, the estate sits in the valley’s fertile fields in the parish of St. Elizabeth, where the valley gets afternoon rain together with warm sunshine, providing the optimum conditions for growing sugar cane.
Sugar cane’s thought to have originated in Papau New Guinea, and Christopher Columbus introduced it to the West Indies in 1493. Sugar cane’s a member of the ‘grass’ family and each variety results in a different rum flavour. The cane grown at the Appleton Estate tends to produce rums that have fruity and buttery notes.
Rum making on the Appleton Estate
Appleton Estate takes a handcrafted approach and uses many controls at every step of rum making, from the selection of the sugar cane, the yeast used in fermentation, its unique distillation methods, through to the ageing, hand-blending and bottling of their rum. Each step is carefully monitored to ensure consistency and quality throughout.
Fermenting
The molasses extracted from the cane are fermented for 36 hours by adding water and yeast. Appleton’s uses spring water from the estate that has been naturally filtered by limestone formations.
The fermented liquid is then distilled to strip the alcohol from the water. This stage uses either a pot still or a continuous still to heat the liquid and draw off the vapour that is then condensed back to a liquid. This resultant liquid is referred to as ‘water white’ because of its crystal clear colour.
Ageing
The rum is then aged in large wooden barrels, almost always oak, and often once-used bourbon barrels. As the rum ages in wood, the sharp flavour begins to mellow as the air permeates the oak, the space it leaves behind through evaporation is known as ‘the angels’ share’. The rum takes on colour from the barrel and this is where the flavour develops.
The art of blending
The final step in the rum-making process is the blending. This is a real art where the blender selects rums that will be used in a particular blend based on the type and style of rum that it contains, and these are blended together. A sugar cane crop, like grapes, can vary from year to year depending on the weather, so to ensure the quality and consistency of a blend, the Master Blender and her team blend all Appleton Estate rum according to a secret formula.
At Appleton Estate, Master Blender Joy Spence hand blends each of the rums that Sainsbury’s sells. This is a technique that’s unique to Appleton and each barrel is individually checked prior to blending.
Once blended, the rums are poured into a large vat for extra time to ‘marry’ the flavours. Blending is both an art and science and many types and styles of rum of varying ages are used in order to create a blend.
Joy Spence was the first woman to become a Master Blender in the rum-making industry. Originally a chemist graduate, she entered the world of beverages in her chemist research and development role at Tia Maria Liqueur. But it was once she joined J Wray & Nephew, owners of Appleton, that her passion for rum was sparked by the-then master blender, Owen Tulloch. However, Joy believes that to be a good blender, you must have good senses, have an artistic and creative flair, have a good understanding of the chemistry behind the rum process and have attention to detail and a passion for the art.
Only when Joy is confident that the blend meets the quality standards will she certify the blend for bottling. It’s then ready to be shipped around the world to be enjoyed.
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