October 28, 2019 • 36 mins
Agricole-style rum (spelled ‘rhum’ in French) is made from fresh sugarcane juice, which lends it grassy flavors. We learn how it’s made with Hawaii’s Kō Hana Distillers and some of the bartenders who use it around Oahu.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
He kept mentioning, how I think he's kind of like
modus upper Randy was that rum brings people joy. He
kept using that expression people joy, And I mean I
was feeling pretty joyous. Yeah, I was too. I wish
I could accurately convey how I felt when I had
that first taste of that first one of just wow,
(00:33):
like what like what is this? Like? Why have I
never had anything like this before? Because this is good? Yeah,
and you're telling yeah, I can't get it. I mean,
that's the thing is it's so representative of bad place. Hello,
and welcome to Savor Protection of I Heart Radio and
STEPH Media. I'm Ann and I'm Lauren voc Obam and
(00:53):
today we're talking about rum agricole and kind of specifically
an agricole style of realm made from Hawaii in sugarcane
or yes, which is very exciting. Yes, we got to
check out a rum agrical style distillery in Hawaii while
we were there, obviously called Cohana, and the he we
were referring to at the top was Kyle Rittner, Cohana's
(01:14):
brand manager and minority partner. And yeah, it was really cool,
Oh so cool, so cool that we've just been a
good ten minutes trying to figure out how to get
it delivered to the mainland. And it involves like going
to different states and relatives, friends. The whole scheme we're
planning really oh but worthwhile, very worthwhile. And the distillery
(01:35):
was really pretty um like green, the green of the sugarcane,
the red of the dirt, and the like blue and
green of the mountains and the sky. Yeah, because they
have their own sugarcane fields. Like we got to taste
some fresh sugarcane juice. Yeah, and of course we get
to do a tasting. And I think Cohana Rum was
on literally I think literally every venue that we into
(02:00):
in a while, from every restaurant we went to, which
I love, Yeah, all that, so many cocktails with it.
Everyone seemed to be pretty excited about what they were
doing there. Uh yeah. And you know, they're not a sponsor,
we're just fans, which brings us to an important point
drink responsibly. But yeah, I had never seen sugarcane growing
(02:20):
before or tasted its juice. Um, and I've only had
limited experience with these agricole style RUMs. So the whole
experience was just excellent. And this brings us to our question,
rum agricole. What is it? Well, rum agricole is a
(02:43):
liquor distilled from fresh pressed sugarcane juice um that's been fermented,
Meaning you harvest sugarcane, smooth out of sugary juice and
encourage yeast to eat those sugars and poop alcohol and
flavors yeast food. Yeah, and that leaves you with a
sort of wine um, some of the ground maybe eight
alcohol that probably isn't very delicious um. So you run
(03:06):
it through still in order to separate the stuff you
want to drink, mostly ethanol and water and flavors, from
these stuff you don't want to drink, like compounds that
are toxic to humans, like methanol and acid tone, plus
some of that water. And then you age that distilled
liquor for less or more time, either in wood if
you want it to pick up those warm and buttery
and scorched flavors and colors, or in steel if you don't.
(03:31):
Kyle actually explained the process more cleanly than anyone else
I've ever heard do it, and believe me, for purely
research purposes, I've heard a lot of people explain the
distillation process um. But yeah, he he calls himself a
recovering chemist, which might be why so I wanted to
include some of that here. So what happens is we'll
bring that fiallands of fresh sugarcane juice up, pump it
(03:53):
inside of this tank, and then we're going to add
the magic microbe, which is yeast. So yeast is what
is going to consume sugar and create joy um. Yeast
sacrifices itself so that we can all live better lives.
So after six days, which is frankly a really long
fermentation time for a run maker, we'll pump it into
(04:16):
our still. So up until this moment, we are growing cane,
we're fermenting cane, and we're using a couple of machines
to sort of move this stuff. But all of what
is happening would happen naturally. No matter what cane's gonna grow,
it's resilient. If you have sugar accessible to east, yeast
is going to consume it and do what it does.
(04:36):
So this is all processes that frankly don't need us.
They would they would occur at some level like we
are we are without you know, within reason, without a job.
All that matters creation wise, has already occurred. Distillation is
(04:58):
concentration fermentation in his creation. So fermentation makes your flavors.
Distillation concentrates things, so you're not when I'm distilling, I'm
not making any of those flavors. I'm finding ways to
concentrate and share them. Um. We talk about all the time.
There's sort of four steps of what happens in any spirit,
(05:19):
which is something has to be grown. You have to
find a yeast. It's going to consume the sugar that
ends up being accessible. You're going to put it into
a glorified tea cuttle that we call us still and
collect that. And then you're going to do whatever post
production stuff you get, which is maybe as simple as
pouring it into a glass or flavoring it with a
(05:40):
million different flavors and calling it popcorn, rum, caramel, marshmallow, whatever. Um.
You have. All you have those sort of four steps
and it goes you know, growth, creation, concentration, and I
don't have a good one for the last one. Sharing,
And that's that's the steps. But this is a little
(06:04):
different from how you make rum. Yes, so rum without
the agricole distinction, UM is what happens when you distill
fermented molasses, which is a byproduct of refining sugarcane juice
into white crystallized sugar. Molasses. Is very sweet and sort
of rich, but as with any processed product do you
wind up kind of flattening the flavor. So between these
(06:27):
two products, rum and agricole rum, you're dealing with just
a whole different flavor palette. Like where rum tends to
be mostly just candy sweet with flavors from barrel aging
or additives, agricole has those candy notes along with these
vegetable and savory and floral or fruity or citrusy or
grassy notes from the fresh sugarcane, which is after all
(06:48):
a grass sugar cane. Will be a whole other episode.
By the way, we did discuss it a little bit
in our two parter on Sugar from the Way Way Back. Um,
but yeah, I definitely want to revisit at some point. UM.
Agricole is spelled with an h R h u M
because that's the French spelling, and this style of liquor
was first popularized in the French Caribbean. Kyle talked a
(07:09):
little about the differences between the two products. So the
process of crushing sugar is actually the first process that
you would use in making granulated table sugar as well.
Once once you've actually got the stalks of cane, it's
a really straightforward thing. I mean, you could you could
muddle it down, you could pound it with mortar and
(07:31):
pestle and get the juice out of it or whatever
it is. We have a simple what's known as a
roller mill. There's just four circular rollers pressing down this
cane as tightly as it can. You want fresh, clean,
gorgeous juice, which means cut it, juice it quickly, and
(07:51):
juice is simply so it's just a roller mill. And
then you know, for the differences between sort of what
we do and what ends up happening with molasses space RUMs,
that's where the starting material ends for us, and then
we start the distillation process. You would be boiling, bleaching, processing,
and then collecting the remnants as you're starting material on
(08:12):
the other side. So while you know, I'm obviously I
come from the side much like the French where you
name your own things something beautiful like rum agricole and
call everybody else is something terrible like rum industriel like
that's that's maybe not the angle to take, Like it's
rum traditional is what I like to say. And and
(08:32):
there's there's an angle to the molasses rum that's super cool,
But for us it is it is really romantic to
be juicing of fresh plants and using that as our start. Oh,
it really does make a difference. We talked a bit
about a similar product made from the fermented juice of
fresh pressed cane in our Cappernia Cocktail episode, the main
liquor in that being cassa and yeah, it's production is
(08:56):
very similar to rum agricole, but cass is a specifically
Brazilian product. Haiti also produces a similar product, clear Hum.
