A Rum-soaked Swashbuckler Died the Way He Lived To you, the words "rum" and "death" mean the same thing. Picture a pirate like Billy Bones. A cutlass covered in dried blood, a chest overflowing with golden loot, and the weathered salty sea dog lying in bed, bloated with dropsy, years of hard living finally catching up with him. His doctor implores him to stop drinking, because rum is killing him before his eyes. Billy ignores him, of course, because the Captain doesn't take orders. Between Treasure Island and every other pirate story ever written, this is the ending we expect. Why should the legend of Captain Morgan be any different? From a young age, Morgan called Jamaica home. The great Welsh privateer spent decades looting and plundering the Spanish Empire before settling down. He acquired land in Clarendon, in an area that came to be known as Morgan's Valley. In 1681, as deputy governor of the colony, he pardoned an old associate named Moses Cohen Henriques, a Sephardic Jewish privateer who resorted to piracy. Henriques then settled down in Jamaica, where he would become a successful sugar plantation owner. Generations later, the Henriques brothers, still involved in the family business of sugar, purchased New Yarmouth Estate. Just a few decades later, that distillery would become the very place where Captain Morgan rum is made. And then there is the death. By 1688, his own physician, Hans Sloane, the very man whose personal collection would go on to found the British Museum, was telling him to stop drinking.^1 Morgan deliberately disobeyed his doctor, and soon after, he died with a swollen belly and yellowed eyes. He was a pirate who placed rum above all else.^3 It's the perfect story about Captain Morgan. It could potentially even be the true story. But it is also the kind of story the real Captain Morgan would have taken you to court over. --- The Lawsuit Alexandre Exquemelin's The Buccaneers of America portrayed Morgan as a pirate of spectacular violence. Exquemelin himself was a surgeon who had sailed directly under Morgan's command. When the English edition was published in London, Morgan sued, not just over the word "pirate", but also over a deeply personal origin story. Exquemelin claimed young Harri Morgan (his name wouldn't be anglicized to Henry until later in life) had been kidnapped off the streets and shipped to the Caribbean as an indentured servant.^2^23 Morgan won his libel case, received £200 in damages, and forced the publishers to retract some claims about him.^21^4 In his affidavit, he went to considerable lengths to establish his hatred of piracy and his status as a respectable gentleman.^4 Perhaps Exquemelin held a grudge against Morgan and used his book as an opportunity to tarnish his reputation unfairly. Or, perhaps he knew the true Morgan, and the buccaneer used his political connections to silence him. --- The Buccaneer’s Ledger Henry Morgan leading the sacking of Puerto del Principe. Exquemelin, The Buccaneers of America But long before Morgan was fighting to control his reputation in court, his indestructibility became the stuff of legend. In January 1669, Morgan's flagship, the Oxford, was anchored off Île-à-Vache (Isla Vaca) celebrating a recent capture. During a wild, drunken deck party, with cannon fire lighting up the night like fireworks, a stray spark hit the powder magazine.^8 The ship went up in a catastrophic blast, leaving hundreds of Englishmen and an unknown number of French prisoners dead, and only a handful of survivors.^24^25 Morgan was among them, reportedly thrown through the window of his cabin and into the sea by the blast.^7 He climbed out of the water, regrouped, allegedly looted the bodies for clothes and jewelery,^24 and kept sailing. The distinction between privateer and pirate can get slippery in the seventeenth-century Caribbean. He operated under English letters of marque, yet his men signed articles of agreement that included a grim injury payout scale, such as six hundred pieces of eight or six enslaved people for a right arm. Accounts of his campaigns described torturing civilians to reveal where the treasures are hidden, and Catholic nuns being forced to carry ladders toward Spanish defenses as human shields.^24 After the 1671 Panama raid, when the haul proved disappointing and his men accused him of undervaluing the loot, Morgan loaded the better part of the booty onto his own ship and slipped away for Port Royal in the night, leaving members of his own crew stranded.