Rum Drinks from the Caribbean

The word RUM brings to our minds romance under a tropical moon — its light filtering through the feathery leaves of palm trees strewn along a white-sand beach — with the rumbling and musical cadence of the waves. Refreshing!

A few years after Christopher Columbus landed in the sunny shores of Hispaniola (and stopped for water in Puerto Rico during his second voyage), the colonizers brought from the other side of the world the first sugar-cane seedlings. The virgin lands of the West Indies soon started yielding the golden-brown sugar obtained from the cane and the residue, black-strap molasses, was fermented and distilled into a powerful beverage — rum-bullion.