I'm bad at French, but it's something like that thank
you um, though that only uses wild yeasts for fermentation um,
which get into the juice from open air that's allowed
(09:16):
to interact with the juice. Industrially produced yeasts tend to
add very few flavors to ferment. Most are bread for
efficient alcohol production and clean flavors. One of the things
that we actually nerded out about Akana is that they
primarily use this local yeast that grows on cacao. They
got some local farmers to help them propagate the strain
that they use. When we very first began, it was
(09:38):
sort of serendipitous. We ran across a farmer who was
trying to get the local communities of Cacao farmers to
buy into using kaw yeast to make chocolate. Chocolates are
fermentable as well, like all great things in the world.
So he was like, Oh, I'm gonna provide this cacaw yeast.
This is what we're gonna do. He didn't succeed, and
(09:59):
he came to the distillery because he didn't succeed, which
is awesome because he needed some rum. And they actually
started talking story with our guys at the time and
was like we were going through East experiments and more
traditional ones like Champagne East like stuff like that. That
was all what we were meant to go with. Where
all these like industrial yeasts, which I would be lying
to you if I didn't say, we do finish with
(10:20):
industrially East if necessary. So it it does get used,
but it's not sort of the beginnings of what we do.
So there's a just like any good scientists, they separated
off a bunch of yeast from the outside of a
cocow plant propagated it out and can basically give us
(10:40):
vials of fantastic, funky cocau east and that's what can
start the fermentation for what we do, which is pretty dope. Um,
what kind of flavors do you feel like you you
get out of that east that you wouldn't get from
more traditional you know, it's funny. I don't know if
I would say we we couldn't get them because there's
so many variables, but it definitely lends itself to more
(11:05):
more like raw flavors. It gets It allows the cane
to be a little more like outgoing and less sort
of like subdued. Like I don't you know, a lot
of a lot of the yeasts out there are are
so clean, they're so like perfect, you know, Yeah, and
that's super cool that that's possible that you can do that.
(11:26):
It's also super cool and you can be like, look,
this is wild, this is like this is a whole
different thing. So, especially for us doing a close top fermentation,
to have something that starts the process with some of
that like needed sort of natural funk to it. Yeah,
that's that's what it brings. Rum In general, both molasses
based and cane juice based doesn't have a lot of
(11:48):
labeling regulations here in the US, unlike products like whiskey.
That's because traditionally the US hasn't produced a lot of rum.
There's been no economic reason to regulate. We talked at
it about this with Chandra Lamb Luca Riello, who's the
director of Mythology and Spirits Education for Southern Glazers Wine
and Spirits of Hawaii. Rum is kind of like the
wild wild West. I mean there's not a lot of regulation,
(12:12):
like not like you know, when you have, like tequila
has to be made in Mexico, there's a certain there's
a non that has to follow. UM wine has their
different rules and regulations. With rum, you can call it
like and yeho, and nobody really knows what that means.
It could be a different definition to three different distilleries
and you get three different answers UM. So it's kind
(12:33):
of just appreciating the specific distilleries and what they're doing
behind the scenes to make their rum special and the
care that they take UM in making it. Yeah, So
Kohana is produced in Kuniya right on Oahu, and they've
actually done a ton of research like just gathering all
(12:55):
these different varietals of sugarcane that came on the original
canoes to um white. So they have thirty two different
varietals of sugar cane that they grow there and then
it's very grass to glass. They just let the cane grow,
they harvest it, they press it, they do a wild
East fermentation with wild East cocao from the Big Island,
(13:17):
and then they just let it age and that's it.
It's very very simple process. You really taste that like
earthy grassiness. So the co hold that's in your glass
is that Cohana rum that's aged and used bourbon barrel,
so it has a richness to it and it's beautiful.
(13:38):
Let's talk more about those flavors. Uh yeah, because all
of that lack of regulation around rum means that rum
sold in the US can have added flavors, colors, or sugars.
Agricole styles tend to be just sugarcane juice, so they
tend to not be as sweet as we expect RUMs
to be. A wheel along with Superproducers, Andrew and Dylan
discussed their tasting experience at Cohana when we got back
(14:00):
to the studio. It's an agricol style rum, which means
that it's made directly from the press juice rather from molasses,
which many RUMs are made from. And um, yeah, there
were white RUMs there that are just so flavorful, yeah,
and and vegetable like grass. Yeah, but in a beautiful,
(14:22):
beautiful right way. Yeah. I've never had anything quite like it.
It was so good, It was so good the two
of you. I know there's a bottle, yes, I know it.
I can't stop thinking about. But they were dark RUMs
as well. And there was also a liqueur, which is
very lovely. Yeah. Yeah, coffee related or maybe like you're
(14:43):
supposed to put it in coffee. It came with that
rum cake, remember that In retrospect, I think we were
talking about their Coca LCA, which is made with Hawaiian
honey and cacao, which I'm pretty sure they sourced from
our friends at Manoah Chocolate. Yeah. But anyway, Um, there
are rules in place for rum agricoles out of certain
(15:06):
places like the AO c for the product out of
French controlled Martinique, just like sparkling wine from Champagne. But yeah,
there's more leeway for RUMs in the United States, so
you have to do a little bit of research. It's
been a barrier for entry to RUMs being considered on
par with whiskeys here, I think, but that's starting to change.
The sector has been experiencing quite a bit of growth
(15:28):
as interest in craft cocktails, craft liquors, and just in
general higher quality interesting ingredients has risen. Sales of premium RUMs,
the category that rum agricol falls under, went up by
twenty eight point five percent according to the Distilled Spirits Council.
While rum agricole production has long been mostly confined to
the French Caribbean and other French territories like Reunion off
(15:51):
of Madagascar, some distilleries have started producing some here in
the US in states that grows sugarcane like Louisiana, South Carolina, California,
and of course Hawaii. The US imported the first bottles
of rum agricole from Martinique only about fifteen years ago,
so this is pretty impressive. And recently the company behind
Compari purchased Rulan Teal s a s. Which is a
(16:14):
French company that produces, among other things, three rum agricoles
in Martinique. Persistence Market Research forecasts that the rum agricole
market will be valued at one point three billion dollars
by the end of twenty nineteen. Apparently in parts of
the French antilities that grows sugarcane. Rum agricole is so cheap,
plentiful and well loved that some of the big producers
(16:37):
sell it in two to three leader boxed from mylar
balloons pretty much like box. Oh man, yes, and they
call it bagricle. Oh, why is that not my life? Right? Oh?
I don't need that in my life. Actually, that would
be a day. Would we had to have a big group, Yeah,
(16:57):
that could be an only four parties purchase. Yes, like
we need to get rid of it tonight with a
bunch of people because I can't have it around me.
But anyway, It's also frequently enjoyed in a cocktail called
t punch or tie punch perhaps um small punch is
what that translates to. Typically, this is a proof of
white rum agricole, simple syrup, lime juice and a lime slice,
(17:19):
traditionally served in a short glass. No ice, Yeah, that's it. Yeah,
that is all I read. It's often served deconstructed, so
you know, different pieces, allowing the drinker to decide the
level of sweetness and strength of the drink. And there's
even a saying in Martinique about this process chacun prepares
a propomole or each one prepares their own death. Please
(17:44):
write it, and I want to know if that's true.