^23^5 This event would mark the end of Morgan's career as a privateer, as the Panama raid occurred after the peace treaty had been signed, and Spain demanded blood, declaring that this technically made Morgan's actions acts of piracy. England arrested Morgan and shipped him back to London aboard a vessel named, ironically, HMS Welcome, along with Jamaican governor Thomas Modyford, who had authorized the raid.^21^2 However, Morgan essentially spent his London arrest networking and being hailed as a hero,^9 and two years later, Charles II knighted him and sent him back to Jamaica as deputy governor.^5 --- The Fragile Illusion Yet, the fight to be seen as the respectable gentleman was an uphill battle. His frequent drunken parties and foul mouth drew the ire of some Jamaican politicians.^11 Upon his return to Jamaica as deputy governor, Morgan was ordered to eradicate piracy, and explicitly could not issue letters of marque. Instead, he directed captains to the French island of Tortuga, where the governor still issued letters of marque against Spanish ships, and in return, the French governor sent Morgan kick-backs for the referrals.^10 The privateers returning to Jamaica to offload stolen loot caused the scheme to be revealed, and hearings were held to investigate whether Morgan was collaborating with the French. In 1683, ten years into his political career, Morgan was purged from the Jamaican government for corruption and misconduct after the governor charged him with "disorder, passions, and miscarriages" and "countenancing men in disloyalty".^11 In his increasingly typical drunken state, he ranted and cursed the Assembly, which, in a surprise to no one but Morgan, convinced the Assembly that he was no longer capable of governing effectively.^11 Morgan was stripped of all his commands and offices, and he spent his final years as a disgraced political has-been on his plantation, only regaining his power five years later in 1688 through sheer cronyism when a personal friend took over as governor, though the redemption was short-lived, as he was too ill to perform any duties.^12 His alcohol consumption caught up to him, and Morgan died that same year. He purchased three sugar plantations and, at the time of his death, held title to 131 enslaved people. Though he died wealthy in land and slaves, he was in debt and had no money left.^13 He was a deeply compromised colonial administrator, having spent his twilight years and fortune making sure that the public record reflected his legitimacy. Captain Morgan rum took Henry Morgan's desperate grasp for respectability and made it walk the plank, building the brand's entire identity on the exact legend he paid lawyers to erase. --- The About-Face There is another problem with putting Henry Morgan on a bottle: which Henry Morgan are we looking at? Five years into Morgan's political career, Alexandre Exquemelin published his infamous book with an engraving by Herman Padtbrugge. The book claims these portraits were drawn "from life," and while we cannot prove Padtbrugge ever saw Morgan in person, the British Museum catalogs it unambiguously as Sir Henry Morgan. In the engraving Morgan is shown at half-length, with curly hair, moustache, sash across his chest, and holding a commander's baton. He is dressed like a respectable naval commander, but behind him, a convoy of ships is ablaze, as they burn and sink in the harbor. The image is captioned "Generaal van de Roovers op Jamaica" ("General of the Robbers from Jamaica"). When Exquemelin's book was translated into English, it gave him a makeover. Frederick Hendrik van Hove based his portrait on Padtbrugge's earlier engraving, but stripped away the burning ships and the baton and placed Morgan inside an ornate oval frame, on top of softening the harsh descriptions of his life. The pirate was already being transformed into a gentleman.^22 You might think all these adjustments during the translation to English would have satisfied him. But remember, even this wasn't good enough, and he still sued the publishers, demanding that they make him look even less objectionable. The original Padtbrugge engraving of Henry Morgan. The embellished Van Hove portrait of Henry Morgan. Don Maitz's Captain Morgan. So there really is a complicated history behind the portraiture of Sir Henry Morgan. However, the grinning, big-hatted figure with one boot on a rum barrel didn't come from any of that anyway. He was invented from scratch in the early 1980s by Don Maitz, a fantasy illustrator with a career built on painting pirates, commissioned to design a "happy scoundrel" for the American market.