Last week, six friends, who happen to be professionals in the spirits industry, joined me to judge rum submissions from 12 countries. The list of sugar cane spirits awarded medals in the Ministry of Rum Tasting Competition can be found here, along with information about my friends, aka the judges. Since the results were announced I have received more comments from email than any other since I began hosting competitions in 2006.

The spirit, no pun intended, behind the Ministry of Rum Tasting Competition is to recognize brands in a competitive setting. The results should only be used as a guide to your next purchase. Competitions are also a way to discover new products and get verified information into the Ministry of Rum database. Competitions are also a way to reach more press about the sugar cane spirit I love. There are always a couple of journalists on the panel of judges as well as other journalists who cover the competition and the results for a number of online magazines.

I hope this sheds some light on the process employed for the Ministry of Rum Tasting Competition, a process that has been adopted by a number of other spirit competitions. I look forward to next year, in the mean time I hope you have a chance to try more tums this year, there are some very good rums coming to a store or bar near you.

Here are answers to the most frequently asked questions.

You don’t have the bests rums in the competition?

Entries were submitted by distillers, blenders and pr firms from around the world. I don’t go out and buy a bunch of rums off the shelf in some US city, or wherever I happen to be. That approach would limit the competition to products that are available in a given city. Once a rum has won a few medals at competitions, sometimes the brand owner feels that it is a liability to risk not winning the highest medal every year.

If you don’t buy bottles off the shelf how can you be sure you’re not getting a competition bottle?

I rely on the distillers/blenders/pr firms not to misrepresent their product. In the words of Ronald Reagan, trust and verify. So, how do you verify that you’re not getting a competition bottle? All of the judges taste rum every week as part of their profession. With that said, once the judges have submitted their scores we reveal the rums and talk about any surprises. On occasion, judges have felt that the bottle before them wasn’t the same as what they remember from previous tastes. Unless the product isn’t available locally, we have gone out and obtained a bottle. And most of the judges have extensive collections so we can usually come up with another bottle, another reason the judges are chosen carefully.

Obviously, this competition was sponsored by . . .

I’ve been accused of being sponsored by several spirits companies in the past, but this year the number of different sponsorship accusations is already at three. None of the judges are compensated for their participation other than for their lunch. So they aren’t inclined to leave as soon as we’ve tasted the premium rums. This year Martin Cate of Smuggler’s Cove, one of the best bars in the country, and it happens to be a tiki bar, was kind enough to offer the use of his bar for the tasting. Thank you Martin.

How do you determine the classes of rums? There should be more categories.

Ideally every rum would be in its own category, which is something I am considering, but more on that later. Categories are adjusted according to the entries. The premium rum category doesn’t include any white rums for instance. Of course there are premium white rums, just look at the prices on some of the white rums on the store shelf. Maybe I’ll change the category name to Premium Dark rums. At least that would satisfy one person. Me.

Sometimes there are only one or two rums in a category, such as the spiced rum category. Flavored rums are generally combined in a flight with spiced and the judges are instructed as to which are spiced rums and that the other rums are flavored, though the flavor is not revealed. I have tasted ’spiced’ rums that tasted more like vanilla-flavored rum than what I expect in a spiced rum. I go by the label and if the predominant word is spiced then that’s where the entry goes.

What rums didn’t win medals?

While many of the rums tasted do win bronze, silver or gold medals, not every rum wins a medal in this or any other competition. I don’t publish a list of rums that didn’t win medals because I don’t believe that publishing that list would encourage others to try them. And it could be viewed as a ‘do not drink’ list for rum snobs. The truth is that the quality of rums being submitted is better every year. Small and large distillers are making and selling better products that deserve recognition.

How could XYZ rum win a gold medal and not ABC?

If this competition was being held in any other country the results would be different. Tastes among rum lovers vary. Tasting 10 or more rums in a flight is a difficult job, which leads to an idea that might be more palatable to more people. Let the judges taste one sugar cane spirit at a time and then all of the judges would discuss what rating that spirit should receive. In the present system there is no discussion so no one or two people can influence the other judges. In the proposed system, less experienced judges may be intimidated if their opinions vary from those who they might think know more about the spirits than they do. On the other hand, using a smaller group of judges makes it possible to have a discussion with less possibility of prejudice.

