Our last post about organic ethanol gave you the knowledge base about this special certification, and as consumers and producers continue to be more social and environmentally conscious, organic products are a trend that that is here to stay.
At Ethimex, it has been almost 2 years since we started to sell organic and Fairtrade certified rum. Made exclusively for us in cooperation with the global leader in everything that is sugar and molasses related, ED&F MAN.
Organic rum is still very much a niche market, and even more so for Fairtrade (and Bonsucro) certified product. The idea was therefore not to sell tankerloads of this, but to create a rum that will please the customer who wants to buy responsibly, without making concessions on the taste. It took a lot of tweaking and adjusting, but we now have a choice of white and dark rums for our customers, for which we have received positive feedback on about 90% of the samples sent. Taste and smell are of course subjective, and we are not alone in this niche, and that is fine. After all, we don’t want to consume the same product!
The Growth of Organic Spirits
The trend to buy organic is strong, but it has not yet fully caught on with spirits as it has in other categories such as fruit and vegetables. Even within the spirits category, other drinks seem to sell easier in organic form, like for example organic gin.
There is of course the price, an organic and fair-trade product will cost more than a conventional one, the economies of scale are just not there. When it comes to rum, the customer is more loyal to a brand and less willing to experiment, whereas a gin lover would happily try an organic gin, not necessarily because it is organic, but because it is new.
We knew this and did not expect an avalanche of orders from the start. It takes a lot of patience and one has to be committed for the long run, and we are very happy that our partner shares this philosophy. A lot of passion has gone into this project and it is incredibly satisfying to hear or read the very positive feedback we now receive, and see the business grow, even at a slow pace. The COVID-19 pandemic did not help in the short term, of course, but if the researchers are right, one side effect of this terrible episode will be a more conscious choice of product by the customers.
How is our Organic Rum Made?
Exclusively made for Ethimex in cooperation with ED&F MAN, our organic fair-trade rum is distilled in the European Union in batch production on a column still. Production of rum at the site is pretty new but it has been an operational sugar factory since 1859 when it was founded by the Habsburg family. One would typically not associate the EU with making rum (except for Austria’s Inländer Rum), but Europeans have been master distillers and makers of premium stills and equipment for centuries. Why not bring it all together?
Our organic rum is aged in virgin white oak barrels from two different species of French oak, and one species of American oak. We could not use the traditional oak barrels that were used already for the ageing of wine, port, or whisky, as none could be found with organic status, and some would prevent Kosher status as well.
To help the rum impart their unique flavours, the barrels of the two types of oak have different levels of charring/ “toasting” some heavily, some much less so, but the only pre-treatment is heating. We then follow a schedule for the different products that we have worked out, for how much time a product will spend in each barrel, before it moves to the next, and then blend with another that had spent time in a different barrel. The finished product is then being sold in new IBCs, but we could scale up to bulk tankers if the market grows to justify this.
If you are interested in our organic, fair-trade rum and would like to know more, contact us today.