^14 The real Morgan was a sour-faced gentleman, while the mascot needed to look like someone who convinces you to buy another round. That schism survived even into the brand's legal battles over its imagery. Alcohol Concern complained to Britain's Portman Group that Captain Morgan's packaging used cartoon-like pirate imagery that might particularly appeal to under-18s. The complaint was dismissed on the grounds that the character is based on a real historical figure,^15 which is ironic, considering Morgan had spent his later life insisting that he was a respectable gentleman rather than a pirate. --- The Rum from Jamaica At this point, you might think that Captain Morgan is simply a modern brand dressing up a random rum in pirate costume. As far as budget rum goes, that would be completely par for the course, unfortunately. But actually, there are surprising connections that Captain Morgan rum has with Jamaica. Seagram introduced the brand in 1944, and Jamaica, the island where Morgan spent his entire adult life, became part of the rum's production story. By most accounts, the famous spiced rum recipe traces not to a pirate's private stock, but to Levy Brothers, a Kingston pharmacy that had been infusing rough Jamaican rum with medicinal herbs and spices and selling it as a tonic.^15 Samuel Bronfman liked what he tasted and bought the rights, but "Levy Brothers Pharmacy Spiced Rum" didn't quite have a nice ring to it, so a privateer with a recognizable reputation in the country was a better bet. A few years later, Seagram bought the Long Pond distillery to lock in a steady supply for Captain Morgan rum.^15 Then in 1960, the whole conglomerate split. A corporate reshuffling left J. Wray & Nephew holding the exclusive rights to make and sell Captain Morgan inside Jamaica, using rum drawn from New Yarmouth.^16 Everywhere else in the world, the rights eventually landed with Diageo.^17 How similar was the rum that Henry Morgan drank to the Captain Morgan rum we have in stores? Barely recognizable. Seventeenth-century Caribbean rum, called "kill-devil", was raw, unaged, and by contemporary accounts close to undrinkable straight. Sailors and privateers cut it with sugar, citrus, water, and spice into a rough swill called bumbo, not because anyone was chasing the spiced rum flavor, but because the alternative was repulsive. So Morgan's world really did have people doctoring rough Caribbean rum with sugar and spice, but the modern column-still, vanilla-forward product descended from a Kingston pharmacy, not from a barrel of bumbo on Morgan's own ship. --- The Echo Back in his seafaring days, Morgan was acquainted with Moses Cohen Henriques.^6 Though Henriques had once sailed under the Dutch flag as a privateer, he later crossed the line into outright piracy... an act Morgan, ever the stickler for legal legitimacy, would officially pardon in 1681.^6 The man who went to court to prove he was never a pirate used his power to officially forgive a man who actually was one. Later, the Henriques family was involved in Jamaican commerce and sugar, and Henriques Bros Ltd. eventually came to possess New Yarmouth.^17 That raises one irresistible question: were those Henriques brothers actually descended from the man Morgan pardoned in 1681? If they were, the story forms a hilarious circle. Morgan pardons Henriques, Henriques becomes a Jamaican sugar magnate, his descendants enter the rum business, and New Yarmouth becomes part of the Jamaican Captain Morgan story. It would be an extraordinary piece of continuity, but no documented bloodline connecting the 17th-century Moses Cohen Henriques to the 20th-century Henriques family who owned New Yarmouth has surfaced. However, the connection is completely conceivable, and at the very least, it's one hell of a coincidence, even if it can't be proven. --- The Wrong Ship If you're looking for stronger connections between the man and the rum, so was Diageo. Beginning around 2010, the Captain Morgan brand helped fund a multi-year underwater archaeology project, led by Texas State University, searching for the fleet Morgan lost off Panama during his 1671 career-ending raid. In 2011, the team announced that they had found the wreck believed to be Morgan's flagship, the Satisfaction. In promotional material for the project, brand director Tom Herbst offered a confident assessment about the discovery: "In our case, we don't have to make up a brand story – ours is real and it's waiting to be discovered at the bottom of the ocean floor."^18 Well... not quite. Further analysis eventually identified the wreck not as Morgan's flagship Satisfaction, but as the Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación, a Spanish merchant ship that sank a full decade after Morgan's raid.