Rum Sales Increasing Throughout World

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30366, 15 February 1964, Page 19

Rum Sales Increasing Throughout World

Rum—the tot that has been the British sailor’s right for centuries, the treacly mugful that has helped the soldier go over the top—is having an increasing sale throughout the world; but the lightercoloured rums are gaining favour. Mr R. E. Norris, a director of United Rum Merchants, Ltd., of London, the biggest rum firm in the world, arrived in Christchurch on Wednesday to begin a month’s visit to New Zealand. He was enthusiastic about the share rum has in the spirits market and of the growth of sales in New Zealand. Mr Norris's company owns distilleries in Jamaica and British Guiana right next to the sugar-cane growers, has three subsidiary companies which make rum and market it throughout the world, and owns a Jamaican company which makes a coffee liqueur. “The consumption of rum is increasing, in line with most other spirits, in every country in the world,” Mr •Norris said. ' The trend was towards the lighter rums—spirits which were not only lighter to col•our but lighter to the taste ’.and smell. Smell. Not Taste - And going back to the beginning of the spirit, Mr Morris explained that “smell” ■was all important. Rum was •a blended product, and one ‘of the most important men .in the industry was the blend--er. His was the secret of •quaEty. But he relied on his nose, not his taste. . To illustrate this, Mr Norris mentioned a man who had ;been a rum blender for 35 years. He neither drank nor smoked. “His nose is the ■most important part of his .’body,” he said. Mr Norris said rum was ■shipped young from the West Indi-a and lay to bond jn London maturing. The -temperatures in the West In■dies were so high that evaporation caused great losses. The more constant temperature in Britain allowed more 'even maturing of the spirit At the end of the maturing period the rums were •blended, and the blending was done just as Scotch whisky was blended, so that whether one distillery had had a not so good year or there had been a drought in One area, the quality of rum would be unchanged. Maturing was a matter of Government regulation, Mr

Norris said, and rums for New Zealand had to be matured for five years. This time was shared by only Southern Ireland. In England the minimum time was three years, and this was general, although Australia and the United States required only two years. But for those countries the rum shipped had generally been maturing for three years. The rise in the world sugar price would have no effect on rum prices, Mr Norris said. Rum came from molasses, a by-product of sugar, and there was no relation between the two. On a refresher visit to New Zealand, visiting old friends and meeting new ones, Mr Norris does not just talk about his wares. Although a senior executive of a wine and spirits company preferred scotch to rum, Mr Norris drank rum himself and persuaded a reporter of “The Press” who had drunk rum neat and with many other cordials to try it with ginger ale —“a popular drink to Britain now,” he was told. The mixture was a repeat prescription.