Make hay while rum shines

So what makes a good rum? "If you acquire the taste immediately, it has to be good!" Stuart says. "A good rum is dry. A 10-year-old Saint Nicholas Abbey (from Barbados with a production of only 5000 cases a year) is almost like whiskey but not as harsh. Whiskey and cognac are seen as 'the posh drinks' but they are acquired tastes with hard flavors."

The two visual qualities to look for are "legs", which is how slow the liquid runs down the glass. (The slower the better.) Then there is color, which has nothing to do with quality but usually determines the source of the rum. Generally, those from British colonies are the darkest, followed by Spanish colonies and finally those from French colonies.

"Anything you do with whiskey, you can do with rum," Carey says. And that means mixing, enjoying it with ice, water or neat.

A good thing to remember when appreciating rum vs whiskey is that rums mature faster than whiskies because of high humidity and quicker evaporation that occurs in the tropics.

A 10-year-old rum will therefore be closer in taste to a 20-year old whiskey. But the age on the bottle is not what it seems: With rums from British colonies, the youngest age of any rum in the blend is what is on the bottle (so a 10-year-old rum may have 15- and 25-year-olds in the blend). For rums from Spanish colonies, it is the opposite.

Therefore, you can have a label that says 25 years old that is primarily younger blends and only 5 percent being 25-year-old rum.

Related: Enjoying scent and flavors of this spirit