Rum is an alcoholic beverage distilled from the unrefined fermented products of the sugar cane. The term "rum" is often given as synonymous with all distilled liquors, much as brandy and whisky are used in the same sense. Distinctively speaking, rum is applied only to a spirit distilled from molasses, or from sugar cane products. The sugar cane juice may be fermented directly, or the products of manufacture, notably the molasses, after the separation of a crop of sugar, are used particularly for this purpose. In fact, for all practical descriptions it may be said that rum is an alcoholic distillate derived from the fermented molasses of sugar cane. Rum may be made wherever sugar cane is produced, but experience has shown that there are certain localities, as in almost every other instance of this kind, in which the product is of greater value than in other places.

Rum is one of the oldest and most widely known of distilled alcoholic liquors. Its particularly peculiar flavor and aroma come from the aromatic volatile bodies naturally present in cane juices, produced in the course of manufacture, or formed during the distillation and aging of the product. It is evident that very little volatile aromatic substances can remain in molasses, by reason of the fact that in the making of molasses a very high temperature is reached, especially if the sugar cane juices be boiled in an open kettle. If a vacuum pan be used the heat of boiling is very much lower but the volatility of the bodies therein is correspondingly increased by the diminished pressure. Nevertheless, all molasses has that fragrant aromatic odor peculiar to this sugar cane product and this fragrant odor is preserved to a large extent to the distillate. Rum, as is the case with other distilled liquors, improves greatly on keeping in wood, and both for beverage and medicinal purposes it is highly important that the rum be well aged. The Act of Congress prescribing a term of four years of storage for distilled spirits bottled in bond is based largely on the fact that during the first four years after manufacture the improvement in the quality of distilled spirits is extremely rapid. In a country where the temperatures in summer are equal to those of the United States, the ripening of the distilled spirits makes great progress in this time, though it is by no means complete. The term "old" probably should be applied to a rum much older than four years, although at the end of four years the rum has assumed quite a fragrant and attractive character. Among the localities which produce rum of the highest character may be mentioned the islands of the West Indies, especially Jamaica.

Jamaican rum is probably the most famous of the rums 6f commerce. Rum is made in almost every country where sugar cane grows, and very largely in countries where it does not grow, as for instance, New England, where the rum industry was established more than a century ago and where it has flourished up to the present time.