^19 The wrong ship, the wrong decade, and the wrong side of the war. The Captain Morgan team had gone looking for the real-life inspiration for its brand and wound up excavating one of the Spanish ships belonging to the people Morgan had spent his career attacking. So, they opted for plan B: a 2014 limited-edition bottle, "Captain Morgan 1671", named for the year of the raid. It was finished in Spanish oak, chosen because barrels of that sort were believed to have been on Morgan's ship.^20 --- A Legend In A Bottle We started with a pirate drinking himself to death, a pardoned comrade whose descendants supposedly kept his rum alive, a Jamaican valley bearing his name, and a bottle that capitalizes on his legacy. True, most of that story turned out to contain a gap somewhere, but that is exactly what makes the legend of Captain Morgan so interesting. The real Morgan spent his last years and a fortune making sure the official record called him anything but a pirate. He won the lawsuit, but he lost the war. Three hundred years later, a liquor company put him back in the costume anyway, and gave him a grin he never had in his life. Sir Henry Morgan spent his final years trying to bury his own legend. Captain Morgan bottled it. --- ^1: Dr. Sloane never actually names Henry Morgan. His patient is identified only as “Sir H.M.”, widely attributed to Morgan. A 1988 paper in Medical History argued that the patient could potentially have been another Jamaican official. ^2: MORGAN, HENRY (1635? - 1688), buccaneer(https://biography.wales/article/s-MORG-HEN-1635.html) ^3: THE CASE HISTORY OF SIR H.M.(https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/21B1539D330C9B69021BDF98998864A3/S0025727300048547a.pdf/the-case-history-of-sir-hm.pdf) ^4: The governors of Jamaica in the seventeenth century(https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00074120/00001) ^5: Sir Henry Morgan(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Morgan-Welsh-buccaneer) ^6: Jew of the Week: Moses Cohen Henriques(https://www.jewoftheweek.net/2021/12/29/jew-of-the-week-moses-cohen-henriques/) ^7: David Hepper, British Warships in the Age of Sail 1640-1860 (Seaforth Publishing, 2023) ^8: Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates(https://archive.org/details/underblackflagro00cord1/page/48/mode/2up) ^9: The Buccaneer King: The Biography of the Notorious Sir Henry Morgan 1635–1688(https://archive.org/details/buccaneerkingbio0000pope/page/264/mode/2up) ^10: The Buccaneer King: The Biography of the Notorious Sir Henry Morgan 1635–1688(https://archive.org/details/buccaneerkingbio0000pope/page/276/mode/2up) ^11: Captain Henry Morgan & The Atlantic World(https://henrymorganandtheatlanticworld.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/the-legend-continues/) ^12: The Buccaneer King: The Biography of the Notorious Sir Henry Morgan 1635–1688(https://archive.org/details/buccaneerkingbio0000pope/page/344/mode/2up) ^13: Sir Henry Morgan(https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146662323) ^14: Captain Morgan artist visits Pirate Fest(https://www.news-press.com/story/entertainment/2014/07/25/captain-morgan-artist-visits-pirate-fest/13132237/) ^15: Captain Morgan Logo(https://logos-world.net/captain-morgan-logo/) ^16: J. Wray & Nephew has two distilleries: Appleton Estate and New Yarmouth. Appleton Estate is more focused on premium rums, while New Yarmouth is more focused on bulk rum production, therefore it is most likely the source of the rum used in Captain Morgan. ^17: An Illustrated and Informal J. Wray & Nephew Timeline(https://cocktailwonk.com/2020/12/illustrated-informal-jwray-timeline.html) ^18: Underwater Archaeologists Dig Deep For Iconic Privateer Captain Henry Morgan's Lost Fleet In The Caribbean(https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/underwater-archaeologists-dig-deep-for-iconic-privateer-captain-henry-morgans-lost-fleet-in-the-caribbean-163852336.html) ^19: Descubren un navío español hundido en 1681 en el Caribe de Panamá(https://www.notimerica.com/cultura/noticia-descubren-navio-espanol-hundido-1681-caribe-panama-20150518192428.html) ^20: Diageo Releases Captain Morgan 1671 Spiced Rum(https://www.barandrestaurant.com/food-beverage/diageo-releases-captain-morgan-1671-spiced-rum) ^21: Sir Henry Morgan(https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/Sir-Henry-Morgan/) ^22: The Liminal, The Licentious, and the Illicit: Pirate Portraits in Alexandre-Olivier Exquemelin’s De Americaense Zee-Rovers(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382045515TheLiminalTheLicentiousandtheIllicitPiratePortraitsinAlexandre-OlivierExquemelin%27sDeAmericaenseZee-Rovers) ^23: Is Captain Henry Morgan a real pirate?(https://corsairslegacy.com/article/captainmorgankirillnazarenko) ^24: The Buccaneers of America(https://dn790006.ca.archive.org/0/items/buccaneersofamer00exquuoft/buccaneersofamer00exquuoft.pdf) ^25: Sources vary whether around 250 or 350 people died in the explosion, and whether the number of survivors was 10 or 30.