It's beautiful. Yeah, we talked a little bit about this
cocktail as a as a precursor to the Dacri in
our Daciri episode. But yes, this style of room has
been popular for over a century in the French Antillies
as a result of the island sugarcane industry trying to
find a way to use up all their sugar to
make rum when threatened by competition from cheaper beat sugar.
(18:05):
More on that in the history portion. The sugarcane industry
has played a big role in Hawaii's history as well,
but that didn't really translate to rum. Here's justin Park,
owner and founder of bar Leather apron On Oaker. Hawaii
doesn't have a long history of rum culture, you know
um like a lot of the Caribbean does. But sugarcane,
(18:27):
like sugar, was our our main export for a very
long time, So sugarcane was there. Is this processed in
a different way. I wish that we created something like
the dachary first, and we had like a Hawaiian rum,
which we do now there's a few distilities making run,
but something more along that line where it's like it's
a pretty simple three ingredient. Like a lot of people
(18:53):
seem to be of this opinion about the dacri. Yeah, yeah,
a lot of people said that, oh, we're we're about
to do a cocktail episode. We'll have to talk about
that more than absolutely. And so yeah, like many things
on Oahu, rum is a product that isn't exactly native,
but it's certainly well embraced. But how did we get here,
(19:13):
Well we'll get into the history of m agricult but
first we're getting into a quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
thank you. So rum history in the smallest of the nutshells,
(19:33):
teeny tiny yes. In Christopher Columbus, that guy introduced sugarcane
to the Caribbean, probably starting with the Bahamas or St. Dominique.
The areas that are now Barbados, Jamaica and Brazil were
the first to produce rum, making it the new world's
first distilled spirit. Sugarcane made it to Martinique somewhere around
(19:56):
sixteen fifty, which is also just a couple of decades
after the first wave of French colonizers started settling there,
and by the end of the seventeenth century, sugar productions
surpassed that of cotton and tobacco on the island, the
previous two big crops. The ports city of Saint Pierre
became a hub for sugar and rum production. Rum distillers
were often situated near ports so that their product could
(20:17):
be shipped to France as quickly as possible. A lot
of credit for refining of rum distillation on Martinique frequently
goes to two French priests, Jacques Doutet and Jean Baptiste.
The Bats arrived on Martinique in the sixt forties and
is touted as the inventor of a distilled sugarcane juice
called od vie, which translates to water of life. When
(20:41):
the middle of the eighteenth century rolled around, rum was
being made widely in the Caribbean, South America, and even
New England. Side note, some drink historians believe the rum
sling to be the world's first cocktail, but as you
can imagine that is a highly contested title, A lot
of argument debate about that. Oh that is that is
(21:01):
an episode for a whole whole other months right now.
Now backing up a bit and looking at Hawaii specifically,
when one of the waves of Polynesian settlers arrived on
Hawaii shores by canoe about eight hundred years ago, one
of the plants they brought with them was coal sugarcane.
The heirloom varietals found on Hawaii today are descended from
(21:22):
these plants. By the sixteen hundreds, it had spread widely
across the islands. It was planted in clumps or rows,
or as a border around taro fields to help with irrigation.
CO was highly valued, both medicinally and as a food stuff.
When James Cook arrived, he traded iron for co. The
first sugar mills started operating in the eighteen thirties, and
a century later employed over fifty thousand people and turned
(21:46):
out one million tons of sugar per year. It is
hard to overstate how much this industry shaped the islands
and how much it shaped the sugar cane that was
growing itself. Because varieties that were the most deficient for
producing mild sugar largely pushed out all the other, perhaps
more interesting varieties. But um, yes, okay, back to the Caribbean.
(22:08):
For a while a rum was made in pretty much
the same way across all of the islands. Um producers
took the cane, crushed and boiled it until they had sugar.
Molasses was a byproduct of the process, and not wanting
to waste an opportunity to make money, folks fermanted this
molasses and used it to make rum. The skimmings from
the boiling process were blended with the molasses, along with
(22:30):
some sediment from the steel, which is called dunder by
the way which differentiates the resulting room from colonial American room.
Or typically only molasses was used. Okay um uh. Rum
in the Caribbean changed though in the eighteen hundreds due
to a few things, but perhaps largely due to some
shipping blockades end a volcanic eruption. So let's let's let's
(22:54):
unpack those a bit. Uh. Starting with the blockades. So,
France and England were at war in the early part
of the century, and blockades made shipping sugar from the
French antillies to France difficult and expensive. Napoleon's solution was
to promote beach sugar in its place, since sugar beats
were grown in Europe, and his plan worked. By the
eighteen seventies, reliance on sugar from the French Caribbean had
(23:16):
substantially decreased, which was just devastating for the sugar industries
based on these islands. Like plantations closed, workers lost their jobs,
Entire economies that had been built on this sugar fell apart.
The plantations that continued to operate no longer had to
put in the effort of separating sugar and molasses since
refined sugar was no longer selling, So they instead we're
(23:38):
just like, well we still have these stills, let's ferment
this raw cane juice. And so not only was the
process simpler this way, but producers got more alcoholic yield
out of it. Um you also have the outlawing of
slavery by all of the European colonizing nations throughout the
first half of the eighteen hundreds, and the Industrial Revolution
ramping up um, influencing how rum was made. Another thing
(24:01):
that changed the worm world was the adoption of the column.
Still on the French islands, particularly those stills designed specifically
for maximum alcohol extraction from the sugar beat. Rum agricol
producers further tweaked these skills to lean lest toward alcohol
extraction and more toward flavor optimization, eventually arriving at what
we now call a creol column. Still, but what about
(24:25):
that volcanic eruption? Okay, So, in n two there was
a catastrophic eruption of Mount Polly and Martinique. It obliterated
the port city of Saint Pierre. Over thirty thousand people
were killed. It altered the course of the island's history
and um, and changed how geologists understand volcanic eruptions. It
(24:46):
was also the deadliest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century,
and it destroyed most of the larger molasses based rum distilleries, which,
in its own tragic way, made room for these smaller
actrical style distilleries to fill that void. World War One
also played an important role in French rum agriculse history.
French rum production was severely endered during wartime in the
(25:08):
French Islands, up to the air production and exports. To
make up for that, more and more people in France
grew familiar with and fell in love with distinct flavor
of these RUMs. Expecting a similar increase in demand. During
World War Two, rum agricult producers churned out a lot
of products, only to run into blockades that made exporting tricky.
(25:29):
So now with a lot of rum, they cast it
and voila aged French rum agricul for the first time
in large scale stores and for the first time available
as a premium product. Still, molasses based rum production didn't
start fading on Martinique until the nineteen sixties. These days,
only one is still in operation on the island. UM. Meanwhile,
(25:53):
the California gold Rats in the eighteen forties and fifties
pushed for greater sugar production in Hawaii, and then yet
another war helped Hawaii's agriculture industry, the Civil War UM.
