RUM

According to Maria Dembinska, the King of Cyprus, Peter I, brought rum with him as a gift for the other royal dignitaries at the Congress of Kraków, held in 1364.^[9] This is feasible given the position of Cyprus as a significant producer of sugar in the Middle Ages,^[10] although the alcoholic sugar drink named rum by Dembinska might not have resembled modern distilled rums very closely. Dembinska also suggests Cyprus rum was often drunk mixed with an almond milk drink, also produced in Cyprus, called soumada.^[11]

Another early rum-like drink is brum. Produced by the Malay people, brum dates back thousands of years.^[12] Marco Polo also recorded a 14th-century account of a "very good wine of sugar" that was offered to him in the area that became modern-day Iran.^[2]

The first distillation of rum in the Caribbean took place on the sugarcane plantations there in the 17th century. Plantation slaves discovered that molasses, a byproduct of the sugar refining process, could be fermented into alcohol.^[13] Later, distillation of these alcoholic byproducts concentrated the alcohol and removed impurities, producing the first modern rums. Tradition suggests this type of rum first originated on the island of Barbados. However, in the decade of the 1620s, rum production was also recorded in Brazil.^[14] A liquid identified as rum has been found in a tin bottle found on the Swedish warship Vasa, which sank in 1628.^[15]

A 1651 document from Barbados stated, "The chief fuddling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar canes distilled, a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor."^[13]