As the story usually goes, rum was born sometime around 1650 in the English colony of Barbados. Problem is, the Portuguese were already distilling sugarcane spirit in Brazil decades earlier. Documentary evidence points to the early 1600s, which predates all evidence of rum in Barbados.^6 The original cane spirit of the Americas is actually cachaça, not rum. For most of the 20th century, cachaça was exported to the United States under the label of "Brazilian rum". Today, that label has been scrubbed from bottles. The official Brazilian position, backed by decades of lobbying and legal legwork, is that cachaça is not rum; it is its own thing in a separate category. Cachaça must be known as a unique spirit that happens to be made from sugarcane, but is absolutely, categorically, not rum. How did we get here, and are they right? Before we dismantle the myths, we need to understand what rum is. The West Indies Rum and Spirits Producers' Association (WIRSPA) is the trade body representing much of the English-speaking Caribbean's rum producers, and probably the group with the greatest authority to tell us what the word "rum" means. According to them, the rule is crystal clear: "If the product is fermented from sugar cane juice, syrup or molasses and distilled below 96% alcohol it is rum, pure and simple".^7 That's it. Around that foundation, nearly every other production choice is allowed to vary: the type of still, unaged or aged, the type of tree the cask is made from, how much sugar is added, if any, or how many times it passed through the still. With that definition in mind, let's work through the case, myth by myth. --- Myth: Cachaça Has a Fundamentally Different Production Process The Claim: Rum is made from molasses (except rhum agricole), while cachaça is made from cane juice.^1^2 Since the opening of Alcoholes Finos Dominicanos, Ron Barceló has been made with sugarcane juice, despite still tasting like a classic Dominican rum. Yes, a vast amount of rum is made from molasses. Jamaican, Demerara, Barbadian, and Puerto Rican rums, along with the world's biggest sellers (Bacardí, Captain Morgan, Tanduay, Havana Club), are overwhelmingly molasses-based. However, the rum category is far more diverse. The Dominican Republic's Ron Barceló bases its own distillation on fresh cane juice, yet it still tastes like a classic Cuban-style ron. Many of Mexico's new distillers are crafting cane juice rums. Even Jamaica's Worthy Park released a cane juice rum to great success. Guatemala's Ron Zacapa and Ron Botrán are distilled from sugarcane syrup, not juice or molasses. Some Haitian clairins use cane juice, while others are distilled from cane syrup. If base material were enough to split the category, two very typical Dominican rums, molasses-based Brugal and juice-based Barceló, would have to sit on separate shelves. Clairin Sajous would be separated from Clairin Le Rocher, and the liquor store would need new shelves for whatever marketing story Dictador is telling this year. Cachaça's base material may be less common, but it is absolutely a variable within the rum family. The Claim: Due to its raw sugarcane juice base, cachaça is more grassy and tastes more like tequila, while rum is heavy and sweet.^1^2^3 This claim only works if your entire reference point for rum is Captain Morgan. Is rhum agricole not rum? Is clairin not rum? Are the cane juice rums of Oaxaca not rums? Are they all heavy and sweet? It makes more sense to contextualize cachaça against the rums of its actual geographic neighbors. Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, and Guyana, which tend toward a heavier, sweeter molasses style. In this regional context, cachaça does stand out. But standing out from a regional style does not remove a spirit from its overarching category. The Claim: Cachaça's single-pass, low proof distillation and low sugar content makes it more rustic.