During Prohibition, lots of Americans descended on Cuba -- home of original multinational Bacardi and some of the world's great bars -- to drink. And what they drank there, because it was cheap and good, was rum. (Usually in mixed drinks, to the heartbreak of high-end distillers.)
   In those pre-revolution days, Cuba was something like a colonial playground for the gringos; Americans didn't exactly own the island, but we occupied it after we "liberated" it from Spain. Prohibition strengthened Bacardi's market position as it shuttered the old New England rum makers. When the 18th amendment passed, Bacardi closed down its U.S. operation -- but not before dispersing some 60,000 cases of inventory to its U.S. stockholders. Soon the company was filling huge orders from tiny islands from the Bahamas to Newfoundland -- most of which was diverted by rumrunners to thirsty Yankees.
   Soon after the miserable experiment was terminated, Bacardi opened shop in the American territory of Puerto Rico -- which allowed them to take advantage of U.S. nationality while controlling their costs by employing Caribbean labor. That first year after Prohibition, they sold nearly a million bottles of rum in the United States, a sizable minority of which went straight down the guzzle of Ernest Hemingway, a man who would go on to become a fishing buddy of Fidel Castro and a drinker of encyclopedic breadth.
   Hemingway started out as a cub reporter on cheap beer and a wine he later remembered as "dago red," and as an ambulance driver in the Great War he embarked on a lifelong exploration of European wines, liqueurs and spirits. After he was wounded at the front, he reportedly bribed porters in an Italian hospital to supply him with Cinzano, marsala, cognac and the local version of "dago red" -- chianti. He enjoyed Asti spumante with the nurses and took informal lessons from an Italian oenophile who instructed him in the finer arts of drinking, smoking and running around with women.
   By the time Hemingway got to Cuba he was an accomplished man and catholic in his taste. Rum was the local drink and so he made it his. With a confidence bordering on pretension, he famously took his "mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita." Frozen daiquiris -- Papa Dobles -- he'd take in either bar, a half-dozen or more at a time.
   Hemingway loved his frozen daiquiris. He wrote about them in Islands in the Stream:
   He was drinking another of the frozen daiquiris with no sugar in it and as he lifted it, heavy and the glass frost-rimmed, he looked at the clear part below the frapped part of the drink and it reminded him of the sea. The frapped part of the drink was like the wake of a ship and the clear part was the way the water looked when the bow cut it and you were in shallow water over marl bottom. That was almost the exact color.
   (Hemingway was not a man for half-measures. On his 50th birthday, he made love three times, shot pigeons, drank a case of champagne with five friends and "looked the ocean for big fish all afternoon." Or so he reported.)
   Hemingway, like most Americans, drank his rum mixed with fruit and lime juice. So there is nothing wrong with that. He also drank it straight, with a couple of ice cubes, the way the rum barons intended their hightest product be consumed. Papa knew this, for he knew many things.
   And he got the color right as well, although the color of rum varies from whispery silver to a molten murk. Aged dark rums are the best, the professional rummies contend, for they are old and expensive. The light rums are for kids, and they are made in big plants in stainless steel tanks. The dark rums age in seasoned oak barrels and are like brandies -- they improve, they deepen and brood and take on character.
   Columbus took sugar cane to Cuba in 1493, although it wasn't until 1620 when the first officially recorded rum showed up. It was produced in Barbados and known first as "rumbullion," a silly English word that sounds as though it was coined by John Cleese and means "great confusion or tumult." Within 30 years the British navy was issuing a daily ration of the drink to every sailor, a practice that continued until 1970, long after Papa had drained his glass and left the veranda.
   All rum is made using sugar cane -- or, more precisely, the molasses that is produced when the sugar is extracted from the cane. The lightest, almost neutral rums that make up the bulk of the U.S. market are distilled in long, continuous columns and require no more than a year of aging. These are the rums that fuel the Cuba libre and the mai tai, the zombie and all the other made-up Trader Vic-type drinks.
   Rum is a wonderful hotweather drink because its rich flavors blend nicely with most fruits. Add lime and sugar to rum and you have a daiquiri, one of the simplest, most perfect drinks ever devised. You can mix the lightest rum with mangos, guavas, papayas, bananas, even Coca-Cola and still know you are drinking rum. Unlike neutral vodka, rum does not go incognito only to rise up and smite you later. It blends in, it supports -- and every so often it kicks you in the head to remind you that you are in fact drinking alcohol.
   While light rum has its place -- and Bacardi Light is the bestselling spirit brand in the world (more vodka is sold worldwide than rum, but no brand of vodka sells more than Bacardi) -- there are some distillers who still employ the older batch process. Here the molasses is distilled in a vessel shaped like a kettle or a cooking pot. These "pot stills" reduce the molasses less completely than the column process, making for a certain syrupy consistency and a complexity of flavor. Most of the darkest, heaviest rums are reinforced with "dunder" -- the residue scraped from the bottom of the still.
   Dark rum -- also known as "sipping rum" or, in some quarters, "real rum" -- also gains flavor (and color) from the oaken aging casks. Often these barrels were used for Kentucky bourbon, and sometimes sequentially for scotch, before being put to use by the rum makers. These rums are aged in casks for three to 12 years, where they can acquire a smooth rich tone with echoes of vanilla, butternut and spice. Caramel is often added as a coloring agent.
   By conservative estimate there are at least 1,500 different brands of rum in the world; rum is produced in about 40 countries in the Caribbean and the Americas, as well as several in Africa and Asia. As with singlemalt scotch and cognac, vagaries of soil, climate and water also influence a rum's distinctive character.
   Most Jamaican rum -- even the white rum -- is robust and full-bodied, while by contrast rum from Barbados is relatively soft and complex. Myers Legend (about $50 for a 750 ml bottle) from Jamaica is a good example of old-style "navy rums." Legend is ruby-colored and thick, with a spicy nose. R.L. Seale's (about $45) from Barbados is a burnished gold with a softer, almost buttery finish and a suggestion of almonds. R.L. Seale's is the more sophisticated sip, but Myers Legend is more "rummish."
   Appleton Estate from Jamaica (about $29) is a popularly priced compromise between these styles -- it doesn't quite achieve the aromatic finesse of Seale's, and it doesn't have quite the nautical, yo-ho-ho character of Myers Legend, but it goes down well enough, with a pronounced butterscotch flavor. And, if you insist, it makes a mean mojito.
   We must admit we're fond of the mojito, and we've discovered that they're like martinis. Everyone has their version -- the Cafe Bossa Nova mojito is a little different from the popularly priced ($5!) version at Rumba, which is a little different from the -- yes, we've tried it -- mojito at P.F. Chang's. This is our version:
   

Mean Mojito
2 fresh mint sprigs 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice 2 teaspoons sugar 2 ounces light rum Club soda
   In a tall glass, crush one of the mint sprigs with a fork, and rub it about the inside of the glass to coat it. Add the lime juice and sugar and stir vigorously. Top with ice, add the rum and fill the glass with chilled club soda (or seltzer) and mix. Garnish with the remaining mint sprig. Spirits is a monthly imbibing guide. E-mail :
   

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

This story was published Friday, July 07, 2006