I’m always looking to improve everything I do. If you have constructive input I would like to hear it, drop me a line. There’s an email link at the bottom of this page.

If you haven’t noticed by now, you have very few rights in this or any other country. You do have, however, a few privileges. But before you flaunt your new-found freedom understand that there are people in your government who are working overtime to curtail those privileges in the name of, well, they’ll think of something, that’s just what they do. Before you tweet this post with your comment that I’ve finally gone off my rocker, please read a little further.

There is hardly a country on this planet where the size of the government is shrinking. Oh there’s a lot of talk about candidates who are working to decrease the size of government, and there are whole parties based on the theory that smaller government is better. The truth is that even those who want to decrease the size of their government, first want to increase the size of the government by at least one individual, themselves, and a few others who have helped them get elected. Dictators aren’t a whole lot different when it comes to the size of the ruling force. And while I have been accused, correctly, or having a strong distaste for most elected officials, or those who take home a paycheck based on their ability to hold a job in the public administrative sector, there have been times in my life, albeit few of them, when I have actually agreed with a bureaucrat. Well, let me correct that, there have been exactly two times in the roughly half century of my life.

Just before the Labor Day weekend I canceled what would have been the third New York Ministry of Rum Festival. I was really looking forward to this event as were others who consider themselves connoisseurs of the spirit from as far away as Boston and the nation’s capitol. In the past this event has been a showplace for some of the best cane spirits available in the US. In the past two years, several brands have launched new products to an audience that appreciates quality and is respectful of the intoxicating effects of spirits. After both of the previous events all of the vendors took the time to personally tell me how much they liked holding this event at Papillon Bar & Bistro, a beautiful restaurant tucked under skyscrapers on 54th St in Midtown Manhattan, so as soon as the date was set for this year’s event, vendors and attendees began making arrangements to attend.  And then I found out that I didn’t have the correct permit to hold a spirits tasting in a restaurant. More correctly it seems that it is illegal to hold spirits tastings in restaurants anywhere in New York state.

I can hear you cry out, “Spirits tastings have been held in restaurants in New York for years!” And you’re right. They have been. (And the guy that got run over by the bus that turned right through the crosswalk, who is now under the bus, had the right of way as well.) But according to the current law, it is illegal to do spirits tastings in restaurants in New York. To date, no one has been cited for violating this provision of the State Statutes. Yes, these are State Laws, enacted by the State Legislature, and that’s the beginning of what will surely be a long, draw-out exercise in government inefficiency. Now I’m no lawyer, and I don’t play one on the internet, but after a few hours spent trying to make sense of the dos and don’ts of the current state of the New York State Laws, I’m only slightly less confused than I was before I made my first call to the State Liquor Authority. Let me back up, my first call left me more confused than I was when I got the notice from a major distributor that handles several brands that have participated in past events telling me that I didn’t have the right plenary permit to conduct a tasting in a licensed on premise restaurant where I had hosted tastings in the past. I won’t even try to make sense of that conversation that ended with the bureaucrat telling me that you couldn’t offer tastes of spirits in a restaurant because you might cheat the customer on the amount of spirit in the glass. To his credit, he did acknowledge that he wasn’t aware of any minimum amount of alcohol that a taste or cocktail had to legally contain. That was about the time that I mentally confirmed that that conversation was a waste of time and that to continue would serve no purpose, I was after all dealing with a government employee who takes home a paycheck to protect the public and the concept of rational thought was beyond the scope of our interaction then or in the future.

A few days later, my second phone call to the SLA was a complete and utter surprise. First, the person whose contact I had been given answered the phone instead of a secretary whose job it is to get rid of anyone who wants to talk to someone in the SLA office. Within a few minutes I began to understand that there are actually people, well at least one person, who understands that their job is not just to say no, like the guy in the Capitol One commercial, but rather to work toward a reasonable solution to the challenges of responsibly serving alcohol in New York in accordance with the State Law. My first clue that this person actually understood that saying no wasn’t going to work, was when he told me that he appreciated that prohibition didn’t work. What a revelation! For the second time in my life I was actually dealing with a bureaucrat that understands that just because there is a law on the books doesn’t mean that it is right, or that it is necessary to enforce that law for the public good.