^2 It is true that in Spanish-style rum production, spirits are often distilled to near-neutral alcohol, diluted, aged, and sometimes sweetened heavily. But there is nothing about this that is inherent to all rum production. Haitian clairins are commonly distilled just once in traditional pot or small creole column stills, then bottled immediately at still strength with no added sugar. Cachaça resembles clairin or agricole more closely than many Spanish-style rums, but that doesn't make it outside of the category. Furthermore, let's address added sugar. Cachaça is often marketed as a more natural spirit than rum, yet Brazilian law actually permits up to 6g/L of added sugar.^5 This is more than Jamaican rum, whose GI does not allow for any added sugar. However, many Central and South American rums operate in less scrupulous ways, where "premium" rums have lots of sugar and other additives to hide imperfections, becoming essentially adult Hawaiian Punch with big numbers on the front that don't actually represent an age statement. In comparison to that, cachaça's 6g/L ceiling is pretty modest. The point isn't that cachaça is more or less pure than rum, but rather that it sits comfortably within rum's existing spectrum of sweetness. The Claim: Rum is aged in ex-bourbon barrels, while cachaça is aged in casks built from native Brazilian trees, such as amburana, which give it a unique flavor.^1^2 Ex-bourbon barrels are common because they are cheap and abundant, but this is not a requirement for rum. Many Spanish-speaking countries, such as Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, make use of Spanish sherry casks for aging, and French-owned brands, such as Planteray and Nicoya, also finish their rums in cognac casks. Japanese whisky producers use mizunara oak. If we created a new spirit category every time someone used a different tree, the back bar would need its own zip code. And critically, aging in native woods is not a strict requirement of cachaça. Cachaça can be consumed unaged (branca/prata), and several major brands, such as Ypióca and Novo Fogo, have begun aging their cachaça in ex-Bourbon barrels. This is driven by a mix of economic realities and growing concerns over the deforestation of Brazil's endangered forests.^8 The Claim: Rum must be aged, while cachaça can be either aged or unaged.^3 It's so sad that the internet is constantly providing false information about my area of expertise. Fortunately, it's very useful and always right about topics I know very little about! If some of these claims sound silly, that's because they are; especially this one. It erases spirits of great cultural importance, such as rhum agricole blanc, Wray & Nephew white overproof rum, Haitian clairins, and others. This one comes from Serious Eats, which I found on the first page of Google if you search "rum vs cachaca". In fact, all 3 sources I used for all of these claims come directly from the first page of Google. If you are going to publish an authoritative, definitive guide on a major platform, and you can't even be bothered to spend five minutes verifying the most basic, easily searchable fact about one of the world's most popular spirits, why should I trust your pizza dough recipe? Also, fun fact: aged cachaça (cachaça envelhecida), by law, doesn't actually have to be fully aged. You can blend aged and unaged cachaça, and as long as at least 50% of it is aged for at least 1 year, it can still legally be called aged cachaça.^5 --- Myth: Cachaça Is Defined as a Separate Spirit The Claim: Rum can be made anywhere in the world, but cachaça can only be made in Brazil.^1 This is a variation of the pervasive "rum has no rules" myth. On its face, the claim is true: cachaça can only be made in Brazil. However, geographic protection is normal. Martinique's Rhum Agricole AOC is strictly geographically bound to Martinique, yet no one argues that it is not a rum. We would not say that rhum agricole, Jamaican rum, and Guatemalan rum are not rums simply because rum can theoretically be made anywhere, while those specific styles can only be made in their respective countries. Geographic protection dictates where and how a spirit is made, but it does not change what the spirit is. The Claim: Brazilian law officially defines cachaça as a spirit separate from rum.^2 Let's start with the United States, the largest importer of cachaça by dollar amount.^12 Brazil used to have to declare it as "Brazilian rum" on US labels. However, after some diplomatic horse-trading in which Brazil agreed to recognize Bourbon and Tennessee Whiskey as protected products in the Brazilian market, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) ruled that cachaça is a type of rum that is a distinctive product of Brazil, allowing it to be labeled simply as "cachaça", with the "rum" qualifier now optional.