“Island Company Rum has offered a new “new
ultra-premium” spirit, that was created to appeal to both rum lovers and vodka lovers
alike. It is a blonde rum with virtually no burn and has even less
calories than your favorite liquor.” Vodka
by definition is clear and tasteless. “I wanted to make a rum that women could
drink straight and that appealed to the sailors and mariners I know throughout
the Caribbean,” according to Island Company, founder, Spencer Antle. The spirit is “blonde” which immediately
takes it out of the vodka category. The
spirit was obviously taken to the point where it became a “neutral spirit”
before being aged for three years. The
rum may be good. “Handcrafted in Trinidad and five times distilled for
purity, but that is just moving out of the rum category and into the neutral
spirit category. Once you strip the
conigers from the wash, you raise the percentage of alcohol and remove the
flavors. You have to make a choice, are
you a neutral spirit or a rum?
There a number of very good rums that can
be substituted into cocktails that were originally based on vodka, but the
flavor of the light rum will add new notes to the cocktail that will bring a once
good and popular cocktail to the level of a premium cocktail. I believe in the fact that rum really has no
rules, but honesty has to be the new rule of rum. You can’t turn your wash to “vodka by
stripping all of the character, flavor and color from the distillate and bring
it back to being rum by barreling it. This
is a gray area, but it is still for the most part a neutral spirit even though
the barrel has put flavor back into the spirit “naturally”.
You can’t have it two ways, vodka has no
flavor profile, yet what you are saying there is a flavor profile. “Island Company Rum® has hints of
natural vanilla and wild honey. On the palette, this blonde rum is effortlessly
smooth with virtually no burn. The clean, gluten free, sugar free, zero carb
quality of Island Company Rum® goes easy on the
body as well, perfect any time of the day or night, at any bar or on any beach.”
This may well be a wonderful product, but
there are a lot of clean rums out there that can replace vodka in cocktails
just like vodka did to gin, but they are still rum. Passing rum off as vodka is a real problem.