Due to blockades of exports from the South, sugar prices
shot up five hundred and twenty five per cent in
eighteen sixty four alone, and as we talked about in
(26:13):
our Welcome to Oahu episode, this lucrative sugar industry led
to the U s overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy at
the end of the nineteenth century UM, but then by
the nineteen sixties, the rise of tourism and shifting production
methods and market prices for sugar basically bombed the commercial
production of Hawaiian sugarcane. I mean, after all, it's wildly
(26:34):
expensive to ship things to and from Hawaii. Um, the
last mill Hawaiian commercial and sugar wouldn't close until six
but yeah, it was on its way out for a
long time. In France, awarded that AOC status to Martinique's
rum Echo, granted that they meet the criteria laid out
in the document, which is the dcument is very long,
(26:55):
by the way, it's very extensive. It's been updated I
think twice in the past twenty years. Yeah, it's wild,
it is. It kind of funny. It's just one of
those really dry things that I really appreciate somebody to
the time to to really go like not other kinds
of yeast. This one, this one, that's it. And around
(27:16):
two four the first Martinique rum agricole was important, yes
to the US. And just last month in September often yeah,
Campari Group acquired that French spirits company Roman Tile, which
produces three rum agricoles. So could Agricole becoming two more
shops near you American citizens. Oh right, Um yeah, I mean,
(27:40):
after all, Compari Group was not entirely unresponsible for the
boom in apperl sprits Is and the availability of that
and other Amari plus i'd say the boom and bourbon.
They acquired April's maker, Barbaro back in two thousand three,
and then Wild Turkey, the bourbon maker in in the
Wild Turkey buyout was definitely like amidst an existing American
(28:03):
renaissance of bourbon drinking. But man, did Campari make apparel
a thing here? Uh? Also, one of the barriers of
French caribbean export to the United States has been bottle size.
The standard European liquor bottle is seven hundred millilaters and
the US standard is seven and fifty, and expanding a
(28:25):
production line to include a new bottle size has been
too expensive for small producers, but that would not be
a problem for Campari, not at all. Um. Supposedly the
first target market for their agricol runs is going to
be France, but oh gosh, I hope it opens up
the market for the product here too, because I only
brought one bottle back with me. Um. Oh yeah, and
(28:48):
I brought zero bottles back with me, and I have
many regrets about it. I really need to track down
some of the stuff that's produced Maitland side. Yeah, try
some of that too. There is some controversy around some
of that stuff, um, and I don't all I know
is it's based on like fresh pressed cane juice versus like, uh, evaporated,
(29:11):
But not not that all of the ones in the
mainland do that at all, but I just know, yeah,
I know that like one in California uses evaporated cane
juice and like have had to kind of defend themselves
against detractors, right, Yeah, definitely. I'm planning on going the
next time I'm at a liquor store. I'm going to
see if I can find because I don't think I've
ever been known to look um. By the way, I
(29:34):
read that bottle size thing in this French and Spanish
magazine called rum Porter. The magazine Dela Culture rum oh Man,
which rum damn so good. Um. Anyway, we do have
a little bit more for you, but first we're going
to take a one more quick break for a word
(29:55):
from our sponsor. And we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes,
thank you, And we thought we would take a quick
moment to look forwards to the future, because, first of all,
as we said at the top of the rum, agricul
(30:16):
market is growing and improving, and secondly, distillation is relatively
new in Hawaii. Here's Kyle again, all right, barrel aging.
I try, I try really hard to tell a lot
of our story as I guess as kindly as I can.
(30:39):
I've been in the industry in Hawaii for the past
almost twenty years, and spirits manufacturing here generally revolved around
shipping something else out here, either red as selling it
or just bottling it and putting a Hawaii name on it. Um.
We we're adamant about getting outside of that and changing
(31:02):
away sort of. The bottom line was done and showing
people that while yes, it's expensive to be out here
and shipping and all of these problems exist, we ought
to be doing things the best way possible and barrel
aging on site our own distillate, was a big part
of that. And it's frankly, it's it might be the
sole reason why I jumped shipped fully into this. I
(31:24):
was in bars and restaurants beforehand. UM and going to
a full real barrel aging program was was a big
big move, not just for us, but just for Hawaii.
So that's pretty cool. Um. And also, the tiki cocktail
trend is still going strong. Think the heck and heavens,
I love it. Um it is it is problematic in
(31:46):
some ways, like I do wish that people with no
knowledge of Polynesian cultures would stop willy nilly appropriating imagery
and names, you know, without so much as like googling
first to make sure that they're not being silly at
best and offensive at worst. Um. But yes, rum is
perhaps obviously a big part of tiki cocktail making, and
agricole RUMs are poised to really add depth and breadth
(32:09):
to the category. Um here's Kyle again, there's I guess
there's two ways to look at that question. So first
of all, we have thirty six unique varietals of Hawaiian coe.
We will eventually have used all of them for single
varietal RUMs. Right now, we have twelve of them. So
you've got ka, which is sort of the most common
(32:33):
of the Hawaiian canes. It means white. It's just like
more most traditional. You have peely, my papa. There's Manula,
which is probably our favorite and the one that kind
of got us into doing this. So for us, some
of the excitement is like sticking to values and X
(32:54):
sort of expanding upon them. So it's like getting getting
rooms made with every single cane and really no what
the fermentations with every single varietole tastes like what the
distillation really and get all of that humming and and and. Frankly,
that's like a lifetime project. That's not a short thing. Um.
It might even be a multigenerational type of project to
(33:16):
really get into it, right if you think about what
are really the greatest distilleries in the world, the greatest viitnors,
the greatest brewers there, it's not a single generation. Takes
a long time to learn a lot um, and anybody
that pretends that it doesn't is out of their mind.
So that would be part of it. The two other
sort of I guess aspects that are I don't know
(33:39):
important to me is that we're we're always improving. I
talk a lot when I when I, you know, get
drunk enough about how our rum will never be as
bad as it was today. And I think we have
great rum, but like what was made today will actually
be our worst rum that we've ever met. It will
(34:01):
be worse than any roum we make going for Like,
you have this like your you must improve and that's
not like growth improvement, like you have to make more.
You have to do this, you get better, and like
there's there's this I guess it's synchronized gear, but you're improving.
You're like your your day is the same, but somehow
you're doing about it. There's a little bit of like
sort of the Japanese mentality of that that brings us
(34:26):
to the end of this episode. Man, do I hope
I can find some good rum agricole around here? Uh?
And just heads up, sneak peek. We are going to
be talking a little bit more about some of this
stuff in a future episode we're doing on cocktail culture
in Wain. Yes, absolutely, yes, So keep your eyes and
years out for that one. But in the meantime, you
(34:48):
can email us at hello at saber pod dot com.
