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Myers’s Original Dark Rum
You’d expect a rum this iconic, long-lived, and well-regarded to come in a fancy bottle. And yet, here we are with Myers’s Rum… which comes primarily in plastic containers with “easy pour” spouts. It might not look like something you’d proudly display on your bar, but this bottle can be found in pretty much every bar in the world. And today we’re going to find out why.
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History
Fred L. Myers established a trading post in Kingston, Jamaica in 1879, acting as a wholesaler specializing in the trade of sugar, rum, and other spirits. I couldn’t find much detail find about the early origins of Myers’s Rum, but given that Myers was importing spirits it would make sense that he would create a custom blend of rums that he could sell as his house brand at a higher profit margin (a practice commonly done in the scotch whisky market, as well).
At some point, the house brand of Myers’s Rum was sold to the Sazerac company.
Founded in 1869, the Sazerac Company was named after a bar they acquired in New Orleans, the Sazerac Coffee House. Following the establishment of the company, they started marketing and distributing brands of liquor under their name. They produce liquor under various brand names, and in 2019 the brand was further sold to the British spirits giant Diageo.
Product
Learn More: What Is Rum?
If you are expecting an in-depth discussion of how this rum is made, you are going to be sorely disappointed, much like I was. There is little to no information publicly available regarding the production process, but I have tried to piece together the best understanding I have of what’s happening here.
The details on the company website try to make it sound like this is made from sugar cane juice, but even they admit that the juice is first boiled down into molasses before processing — which means we’re probably starting with backstrap molasses (the dirtiest and cheapest form of sugar available) as the raw material, with the better quality components shipped off for sale as table sugar and other sweeteners.
Once a sugary liquid is created, the next step is fermentation to create some alcohol content. Jamaican rum tends to use interesting and characterful components in their fermentation process, but it doesn’t sound like any of that is happening here. Instead, it seems to be just cheaply and quickly fermented.
According to some advertisements from the mid 20th century, this rum was originally distilled in the traditional Jamaican method of a double retort pot still, which creates an interesting and flavorful rum. There’s some indication that the process might still be in use today, but the company website now specifically identifies that this is made with a combination of pot still and column still processes. Column stills are great for putting out large quantities of spirits very quickly, and usually without a lot of flavor. So this is probably a column still produced rum that is then flavored with pot still produced rum.
Once the rum has been manufactured, it is aged in white oak barrels for an undisclosed period of time before being blended and bottled.
As a Jamaican rum, the use of caramel coloring is permitted before bottling to change the color of the end product. I can’t find any confirmation that this is colored, but I highly suspect it personally.
Packaging
I don’t think I’ve seen a bottle this cheap since I reviewed Kentucky Deluxe.
The body of the bottle is plastic with a rectangular cross section and rounded edges. The bottle slopes smoothly at the shoulder to a short neck that is capped off by a plastic screw-on top.
I’ll give some credit to the label here, which I do think is somewhat aesthetically pleasing. If you’ve got a cheap bottle and an (allegedly) artificially colored spirit, then there’s no real reason to highlight the contents with a transparent glass bottle. Give me a good label on an opaque bottle and we’re cool — and that’s exactly what they did here. It’s a nice illustration of a waterside warehouse (potentially the Meyers’s warehouse in Jamaica) depicted in bright tropical sunset colors.
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