Organic Rum? What's the Difference?

Organic Rum

      True, if you're changing your eating and drinking habits to reduce your exposure to toxic chemicals, switching to organic rum isn’t likely to do you much good.   The chemicals you're trying to avoid are entirely taken out of the picture during the processes of fermentation and distillation.   There has to be another gain to the consumer to make it worth going for.

      Puerto Angel Rum which came to the USA in the summer of 2015 is one of my favorite rums, but it is because of how it is made more than the use of organic sugarcane.   The cane fields are just minutes from the distillery, it only takes a few hours for the cane to go from the cane cutting, to the crushing, then to the fermentation tanks.  Puerto Angel Organic Rum is USDA Organic rum, distilled from freshly squeezed cane juice at the Krassel family-owned distillery which does produce some of the finest artisanal spirits.  The family opened the distillery in 1938, and established their own organic sugarcane plantation in the high levels of the Oaxaca Mountains, Mexico. 

Organic Sugarcane

     But thinking about the bigger picture, and looking at secondary benefits, organic rum made from organic sugar cane can reduce the overall spraying of pesticides and the resultant contamination of soil and groundwater.   Drinking a rum distilled from organic sugar cane can have an impact beyond the drinker's immediate environment, and also provides a financial incentive for growers to use more earth friendly farming practices.  Florida’s sugarcane fields are a huge source of pollution of the waterways and the everglades, that could help all of us if they were to use more earth friendly farming practices.   "There is a historic load of phosphorus already in Lake Okeechobee that came from the sugar farms."  There is a current load, though it is not a major percentage that is coming from the sugar farms.  The key is to keep reducing this load.

     I feel that the organic rum is a good thing because of what it does to improve the quality of the earth more than the quality of the spirit.  Distilling removes the impurities from the spirits, making the organic card a moot one as far as the finished product goes.