You can also find us on social media. We are
on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at saber pod and we
do hope to hear from you. Thanks to our super
produce Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard, our executive producer Christopher
Hassiotas and all of our interviewees, and also Michelle McGowan,
Rice of the Hawaii Food and Wine Festival, Don Sakamotapaiva
(35:10):
of Put It on My Plate, and Joy Gooto and
Maria Hartfield of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau for
putting us in touch with all of those interviewees. Savor
is a production of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
(35:31):
your way. What are you're looking at? Here is all
of the production space that we have at Kahana Distillers,
So you're looking at for fermentation tanks back there all
(35:56):
named the Latina. I t s my distiller and call
them each an individual Tina. So I've got Tina Fe,
I've got Christina Aguilera, I've got you know. Different different
Tinas represent different fermentation types. He hates it, which is
why I hope you guys make sure he gets on
the podcast. I Love you, Tyler,
He kept mentioning, how I think he's kind of like
modus upper Randy was that rum brings people joy. He
kept using that expression people joy, And I mean I
was feeling pretty joyous. Yeah, I was too. I wish
I could accurately convey how I felt when I had
that first taste of that first one of just wow,
(00:33):
like what like what is this? Like? Why have I
never had anything like this before? Because this is good? Yeah,
and you're telling yeah, I can't get it. I mean,
that's the thing is it's so representative of bad place. Hello,
and welcome to Savor Protection of I Heart Radio and
STEPH Media. I'm Ann and I'm Lauren voc Obam and
(00:53):
today we're talking about rum agricole and kind of specifically
an agricole style of realm made from Hawaii in sugarcane
or yes, which is very exciting. Yes, we got to
check out a rum agrical style distillery in Hawaii while
we were there, obviously called Cohana, and the he we
were referring to at the top was Kyle Rittner, Cohana's
(01:14):
brand manager and minority partner. And yeah, it was really cool,
Oh so cool, so cool that we've just been a
good ten minutes trying to figure out how to get
it delivered to the mainland. And it involves like going
to different states and relatives, friends. The whole scheme we're
planning really oh but worthwhile, very worthwhile. And the distillery
(01:35):
was really pretty um like green, the green of the sugarcane,
the red of the dirt, and the like blue and
green of the mountains and the sky. Yeah, because they
have their own sugarcane fields. Like we got to taste
some fresh sugarcane juice. Yeah, and of course we get
to do a tasting. And I think Cohana Rum was
on literally I think literally every venue that we into
(02:00):
in a while, from every restaurant we went to, which
I love, Yeah, all that, so many cocktails with it.
Everyone seemed to be pretty excited about what they were
doing there. Uh yeah. And you know, they're not a sponsor,
we're just fans, which brings us to an important point
drink responsibly. But yeah, I had never seen sugarcane growing
(02:20):
before or tasted its juice. Um, and I've only had
limited experience with these agricole style RUMs. So the whole
experience was just excellent. And this brings us to our question,
rum agricole. What is it? Well, rum agricole is a
(02:43):
liquor distilled from fresh pressed sugarcane juice um that's been fermented,
Meaning you harvest sugarcane, smooth out of sugary juice and
encourage yeast to eat those sugars and poop alcohol and
flavors yeast food. Yeah, and that leaves you with a
sort of wine um, some of the ground maybe eight
alcohol that probably isn't very delicious um. So you run
(03:06):
it through still in order to separate the stuff you
want to drink, mostly ethanol and water and flavors, from
these stuff you don't want to drink, like compounds that
are toxic to humans, like methanol and acid tone, plus
some of that water. And then you age that distilled
liquor for less or more time, either in wood if
you want it to pick up those warm and buttery
and scorched flavors and colors, or in steel if you don't.
(03:31):
Kyle actually explained the process more cleanly than anyone else
I've ever heard do it, and believe me, for purely
research purposes, I've heard a lot of people explain the
distillation process um. But yeah, he he calls himself a
recovering chemist, which might be why so I wanted to
include some of that here. So what happens is we'll
bring that fiallands of fresh sugarcane juice up, pump it
(03:53):
inside of this tank, and then we're going to add
the magic microbe, which is yeast. So yeast is what
is going to consume sugar and create joy um. Yeast
sacrifices itself so that we can all live better lives.
So after six days, which is frankly a really long
fermentation time for a run maker, we'll pump it into
(04:16):
our still. So up until this moment, we are growing cane,
we're fermenting cane, and we're using a couple of machines
to sort of move this stuff. But all of what
is happening would happen naturally. No matter what cane's gonna grow,
it's resilient. If you have sugar accessible to east, yeast
is going to consume it and do what it does.
(04:36):
So this is all processes that frankly don't need us.
They would they would occur at some level like we
are we are without you know, within reason, without a job.
All that matters creation wise, has already occurred. Distillation is
(04:58):
concentration fermentation in his creation. So fermentation makes your flavors.
Distillation concentrates things, so you're not when I'm distilling, I'm
not making any of those flavors. I'm finding ways to
concentrate and share them. Um. We talk about all the time.
There's sort of four steps of what happens in any spirit,
(05:19):
which is something has to be grown. You have to
find a yeast. It's going to consume the sugar that
ends up being accessible. You're going to put it into
a glorified tea cuttle that we call us still and
collect that. And then you're going to do whatever post
production stuff you get, which is maybe as simple as
pouring it into a glass or flavoring it with a
(05:40):
million different flavors and calling it popcorn, rum, caramel, marshmallow, whatever. Um.
You have. All you have those sort of four steps
and it goes you know, growth, creation, concentration, and I
don't have a good one for the last one. Sharing,
And that's that's the steps. But this is a little
(06:04):
different from how you make rum. Yes, so rum without
the agricole distinction, UM is what happens when you distill
fermented molasses, which is a byproduct of refining sugarcane juice
into white crystallized sugar. Molasses. Is very sweet and sort
of rich, but as with any processed product do you
wind up kind of flattening the flavor. So between these
(06:27):
two products, rum and agricole rum, you're dealing with just
a whole different flavor palette. Like where rum tends to
be mostly just candy sweet with flavors from barrel aging
or additives, agricole has those candy notes along with these
vegetable and savory and floral or fruity or citrusy or
grassy notes from the fresh sugarcane, which is after all
(06:48):
a grass sugar cane. Will be a whole other episode.
By the way, we did discuss it a little bit
in our two parter on Sugar from the Way Way Back. Um,
but yeah, I definitely want to revisit at some point. UM.
Agricole is spelled with an h R h u M
because that's the French spelling, and this style of liquor
was first popularized in the French Caribbean. Kyle talked a
(07:09):
little about the differences between the two products. So the
process of crushing sugar is actually the first process that
you would use in making granulated table sugar as well.
Once once you've actually got the stalks of cane, it's
a really straightforward thing. I mean, you could you could
muddle it down, you could pound it with mortar and
(07:31):
pestle and get the juice out of it or whatever
it is. We have a simple what's known as a
roller mill. There's just four circular rollers pressing down this
cane as tightly as it can. You want fresh, clean,
gorgeous juice, which means cut it, juice it quickly, and
(07:51):
juice is simply so it's just a roller mill. And
then you know, for the differences between sort of what
we do and what ends up happening with molasses space RUMs,
that's where the starting material ends for us, and then
we start the distillation process. You would be boiling, bleaching, processing,
and then collecting the remnants as you're starting material on
(08:12):
the other side. So while you know, I'm obviously I
come from the side much like the French where you
name your own things something beautiful like rum agricole and
call everybody else is something terrible like rum industriel like
that's that's maybe not the angle to take, Like it's
rum traditional is what I like to say. And and
(08:32):
there's there's an angle to the molasses rum that's super cool,
But for us it is it is really romantic to
be juicing of fresh plants and using that as our start. Oh,
it really does make a difference. We talked a bit
about a similar product made from the fermented juice of
fresh pressed cane in our Cappernia Cocktail episode, the main
liquor in that being cassa and yeah, it's production is
(08:56):
very similar to rum agricole, but cass is a specifically
Brazilian product. Haiti also produces a similar product, clear Hum.