^10 But cachaça is still unequivocally defined as rum, and cachaça imported into the US must still meet the base production requirements of rum: fermented from sugarcane products, distilled below 96% ABV, and bottled at no less than 40% ABV (while in Brazil the minimum is 38%). The European Union tells the same story. It defines rum as a spirit that is fermented from sugarcane products, distilled below 96% ABV, and bottled at no less than 37.5% ABV, and may not be flavored, nor sweetened above 20g/L.^11 Cachaça does not appear as its own separate category anywhere in Annex I, and it falls under the general rum definition. So, if you live in the US or the EU, legally, cachaça is rum. But many countries have quirks in their laws. We all know the saying: "It's not called Champagne unless it comes from the Champagne region of France, otherwise it's just a sparkling wine". But actually, the U.S. has a grandfather clause that allows some American producers to label their sparkling wine "Champagne", much to the chagrin of the French. In 2021, Russia amended its alcohol law so that only Russian-made sparkling wine could carry the unqualified Russian word for "Champagne" (Shampanskoye), forcing French Champagne houses to label their product as "sparkling wine" for the Russian market. It should be noted that Brazil maintains two legal categories for sugarcane spirits: aguardente de cana, a less-regulated tier of sugarcane spirits, and cachaça, a subset of aguardente de cana that is a tightly controlled premium product. When Brazil campaigns for international recognition of cachaça as something other than rum, it isn't asking for the same distinction to be made for aguardente de cana. The broader, cheaper, less regulated parent category can continue sitting beside Captain Morgan, and Brazil doesn't object. The lobbying only begins when the designation threatens the price point. The Claim: The caipirinha is the national cocktail of Brazil, and it can only be made with cachaça, not rum.^1 Some argue that a caipirinha is just a daiquiri.^13 Let's acknowledge one thing: the caipirinha is not a daiquiri. The muddling of fresh lime wedges with granulated sugar extracts different oils and creates a completely different texture than a shaken cocktail of lime juice and simple syrup. The caipirinha is a uniquely Brazilian invention, and it deserves its own name. A Cuba Libre is a uniquely Cuban invention, and we would not reduce it to merely a "rum and Coke". But we also don't decide that Cuban rum is therefore a separate category of spirit. A Manhattan is not an Old Fashioned. We respect these distinctions because they matter to the people who drink them. The caipirinha is Brazil's mixed drink, but the fact that it has a national identity doesn't mean the liquid in the bottle stopped being rum. --- Myth: Cachaça Came First, So It Can't Be Rum The Claim: Cachaça predates rum. Therefore, it is not a type of rum.^2^3 While the exact genealogy of early cane spirits is messy, the evidence that we have of distilling cane in Brazil predates that of Caribbean rum. In at least one case, we know that the Dutch were distilling cane spirits in Pernambuco before the Portuguese expelled them in 1654. Many of those settlers took their pot stills and their expertise to Barbados, where they put them to work on the island's sugarcane plantations.^4 In general, though, the broader picture is a complex and interconnected one, where tafia, guildive, aguardiente, and aguardente de cana all developed in parallel across colonial towns, as workers distilled whatever sugarcane product was at hand, and influenced each other through trade and migration. The idea that someone in Barbados looked at decades of Brazilian distilling and thought, "You know what? I'll invent something completely different!" is absurd. Cachaça came first, and rum soon followed, but the origins are anything but separate. If anything, the logical conclusion isn't that cachaça is a separate category from rum, but that rum is actually a type of cachaça. Brazil, understandably, does not make this argument. It won't earn them their own shelf at Total Wine. --- Why Brazil Is Fighting This Battle Brazil has fought long and hard to divorce cachaça from the rum category, but the production myths don't hold, and the legal distinction is a political game. But it's a smart game with undeniable benefits. When Brazil lobbies the international community to recognize cachaça as a unique category, they are protecting their premium tier. Rum carries baggage: coconut flavoring, pirates and parrots on labels, $12 handles that you chugged in college and regretted the following morning. Brazil wants to ensure that the world recognizes the craftsmanship and heritage that elevates cachaça above that. Sugarcane crushing in a vertical-roller mill driven by a waterwheel. José Joaquim Freire, 1784.Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro. The arrest of Governor Bligh during the Rum Rebellion, NSW Australia, 1808. But it's also more than just marketing. Cachaça was historically the drink of communities of enslaved Africans and runaways, the spirit of the senzala and the quilombo. Portuguese colonizers and the Brazilian elite often denigrated it as rough swill for peasants and slaves, instead importing Portuguese wine and brandy for themselves. When the Portuguese crown banned cachaça multiple times in the 17th and 18th centuries to protect its own wine and brandy exports, drinking cachaça became an act of defiance. In the Revolta da Cachaça, Brazilians overthrew the governor, held Rio de Janeiro for five months, and won back the spirit, further cementing cachaça's place as the spirit of Brazil's people.^9 However, this sort of story is a shared history of the Americas. Spain's ban of aguardiente sparked rebellions across South America and started the First Rum War in Cuba (yes, there was more than one). The American Revolution was fueled in part by anger over the restrictions placed on Barbadian rum, which was later served by the barrel at Washington's inauguration. The entire history of cane spirits in the Americas is one of colonial extraction, enslaved labor, and working-class rebellion. By artificially segregating cachaça, Brazil might think it is protecting Brazilian heritage, but at the same time, it is isolating the very "father of all rums" from its own family tree. Cachaça should have nothing to fear from the word "rum". If Brazil helped invent the family, why should it be insulted by being recognized as part of it? Cachaça producers and exporters benefit immensely from rum's massive global distribution networks, its cocktail culture, its bartender community, its competitions, yet they bristle when a bartender groups them together, or when a liquor store places them on the same shelf. At the end of the day, the definition of rum is broad enough, under US law, EU law, and WIRSPA, to cover many diverse styles, from grassy, salty agricoles to fruity Jamaican funk bombs; from rich, sweet Central American soleras to light, dry Cuban rones. So it's time to call cachaça what it is: great, historic, Brazilian rum. Recognizing cachaça as rum does not erase its identity, but rather, acknowledges that Brazil helped shape the history of the New World's great spirit. So if calling cachaça "rum" feels like a demotion, then perhaps we've simply undervalued rum. --- ^1: Cachaça vs Rum – What Sets Them Apart? – Texas de Brazil(https://texasdebrazil.com/blog/cachaca-rum-sets-apart/) ^2: What Are the Differences Between Rum and Cachaça? – Vinatis(https://www.vinatis.co.uk/blog-rum-cachaca-differences) ^3: The Serious Eats Guide to Cachaça – Serious Eats(https://www.seriouseats.com/what-is-cachaca-how-its-made-taste-versus-rum) ^4: Going Brazilian – Cachaca Regulations Demystified – Cocktail Wonk(https://cocktailwonk.com/2018/06/going-brazilian-cachacas-regulations-demystified-translated.html) ^5: Classification and labelling terminology for cachaça – NIH.gov(https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10486784/) ^6: American Rum: Brazil – The Rum Historian(https://www.therumhistorian.com/2019/04/22/american-rum-brazil/) ^7: Is Cachaça rum – Distilled Sunshine(https://distilledsunshine.wordpress.com/2017/07/28/is-cachaca-rum/) ^8: One Brazilian Booze Brand Is Leading The Fight For An Un-Endangered Forest - Forbes(https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradjaphe/2018/07/24/one-brazilian-booze-brand-is-leading-the-fight-for-an-un-endangered-forest/) ^9: Cachaça: The People’s Spirit - Distiller(https://distiller.com/articles/cachaca-peoples-spirit) ^10: US TTB 27 CFR § 5.147(b)(1) – ECFR(https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-27/chapter-I/subchapter-A/part-5/subpart-I/section-5.147) ^11: Regulation (EU) 2019/787 – EUR-Lex(https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2019/787/oj/eng) ^12: 'Cachaça is far more than the Caipirinha!' – Beverage Daily(https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2021/03/09/Brazil-eyes-up-potential-for-Cachaca-in-global-markets/) ^13: Caipirinha – Tom Macy Cocktails(https://www.tommacy.com/caipirinha)