Cultivation Today
Where Does Sugarcane for Rum Grow Today, and Where Has It Disappeared?
Sugarcane for rum grows today in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and islands in the Indian Ocean—in Europe, only on Madeira. Many rum-producing countries, however, have lost their sugar industries: Trinidad and Puerto Rico now distill rum from imported molasses.
Where Is Sugarcane Grown Today?
The world's largest sugarcane fields aren't in the Caribbean, but in Brazil and India. There, most of the harvest goes into sugar and, especially in Brazil, into fuel ethanol. Rum is only a minor consumer. Even so, it depends on these volumes, because wherever large amounts of sugar are produced, large amounts of molasses follow.
This explains why today's largest rum markets lie in Asia. India is by far the world's biggest rum market; in the Philippines, Tanduay has been the best-selling rum brand since 2018. The island of Negros, where sugarcane dominates the landscape, is nicknamed Sugarlandia there. In the Caribbean, by contrast, cultivation has shrunk in many places, as cane sugar could barely compete with cheaper alternatives. Rum from countries with their own cane also comes from Australia, where Bundaberg in Queensland has distilled rum since 1889, and from Fiji, where South Pacific Distilleries has operated in Lautoka since 1980.
Rum Without Its Own Sugar Industry: Trinidad and Puerto Rico
Trinidad was long a sugar country. The Caroni distillery closed in 2002, and the state sugar company Caroni Ltd. was dissolved in 2003, taking the island's sugar industry with it. Since then, Angostura, Trinidad's remaining rum distillery, has had to import its molasses, mainly from Guyana according to industry reports. There, only one distillery has produced rum since the end of 1999: Diamond, run by Demerara Distillers.
Puerto Rico shows the same picture on a larger scale. The island's last sugar factories closed around the year 2000. Yet two major houses still distill rum there: Bacardí in Cataño, home to the main distillery since 1958, and Serrallés with its Don Q brand in Ponce. Both work with imported molasses. For molasses rum, that's no contradiction, since the raw material travels well. You won't see any of this on the label.
Sugarcane in Europe: Madeira and the End in Andalusia
On Madeira today, around 125 hectares of sugarcane yield about 5,800 tons of cane per year. The main areas are Calheta, Machico with Porto da Cruz, and Ponta do Sol. There, the engenhos—the old sugar mills—press fresh juice each spring for Rum da Madeira. This makes Madeira the only place in Europe where rum with a protected designation of origin is still made from locally grown cane.
In Andalusia, the story of European cane sugar ended on June 5, 2006. On that day, the Azucarera del Guadalfeo near Salobreña, on the coast of Motril, closed its doors—in operation since 1861 and known as the last cane sugar factory in Europe. The Ron Montero distillery in Motril, founded in 1963, still markets itself today as Europe's only sugarcane rum distillery. That's a marketing claim, since Madeira also distills rum from its own cane.
Juice Rum Needs Fields, Molasses Rum Doesn't
This picture leads to a simple rule. Rum from fresh juice can only be made where the cane grows and the mill stands right by the field: on Martinique, Guadeloupe and Réunion, on Madeira, in Haiti—where Clairin and Barbancourt are distilled from juice—in Brazil as cachaça, and on Mauritius, where Chamarel has distilled juice rum since 2008.
Molasses rum, by contrast, needs only molasses and a distillery. This explains why countries without a single sugarcane field have rum traditions. For Austrian Inländerrum, rum distillate from sugarcane raw material is distilled in Austria. German Rum-Verschnitt blends imported rum with neutral alcohol. Anyone wanting to know whether a rum comes from the country where its cane grew should look for protected designations such as Rhum de la Martinique or Rum da Madeira.
For enthusiasts, this has a practical consequence. A juice rum is always also a harvest report—it comes from a specific campaign and from fields near the distillery. A molasses rum tells more about its distillery, its yeast, its still and its warehouse. Both have their own value; neither is inherently better. Anyone seeking origin in the literal sense will find it more easily in rum made from fresh juice.