I'm bad at French, but it's something like that thank
you um, though that only uses wild yeasts for fermentation um,
which get into the juice from open air that's allowed
(09:16):
to interact with the juice. Industrially produced yeasts tend to
add very few flavors to ferment. Most are bread for
efficient alcohol production and clean flavors. One of the things
that we actually nerded out about Akana is that they
primarily use this local yeast that grows on cacao. They
got some local farmers to help them propagate the strain
that they use. When we very first began, it was
(09:38):
sort of serendipitous. We ran across a farmer who was
trying to get the local communities of Cacao farmers to
buy into using kaw yeast to make chocolate. Chocolates are
fermentable as well, like all great things in the world.
So he was like, Oh, I'm gonna provide this cacaw yeast.
This is what we're gonna do. He didn't succeed, and
(09:59):
he came to the distillery because he didn't succeed, which
is awesome because he needed some rum. And they actually
started talking story with our guys at the time and
was like we were going through East experiments and more
traditional ones like Champagne East like stuff like that. That
was all what we were meant to go with. Where
all these like industrial yeasts, which I would be lying
to you if I didn't say, we do finish with
(10:20):
industrially East if necessary. So it it does get used,
but it's not sort of the beginnings of what we do.
So there's a just like any good scientists, they separated
off a bunch of yeast from the outside of a
cocow plant propagated it out and can basically give us
(10:40):
vials of fantastic, funky cocau east and that's what can
start the fermentation for what we do, which is pretty dope. Um,
what kind of flavors do you feel like you you
get out of that east that you wouldn't get from
more traditional you know, it's funny. I don't know if
I would say we we couldn't get them because there's
so many variables, but it definitely lends itself to more
(11:05):
more like raw flavors. It gets It allows the cane
to be a little more like outgoing and less sort
of like subdued. Like I don't you know, a lot
of a lot of the yeasts out there are are
so clean, they're so like perfect, you know, Yeah, and
that's super cool that that's possible that you can do that.
(11:26):
It's also super cool and you can be like, look,
this is wild, this is like this is a whole
different thing. So, especially for us doing a close top fermentation,
to have something that starts the process with some of
that like needed sort of natural funk to it. Yeah,
that's that's what it brings. Rum In general, both molasses
based and cane juice based doesn't have a lot of
(11:48):
labeling regulations here in the US, unlike products like whiskey.
That's because traditionally the US hasn't produced a lot of rum.
There's been no economic reason to regulate. We talked at
it about this with Chandra Lamb Luca Riello, who's the
director of Mythology and Spirits Education for Southern Glazers Wine
and Spirits of Hawaii. Rum is kind of like the
wild wild West. I mean there's not a lot of regulation,
(12:12):
like not like you know, when you have, like tequila
has to be made in Mexico, there's a certain there's
a non that has to follow. UM wine has their
different rules and regulations. With rum, you can call it
like and yeho, and nobody really knows what that means.
It could be a different definition to three different distilleries
and you get three different answers UM. So it's kind
(12:33):
of just appreciating the specific distilleries and what they're doing
behind the scenes to make their rum special and the
care that they take UM in making it. Yeah, So
Kohana is produced in Kuniya right on Oahu, and they've
actually done a ton of research like just gathering all
(12:55):
these different varietals of sugarcane that came on the original
canoes to um white. So they have thirty two different
varietals of sugar cane that they grow there and then
it's very grass to glass. They just let the cane grow,
they harvest it, they press it, they do a wild
East fermentation with wild East cocao from the Big Island,
(13:17):
and then they just let it age and that's it.
It's very very simple process. You really taste that like
earthy grassiness. So the co hold that's in your glass
is that Cohana rum that's aged and used bourbon barrel,
so it has a richness to it and it's beautiful.
(13:38):
Let's talk more about those flavors. Uh yeah, because all
of that lack of regulation around rum means that rum
sold in the US can have added flavors, colors, or sugars.
Agricole styles tend to be just sugarcane juice, so they
tend to not be as sweet as we expect RUMs
to be. A wheel along with Superproducers, Andrew and Dylan
discussed their tasting experience at Cohana when we got back
(14:00):
to the studio. It's an agricol style rum, which means
that it's made directly from the press juice rather from molasses,
which many RUMs are made from. And um, yeah, there
were white RUMs there that are just so flavorful, yeah,
and and vegetable like grass. Yeah, but in a beautiful,
(14:22):
beautiful right way. Yeah. I've never had anything quite like it.
It was so good, It was so good the two
of you. I know there's a bottle, yes, I know it.
I can't stop thinking about. But they were dark RUMs
as well. And there was also a liqueur, which is
very lovely. Yeah. Yeah, coffee related or maybe like you're
(14:43):
supposed to put it in coffee. It came with that
rum cake, remember that In retrospect, I think we were
talking about their Coca LCA, which is made with Hawaiian
honey and cacao, which I'm pretty sure they sourced from
our friends at Manoah Chocolate. Yeah. But anyway, Um, there
are rules in place for rum agricoles out of certain
(15:06):
places like the AO c for the product out of
French controlled Martinique, just like sparkling wine from Champagne. But yeah,
there's more leeway for RUMs in the United States, so
you have to do a little bit of research. It's
been a barrier for entry to RUMs being considered on
par with whiskeys here, I think, but that's starting to change.
The sector has been experiencing quite a bit of growth
(15:28):
as interest in craft cocktails, craft liquors, and just in
general higher quality interesting ingredients has risen. Sales of premium RUMs,
the category that rum agricol falls under, went up by
twenty eight point five percent according to the Distilled Spirits Council.
While rum agricole production has long been mostly confined to
the French Caribbean and other French territories like Reunion off
(15:51):
of Madagascar, some distilleries have started producing some here in
the US in states that grows sugarcane like Louisiana, South Carolina, California,
and of course Hawaii. The US imported the first bottles
of rum agricole from Martinique only about fifteen years ago,
so this is pretty impressive. And recently the company behind
Compari purchased Rulan Teal s a s. Which is a
(16:14):
French company that produces, among other things, three rum agricoles
in Martinique. Persistence Market Research forecasts that the rum agricole
market will be valued at one point three billion dollars
by the end of twenty nineteen. Apparently in parts of
the French antilities that grows sugarcane. Rum agricole is so cheap,
plentiful and well loved that some of the big producers
(16:37):
sell it in two to three leader boxed from mylar
balloons pretty much like box. Oh man, yes, and they
call it bagricle. Oh, why is that not my life? Right? Oh?
I don't need that in my life. Actually, that would
be a day. Would we had to have a big group, Yeah,
(16:57):
that could be an only four parties purchase. Yes, like
we need to get rid of it tonight with a
bunch of people because I can't have it around me.
But anyway, It's also frequently enjoyed in a cocktail called
t punch or tie punch perhaps um small punch is
what that translates to. Typically, this is a proof of
white rum agricole, simple syrup, lime juice and a lime slice,
(17:19):
traditionally served in a short glass. No ice, Yeah, that's it. Yeah,
that is all I read. It's often served deconstructed, so
you know, different pieces, allowing the drinker to decide the
level of sweetness and strength of the drink. And there's
even a saying in Martinique about this process chacun prepares
a propomole or each one prepares their own death. Please
(17:44):
write it, and I want to know if that's true.