It turns out that in early August, the SLA had a big meeting about how alcohol, specifically tastings, etc. should be handled in New York. It was really refreshing to hear a bureaucrat say that they didn’t want to shut down every tasting in New York without doing more work on the issue because there are a number of alcohol related tastings that have been going on for years. So without trying to upset the system myself I asked, “So what is the current enforcement policy on tastings?” While I tried not to gasp at the directness of my own question I moved the phone to the full extension of my long arm. “Well, at this time,” I heard a faint voice tell me and I dared to move the phone back to my ear, “we aren’t citing these events, providing . . .” And then it got a bit murky. The gist of the conversation is that the SLA is working hard to figure how they can enforce the laws regarding tastings, in restaurants, or at places with catering licenses, without upsetting the proverbial apple cart, too much.

So what’s going to happen. Well, in my case, it already has. I canceled the third New York Ministry of Rum Festival and here’s why. My crystal ball doesn’t work any better than yours, but it is my guess that at some point in the foreseeable future, there is going to be a publicized event that will be attended by a number of SLA employees, attorneys and others for the purpose of documenting what actually goes on at a spirits tasting. The event or events that are selected to be scrutinized will probably be analyzed and dissected by others who didn’t attend and these events will be used as examples of what is right or wrong with the current law. It is anyone’s guess what will happen when it is determined that the tasting broke the State Law, but I’m not in a position to defend myself against a citation for something that I know violates the State Law. I don’t have to agree with it, but I will, this time, respect the State Law and here’s why.

Personally, I don’t see a problem with a tasting that is held in a restaurant that is licensed to sell alcohol. The legal problem occurs when there is an admission charge, which there has to be in order to limit the number of attendees and to pay the cost of using a restaurant space during the busiest part of the day. And who is going to pay for the food, which isn’t available in off-premise businesses, which are the only legal place to currently conduct a tasting under New York Law. I’m also not in favor of events that are advertised on the internet as an opportunity to drink as much as you can in two or three hours. We’ve all seen the ads. I don’t want to deal with that kind of clientele and neither do the restaurants where I’ve hosted tastings in the past. Tastings that are held under a caterer’s permit run foul of the law because you can’t charge admission for such events and when you do you are essentially running an on-premise business in competition with surrounding businesses that do have an on-premise license and are paying thousands of dollars in property taxes and licensing fees every year.

So what’s the answer for someone who wants to host a responsible tasting? Well if it was simply up to the SLA, I think we would have a solution hashed out by the end of the year, but unfortunately, that isn’t the case. We’re dealing with State Laws that can only be amended by the State Legislature, when it gets around to it. New laws will have to be drafted, voted on and then passed before there can be a change. Another solution would be for the State Legislature to give the SLA the authority to act responsibly in making rules that protect the public good and allow spirits companies to act responsibly while marketing their products to the protected public. The good news is that at least one person in the SLA understands that prohibition didn’t work.

If you’d like to leave a comment about this post please leave it here in the Ministry of Rum forums.

In the 2010 Gibbs & Soell Sense & Sustainability TM Study the Executive Summary of 304 Fortune 1000 Companies concluded that 78% of the executives polled felt that there was insufficient return on investment for them to engage in a green initiative in their business.

Fortunately most agriculturally based businesses see sustainability as one of the cornerstones of their industry. The sugar cane spirits industry is certainly agriculturally based, but a surprising number of distillers and bottlers are doing nothing to save the environmental impact of their businesses. Certainly there are big differences between these two businesses, distillers generate byproducts that can be turned into methane and used to generate steam for more distillation while blenders have fewer opportunities. When I first started asking distillers what they did with their distillery byproduct streams no one, including me, was talking about environmental consciousness. This was all about money, cost of energy and cost of systems to convert byproducts to energy.  Once in a while the word pollution was mentioned but it was clear that neither the EPA, or any other similar foreign government office, wanted to interfere too much with the status quo when it came to the rum industry. From Puerto Rico to Martinique to Trinidad the general consensus was that it was too expensive to treat the distillation byproducts and at the same time too expensive to build a reliable system to turn these product streams into energy. In Trinidad where energy is relatively cheap, the answer was economics. “It will cost more than we can save in energy costs. Besides waste water treatment isn’t our problem that’s what we pay the municipality to do.”