It's beautiful. Yeah, we talked a little bit about this
cocktail as a as a precursor to the Dacri in
our Daciri episode. But yes, this style of room has
been popular for over a century in the French Antillies
as a result of the island sugarcane industry trying to
find a way to use up all their sugar to
make rum when threatened by competition from cheaper beat sugar.
(18:05):
More on that in the history portion. The sugarcane industry
has played a big role in Hawaii's history as well,
but that didn't really translate to rum. Here's justin Park,
owner and founder of bar Leather apron On Oaker. Hawaii
doesn't have a long history of rum culture, you know
um like a lot of the Caribbean does. But sugarcane,
(18:27):
like sugar, was our our main export for a very
long time, So sugarcane was there. Is this processed in
a different way. I wish that we created something like
the dachary first, and we had like a Hawaiian rum,
which we do now there's a few distilities making run,
but something more along that line where it's like it's
a pretty simple three ingredient. Like a lot of people
(18:53):
seem to be of this opinion about the dacri. Yeah, yeah,
a lot of people said that, oh, we're we're about
to do a cocktail episode. We'll have to talk about
that more than absolutely. And so yeah, like many things
on Oahu, rum is a product that isn't exactly native,
but it's certainly well embraced. But how did we get here,
(19:13):
Well we'll get into the history of m agricult but
first we're getting into a quick break for a word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
thank you. So rum history in the smallest of the nutshells,
(19:33):
teeny tiny yes. In Christopher Columbus, that guy introduced sugarcane
to the Caribbean, probably starting with the Bahamas or St. Dominique.
The areas that are now Barbados, Jamaica and Brazil were
the first to produce rum, making it the new world's
first distilled spirit. Sugarcane made it to Martinique somewhere around
(19:56):
sixteen fifty, which is also just a couple of decades
after the first wave of French colonizers started settling there,
and by the end of the seventeenth century, sugar productions
surpassed that of cotton and tobacco on the island, the
previous two big crops. The ports city of Saint Pierre
became a hub for sugar and rum production. Rum distillers
were often situated near ports so that their product could
(20:17):
be shipped to France as quickly as possible. A lot
of credit for refining of rum distillation on Martinique frequently
goes to two French priests, Jacques Doutet and Jean Baptiste.
The Bats arrived on Martinique in the sixt forties and
is touted as the inventor of a distilled sugarcane juice
called od vie, which translates to water of life. When
(20:41):
the middle of the eighteenth century rolled around, rum was
being made widely in the Caribbean, South America, and even
New England. Side note, some drink historians believe the rum
sling to be the world's first cocktail, but as you
can imagine that is a highly contested title, A lot
of argument debate about that. Oh that is that is
(21:01):
an episode for a whole whole other months right now.
Now backing up a bit and looking at Hawaii specifically,
when one of the waves of Polynesian settlers arrived on
Hawaii shores by canoe about eight hundred years ago, one
of the plants they brought with them was coal sugarcane.
The heirloom varietals found on Hawaii today are descended from
(21:22):
these plants. By the sixteen hundreds, it had spread widely
across the islands. It was planted in clumps or rows,
or as a border around taro fields to help with irrigation.
CO was highly valued, both medicinally and as a food stuff.
When James Cook arrived, he traded iron for co. The
first sugar mills started operating in the eighteen thirties, and
a century later employed over fifty thousand people and turned
(21:46):
out one million tons of sugar per year. It is
hard to overstate how much this industry shaped the islands
and how much it shaped the sugar cane that was
growing itself. Because varieties that were the most deficient for
producing mild sugar largely pushed out all the other, perhaps
more interesting varieties. But um, yes, okay, back to the Caribbean.
(22:08):
For a while a rum was made in pretty much
the same way across all of the islands. Um producers
took the cane, crushed and boiled it until they had sugar.
Molasses was a byproduct of the process, and not wanting
to waste an opportunity to make money, folks fermanted this
molasses and used it to make rum. The skimmings from
the boiling process were blended with the molasses, along with
(22:30):
some sediment from the steel, which is called dunder by
the way which differentiates the resulting room from colonial American room.
Or typically only molasses was used. Okay um uh. Rum
in the Caribbean changed though in the eighteen hundreds due
to a few things, but perhaps largely due to some
shipping blockades end a volcanic eruption. So let's let's let's
(22:54):
unpack those a bit. Uh. Starting with the blockades. So,
France and England were at war in the early part
of the century, and blockades made shipping sugar from the
French antillies to France difficult and expensive. Napoleon's solution was
to promote beach sugar in its place, since sugar beats
were grown in Europe, and his plan worked. By the
eighteen seventies, reliance on sugar from the French Caribbean had
(23:16):
substantially decreased, which was just devastating for the sugar industries
based on these islands. Like plantations closed, workers lost their jobs,
Entire economies that had been built on this sugar fell apart.
The plantations that continued to operate no longer had to
put in the effort of separating sugar and molasses since
refined sugar was no longer selling, So they instead we're
(23:38):
just like, well we still have these stills, let's ferment
this raw cane juice. And so not only was the
process simpler this way, but producers got more alcoholic yield
out of it. Um you also have the outlawing of
slavery by all of the European colonizing nations throughout the
first half of the eighteen hundreds, and the Industrial Revolution
ramping up um, influencing how rum was made. Another thing
(24:01):
that changed the worm world was the adoption of the column.
Still on the French islands, particularly those stills designed specifically
for maximum alcohol extraction from the sugar beat. Rum agricol
producers further tweaked these skills to lean lest toward alcohol
extraction and more toward flavor optimization, eventually arriving at what
we now call a creol column. Still, but what about
(24:25):
that volcanic eruption? Okay, So, in n two there was
a catastrophic eruption of Mount Polly and Martinique. It obliterated
the port city of Saint Pierre. Over thirty thousand people
were killed. It altered the course of the island's history
and um, and changed how geologists understand volcanic eruptions. It
(24:46):
was also the deadliest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century,
and it destroyed most of the larger molasses based rum distilleries, which,
in its own tragic way, made room for these smaller
actrical style distilleries to fill that void. World War One
also played an important role in French rum agriculse history.
French rum production was severely endered during wartime in the
(25:08):
French Islands, up to the air production and exports. To
make up for that, more and more people in France
grew familiar with and fell in love with distinct flavor
of these RUMs. Expecting a similar increase in demand. During
World War Two, rum agricult producers churned out a lot
of products, only to run into blockades that made exporting tricky.
(25:29):
So now with a lot of rum, they cast it
and voila aged French rum agricul for the first time
in large scale stores and for the first time available
as a premium product. Still, molasses based rum production didn't
start fading on Martinique until the nineteen sixties. These days,
only one is still in operation on the island. UM. Meanwhile,
(25:53):
the California gold Rats in the eighteen forties and fifties
pushed for greater sugar production in Hawaii, and then yet
another war helped Hawaii's agriculture industry, the Civil War UM.