In Martinique, no one wanted the government to impose anything that was untested and would cost too much money. Bacardi on Puerto Rico had spent upwards of $2 million, at a time when $2 million was considered real money, on a distillery waste treatment and anaerobic digester that failed to meet the expectations of Bacardi or the designer. In the mid-90s, the mantra echoed through the islands was that if Bacardi can’t do it, how can we be expected to?

At a recent Rum Barrel Debate in Oakland, I was joined by David Cid from Bacardi, Martin Cate – Smuggler’s Cove, Gerry Schweitzer from Leblon, some notable press representatives including Camper English from Alcademics and fifty other attendees. After a few minutes talking about the history of environmental consciousness in the sugar cane spirits industry it became clear that this was a topic that everyone felt was important enough to pay attention to. Bacardi, working with a local energy company, now has a wind turbine on their Puerto Rico property that provides all of the electrical energy required to power their visitor center. The last numbers I have from Bacardi are that they are also producing 30% of their energy from distillery byproduct conversion. On the south side of the island, Serralles is producing about 70% of their energy from distillery byproducts. About 200 miles west, on the island of Hispaniola, Brugal is producing more than 75% of their distillery energy from an anaerobic digester installed nearly ten years ago and expanded after the initial project proved to be successful.

It appears that you don’t have to be operating the biggest distillery in order to benefit from distillery byproduct conversion. And certainly in the Dominican Republic where energy costs are higher than in Puerto Rico, which are higher than in many places in the US, there is more of an economic incentive to convert as much distillery byproduct as possible to usuable energy. As Diageo builds what will arguably be the biggest and most modern distillery in the Caribbean, a distillation byproduct recovery system is part of the design that will not only help control energy costs, which will undoubtedly rise during the life of the plant, but also reduce the environment impact of distilling so much imported molasses.

The size of a distillery has a lot to do with how efficiently it can handle all of its byproducts. Small distilleries, like those popping up all over the US don’t produce enough spent yeast to warrant an anaerobic digester and most simply dilute the waste into the municipal waste water treatment system. On the other hand you don’t have to be big to make a difference as Brugal has demonstrated. And then there’s Flor de Caña where distillery byproducts are used to produce all of the energy needs for the distillation, bottling and packaging of the primary product – rum. A couple of miles away, at the sugar factory that makes the molasses used at the Flor de Caña distillery, crushed cane or bagasse, is burned in a modern, high-pressure boiler that provides nearly one quarter of the electricity to power the country of Nicaragua during the cane harvest season. The rest of the year, the power output from this investment provides more than 15% of the country’s power while reducing Nicaragua’s dependence on foreign oil.

Just as sugar mills in the early years of the Caribbean sugar industry viewed molasses as a waste product, today no one throws molasses away but rather distills it themselves or sells it to a distiller who turns it into rum and a tidy profit. I look forward to the day when the spent yeast from these distilleries is viewed with the same eye to the bottom line as molasses is viewed by the companies that produce it.

I’m not much for New Year’s Resolutions but here’s one I’m going to try my best to live up to. It ’s been more than ten years since I published my last book and I only regret I didn’t have more books to sell from the last printing.

When my boat sunk off Antigua in 2001, I lost about 600 books. By the time I got to Chicago a year later, I discovered that the publisher of The Complete Guide to Rum had sold about 400 books off as remainders and the asking price for those books has gone through the roof.

The Ministry of Rum website has taken a lot of time, but the bulk of that coding work is behind me. Oh, there will be more new features but I’m getting better at writing the code and there is more, and better, error documentation online. Just getting this blog formatted is something that would have taken several weeks to code only a few years ago, but was accomplished while a few football bowl games keep me company.

A lot has happened in the world of sugar cane spirits in the last few years and I’ve been busy collecting more information, discerning more facts and dispelling more lies about my favorite spirit. So without wasting any more time I’m starting the process of writing the next book. The next book won’t have information on every rum in the world, but it will be an attempt to give you as much credible information as I can compile about these spirits and the people who spend their lives making them.

So without wasting any more time, I’m off to compiling the next book. I don’t have a publish date yet but hope to have this completed in the next few months and to keep you updated on the progress here.