Due to blockades of exports from the South, sugar prices
shot up five hundred and twenty five per cent in
eighteen sixty four alone, and as we talked about in
(26:13):
our Welcome to Oahu episode, this lucrative sugar industry led
to the U s overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy at
the end of the nineteenth century UM, but then by
the nineteen sixties, the rise of tourism and shifting production
methods and market prices for sugar basically bombed the commercial
production of Hawaiian sugarcane. I mean, after all, it's wildly
(26:34):
expensive to ship things to and from Hawaii. Um, the
last mill Hawaiian commercial and sugar wouldn't close until six
but yeah, it was on its way out for a
long time. In France, awarded that AOC status to Martinique's
rum Echo, granted that they meet the criteria laid out
in the document, which is the dcument is very long,
(26:55):
by the way, it's very extensive. It's been updated I
think twice in the past twenty years. Yeah, it's wild,
it is. It kind of funny. It's just one of
those really dry things that I really appreciate somebody to
the time to to really go like not other kinds
of yeast. This one, this one, that's it. And around
(27:16):
two four the first Martinique rum agricole was important, yes
to the US. And just last month in September often yeah,
Campari Group acquired that French spirits company Roman Tile, which
produces three rum agricoles. So could Agricole becoming two more
shops near you American citizens. Oh right, Um yeah, I mean,
(27:40):
after all, Compari Group was not entirely unresponsible for the
boom in apperl sprits Is and the availability of that
and other Amari plus i'd say the boom and bourbon.
They acquired April's maker, Barbaro back in two thousand three,
and then Wild Turkey, the bourbon maker in in the
Wild Turkey buyout was definitely like amidst an existing American
(28:03):
renaissance of bourbon drinking. But man, did Campari make apparel
a thing here? Uh? Also, one of the barriers of
French caribbean export to the United States has been bottle size.
The standard European liquor bottle is seven hundred millilaters and
the US standard is seven and fifty, and expanding a
(28:25):
production line to include a new bottle size has been
too expensive for small producers, but that would not be
a problem for Campari, not at all. Um. Supposedly the
first target market for their agricol runs is going to
be France, but oh gosh, I hope it opens up
the market for the product here too, because I only
brought one bottle back with me. Um. Oh yeah, and
(28:48):
I brought zero bottles back with me, and I have
many regrets about it. I really need to track down
some of the stuff that's produced Maitland side. Yeah, try
some of that too. There is some controversy around some
of that stuff, um, and I don't all I know
is it's based on like fresh pressed cane juice versus like, uh, evaporated,
(29:11):
But not not that all of the ones in the
mainland do that at all, but I just know, yeah,
I know that like one in California uses evaporated cane
juice and like have had to kind of defend themselves
against detractors, right, Yeah, definitely. I'm planning on going the
next time I'm at a liquor store. I'm going to
see if I can find because I don't think I've
ever been known to look um. By the way, I
(29:34):
read that bottle size thing in this French and Spanish
magazine called rum Porter. The magazine Dela Culture rum oh Man,
which rum damn so good. Um. Anyway, we do have
a little bit more for you, but first we're going
to take a one more quick break for a word
(29:55):
from our sponsor. And we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes,
thank you, And we thought we would take a quick
moment to look forwards to the future, because, first of all,
as we said at the top of the rum, agricul
(30:16):
market is growing and improving, and secondly, distillation is relatively
new in Hawaii. Here's Kyle again, all right, barrel aging.
I try, I try really hard to tell a lot
of our story as I guess as kindly as I can.
(30:39):
I've been in the industry in Hawaii for the past
almost twenty years, and spirits manufacturing here generally revolved around
shipping something else out here, either red as selling it
or just bottling it and putting a Hawaii name on it. Um.
We we're adamant about getting outside of that and changing
(31:02):
away sort of. The bottom line was done and showing
people that while yes, it's expensive to be out here
and shipping and all of these problems exist, we ought
to be doing things the best way possible and barrel
aging on site our own distillate, was a big part
of that. And it's frankly, it's it might be the
sole reason why I jumped shipped fully into this. I
(31:24):
was in bars and restaurants beforehand. UM and going to
a full real barrel aging program was was a big
big move, not just for us, but just for Hawaii.
So that's pretty cool. Um. And also, the tiki cocktail
trend is still going strong. Think the heck and heavens,
I love it. Um it is it is problematic in
(31:46):
some ways, like I do wish that people with no
knowledge of Polynesian cultures would stop willy nilly appropriating imagery
and names, you know, without so much as like googling
first to make sure that they're not being silly at
best and offensive at worst. Um. But yes, rum is
perhaps obviously a big part of tiki cocktail making, and
agricole RUMs are poised to really add depth and breadth
(32:09):
to the category. Um here's Kyle again, there's I guess
there's two ways to look at that question. So first
of all, we have thirty six unique varietals of Hawaiian coe.
We will eventually have used all of them for single
varietal RUMs. Right now, we have twelve of them. So
you've got ka, which is sort of the most common
(32:33):
of the Hawaiian canes. It means white. It's just like
more most traditional. You have peely, my papa. There's Manula,
which is probably our favorite and the one that kind
of got us into doing this. So for us, some
of the excitement is like sticking to values and X
(32:54):
sort of expanding upon them. So it's like getting getting
rooms made with every single cane and really no what
the fermentations with every single varietole tastes like what the
distillation really and get all of that humming and and and. Frankly,
that's like a lifetime project. That's not a short thing. Um.
It might even be a multigenerational type of project to
(33:16):
really get into it, right if you think about what
are really the greatest distilleries in the world, the greatest viitnors,
the greatest brewers there, it's not a single generation. Takes
a long time to learn a lot um, and anybody
that pretends that it doesn't is out of their mind.
So that would be part of it. The two other
sort of I guess aspects that are I don't know
(33:39):
important to me is that we're we're always improving. I
talk a lot when I when I, you know, get
drunk enough about how our rum will never be as
bad as it was today. And I think we have
great rum, but like what was made today will actually
be our worst rum that we've ever met. It will
(34:01):
be worse than any roum we make going for Like,
you have this like your you must improve and that's
not like growth improvement, like you have to make more.
You have to do this, you get better, and like
there's there's this I guess it's synchronized gear, but you're improving.
You're like your your day is the same, but somehow
you're doing about it. There's a little bit of like
sort of the Japanese mentality of that that brings us
(34:26):
to the end of this episode. Man, do I hope
I can find some good rum agricole around here? Uh?
And just heads up, sneak peek. We are going to
be talking a little bit more about some of this
stuff in a future episode we're doing on cocktail culture
in Wain. Yes, absolutely, yes, So keep your eyes and
years out for that one. But in the meantime, you
(34:48):
can email us at hello at saber pod dot com.
You can also find us on social media. We are
on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at saber pod and we
do hope to hear from you. Thanks to our super
produce Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard, our executive producer Christopher
Hassiotas and all of our interviewees, and also Michelle McGowan,
Rice of the Hawaii Food and Wine Festival, Don Sakamotapaiva
(35:10):
of Put It on My Plate, and Joy Gooto and
Maria Hartfield of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau for
putting us in touch with all of those interviewees. Savor
is a production of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
(35:31):
your way. What are you're looking at? Here is all
of the production space that we have at Kahana Distillers,
So you're looking at for fermentation tanks back there all
(35:56):
named the Latina. I t s my distiller and call
them each an individual Tina. So I've got Tina Fe,
I've got Christina Aguilera, I've got you know. Different different
Tinas represent different fermentation types. He hates it, which is
why I hope you guys make sure he gets on
the podcast. I Love you, Tyler,
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